The recent column by Betsy McCaughey underscores a well-founded need for towns and cities around the country to take sensible approaches to urban development.

McCaughey argues that the “lifestyle” of small-town America is under attack, a lifestyle she argues is based on living in single-family homes.

But I must ask: What lifestyle and to what extent is this lifestyle homogeneous across the country?

Small towns vary dramatically, but she egregiously believes that it is activists and those who wish to turn single-use zoned cities and towns from Norman Rockwell-esque paradises into mixed-use hellscapes where crime and homelessness are rampant. These are bad-faith arguments.

Some of the nicest small towns in the country mix housing within commercial districts.

Think of State College, a very lively and upbeat small town, where housing and shops are mixed. One can live in the town, but also live farther out in the suburbs. This is what the many activists and policymakers desire for our urban areas that McCaughey lauds as “social engineering,” a completely unfair argument.

Decisively, however, McCaughey celebrates high house prices as a positive characteristic of the “small-town lifestyle” which is outrageous. Housing prices are ridiculously high; we have young people in this country who wish to buy new homes in urban areas, but the policies that McCaughey cheerleads to protect the “small-town lifestyle” only hinder housing construction and mix-use zoning, the precise reason why houses cost so much today.

I urge readers to think critically about issues related to urban development.

David Trumpbour

Duncansville