Damn_Underscore posted...
If people were open to the idea of community units there would be no need to propose them, they would already exist
Ehhh, yes and no. Car-centric suburbanization was driven (pun not intended) by individuals' desires to embrace the supposed convenience and freedom a car could provide (spurred in no small part by propaganda from car and oil companies, but there was legitimate interest there), leading them to vote for development patterns that favoured the car. In that regard, yes, fragmented suburban non-communities can be said to be what people wanted, but a lot of the consequences of those design patterns weren't readily obvious to the people who just liked the face value of "I can drive right from my door to my destination!". The broader social impacts, the infrastructure costs, and the economic fragility that came from trying to make it so everyone could enjoy that convenience weren't considered in expressing those desires.
And now, of course, so many people have only ever known car dependence that they can't wrap their heads around alternatives being any better (see: the number of people that steadfastly believe that owning a car is the only way to be free or independent), so of course they aren't going to be in favour of changing the status quo.
It's kind of like the Internet: Pretty much everyone would agree that, on paper, having easier access to information and contact with people you care about is a good thing. Now that the Internet has made access to information
too
easy, though, you end up with misinformation that's impossible to counter, people becoming overwhelmed by such a massive deluge of information that they can't filter out what's important/true, and being constantly plugged into each others' lives has created some major problems.