What on earth do you mean "neutral" as if there are two sides to caring about long term infrastructure sustainability. If by "cherry-pick" you mean, explain a falsifiable hypothesis and then point to example of the hypothesis playing out exactly as predicted (Detroit, Jackson, etc.).
If you really think their hypothesis is totally wrong, we're currently living in a real time experiment of the thesis in the Phoenix metro area. Due to water concerns, the suburban development model is no longer feasible. It's unlikely that Phoenix will suddenly become density mecca (as it's not feasible with automobile transportation), so we should expect to see a massive hole in the metro cities' budgets sooner rather than later. If Phoenix turns out to be fine a in 15 years, I'll happily concede the point and will have learned a lot.
