Sprawl review/New Urbanism

I finished reading Sprawl over the weekend. It was a decent book but didn't really provide me with the answers I was looking for. The author essentially says that sprawl really isn't something worth worrying about as it is simply a normal party of development and can be traced at least as far back as Roman times. The book is geared more towards those people who believe that artificial limits should be placed on growth, spending a lot of time examining "smart growth" policies such as in Portland, Oregon.

My problem, however, has never been with growth per se. After all, people have to have places to live and not everyone wants an urban environment. But what I've wondered is: does it have to be so ugly? Why does it seem we find so much more visual crap here in the U.S. rather than Europe for example?

Is this just a phase in development? Or is there something fundamentally unsound about our urban planning? I don't know.

As a possible solution to this phenomenon I've been doing some reading about New Urbanism (and here's a New Urbanist blog). Some of their ideas seem pretty sound but other stuff I'm not entirely sold on. Indeed, I think a lot of New Urbanists are a bunch of socialists who want to dictate how people live.

While visually appealing I think it is hardly a fix-all, and as this person notes it seems to suffer from some flaws.