Our friend Andres Duany is touring the English countryside with the Prince of Wales, and doing a bit of work while he’s there designing a new town near Inverness. What they have there in England, he says, is but “baby sprawl” compared to what we have here in the United States. But if they are not careful, they’ll end up like us. He also noted:

One of the things you can say about America is that at least we are spirited in our commitment to suburban sprawl. Those half-apologetic sub-divisions up there [Inverness] don’t even have the full vulgarity of Dallas, the audacity of the ‘McMansion’

And if you have a choice, and today’s mobile, creative young professionals do have choices, they are not only going to leave vulgar Dallas, but the whole country for Europe, which has a different dream.

Americans cannot get over how people in Europe have five weeks’ vacation annually. They have no concept of quality of life, that leisure time is something to be valued. Europe is going through a spectacularly good time and its quality of life is going to be so superior to America that young people, faced with a choice of living, say, in Atlanta or Munich will choose Munich and Europe any time.