Large metro areas effectively subsidize the rural areas. Those millions of people have enjoyed amazingly subsidized civil engineering to have that car commute. If those commutes built-in the correct costs in land usage, gov budget impact, and environmental impact, those commutes would be untenable.
Without populated rural areas to support them, people in cities would start cannibalizing each other within weeks. You seem to have a lot of disdain for people that make your urban lifestyle possible.
Such people are participants in the communities they live in. They pay taxes and patronize local businesses. Often the spouses of commuters work in the local community for those local businesses or the local government. The spouse of the city commuter he despises might well be the best English teacher at the local highschool the farmer sends his children too. The children of a commuter might be the friends of the children of a farmer, and often as teenagers will work for some of those farmers. Beyond economic participation, commuters and their families participate in local clubs and churches which benefit those farmers as much as anybody.
By singling out an economically and socially productive segment of rural communities to attack, he is in fact attacking those communities as a whole.
(Incidentally, it's not just a matter of food. Where do you think the concrete, asphalt and timber cities are made out of comes from? I've not seen many quarries or forests in major cities. Rural communities as a whole, not just farmers specifically, make urban life possible.)
You're accusing me of a bias that does not exist. If you want to live in the country with a different taste of personal freedom, please be my guest. However, it comes with a cost that has been ignored for too long.
Personally, I view a city that is safe from cars as the greater freedom. It means my children can walk to school/friends/store without the very real danger of being killed. Cars are the number one cause of death for children.
A suburban area that likely expanded because of 1950's highways that bored through the downtowns of cities, displacing thousands. Streetcar Suburbs, predating car oriented development, are way more walkable and not car dependent.
That may be true in many cases. But I distinctly remember some of the highways that were built in Portland, and they bulldozed existing suburban neighborhoods to do it. This city was basically one big suburb well before someone had the bright idea to build I-5 through downtown. Heck, almost all of the [residential] tall buildings in the downtown area were built well after the freeway was built.
We have an urban growth boundary now which tries to limit further sprawl, but it can't change the fact that the Portland metro area is 2 million people most of whom live in single-family homes, or maybe low density suburban apartment complexes.
