I have noticed an unsettling development in the urban planning community. At some point "urbanism" became actually code for something that isn't quite really urbanism, but borrowed its language and tokens to insinuate its way into the impressionable minds of young people, much like how "neoliberal", once relatively innocuous, was hijacked by a specific faction in the 1960s and eventually became synonymous with destroying individual liberty to bolster the interests of a specific and narrow group of oligarchs at the expense of all others.

Have we already gone past a similar point of no return for "urbanism", perhaps without realizing it? Will future generations associate "urbanism" with faceless REITs and smug self-satisfied YIMBYs with slicked back hair and expensive suits?

Can mixed medium density land use, effective mass transit, bike friendly road design, and sustainability be taken back to its subversive, grassroots-level origins? Or have plutocrats, twitter bots run by PR firms, and greedy property speculators already hijacked the narrative?