What I think you find if you dig into it, is that they can't find the balance of trade-offs they want. I can find a completely walkable city near me, where I could walk to everything I could possibly want, and at reasonable prices ... but crime is too high for some people.

They want the low-crime high value suburban life in a dense environment, and that's what they often can't find. It can be really hard to get this out of them, you basically have to keep providing examples of what they say they want until they finally break down and admit why they don't work.