IMO 'urbanist' is used as a stand-in for someone who believes in a particular array of left-liberal urban policies that happens to have a few key differences from the array of urban policies that is currently coded as The Leftist Urban Policies https://twitter.com/stephenjudkins/status/1279610917332725761

it's really at bottom a dispute between people who are first and foremost interested in cities and also identify as leftist/left-ish/socdem, and people who first and foremost identify as leftists and derive from that a particular outlook on cities

no i don't think i'm more interested in 'data' than anyone else. i just think my ideology is derived from the belief in a particular set of urban problems being the most important right now that is a little different from what some others think. https://twitter.com/seanbax/status/1279907557570752512

i agree but on a certain level this is a conflict over what gets to count as a leftist stance on cities and i do think there is an asymmetrical amount of interest in resolving this question that tilts it in one direction https://twitter.com/donewman/status/1279909824046735362

we don't even have to get into housing to see this. one group has taken an interest in reducing transit construction costs as a linchpin issue for improving quality of life for people in cities. another has not, because it doesn't map onto anything else particularly well.

yeah and this is where i get frustrated because it does occasionally delve into an ingroup/outgroup thing where the outgroup is made out to be uncaring rather than having really what amounts to a different approach to a broadly similar end goal https://twitter.com/ambrown/status/1279911379093217280