Do people really believe this stuff?

I acknowledge the fact that it's hard to draw any conclusions about people's thinking from online forums, particularly the local mecca of mouth-breathers, the azcentral.com blogs.

But some recent comments made by one inhabitant of the azcentral.com forums were striking to me for their sheer ignorance:

"Most major cities never had a downtown and function quite well without
one."

"There are few if any examples of the successful application of urban planning models to the development of a modern city."

"All of Paris is a downtown, just like all of Phoenix is a downtown."

For obvious reasons, I'll let these arguments speak for themselves. But it's no wonder that downtown Phoenix looks the way it does when this line of thought is prevalent in the community.