Cities that used to be towns were so set on remaining towns that they limited building heights, preventing the development of real "downtowns" at the center of their communities. So now there are tons of business parks all over the place and no central business district. This makes commuting/public transportation impractical and inefficient. And instead of having a natural flow of high density housing to suburban single family homes, you just have a hodge podge of random housing all over the place.