Except strong towns just seems to favor a particular style of development and goes out of its way to cherry pick data to support its points. Plenty of cities are and will be doing just fine with current development plans. The apocalyptic 'every town is going to fail if they dont all live in high rises and have dense commercial development' talk is a bit of a joke.
Yes and no. Like most everything, there has to be a middle ground. Again picking from my local area, Cedar Rapids, has been pushing more downtown commercial projects to point of being annoying about it. But when you step back, it makes sense why. The infrastructure is already there. Walmart wanted to build a new large superstore on the far SE corner of the city along a major road, but both the neighborhood and city council voted it down.
There was a similar thread on here talking about cul de sacs and the overhead involved with the inefficient expansion of cities. I think similar thinking needs applied when commercial developers ask to rezone new land. It has the same effect of stretching the city resources. Especially when cities toss around TIF money like m&ms.