Oh I agree; he's like Joel Kotkin I guess, since Kotkin also likes to promote car use, even though he's an urban planner. WTF.
I posted the article mainly because it mentions a revision the Census Bureau made regarding the most dense metro area. In that instance, it seems rather objective.
And like you said, suburbs in the northeast, and I guess in the midwest too, can be a lot less dense than SoCal suburbs. I grew up in the LA area, so, when I first visited the northeast and went to some of its suburban areas (like Rockaway, NJ), they seemed more like small towns or even semi-rural to me.