The author writes well. Within a few paragraphs the reader entirely forgets that "I couldn't publish Crap Towns today" is a hypothetical.

Yeah I kept reading for the part where the author addresses the thesis, but that's not what it's about.

I thought that too, it it quite hard to uncover the logical argument there. Appears to be sourced from conversations with journalists. I ended up just trusting that it was true in order to engage with the rest of the piece.