Well, since I am so "clueless" I must say my education has been entirely on experience, so maybe you should visit my town and tell the Smart Growth chapter here that they've got it all wrong. For the past ten years, these wealthy, newly immigrated refuges from other places have been squashing virtually every business proposal in town. They are milky white, politically left, holier than damn-near-everyone, upper income pains in the butt--nothing like open minded or tolerant at all. Every time a business permit is applied for, they show up at the town meeting with their skanky little lawyer to oppose it. If you make under 40K in this town you can't afford to shop here for anything except groceries, because Smart Growth won't allow retail chains.
Furthermore, the only lower income people who agree with Smart Growth are those who are afraid of inner city (read black/hispanic) immigrants trying to find affordable local housing so they can send their kids to our superior schools. So scorn my empirical opinion all you like--they walk like ducks, etc. If we have the wrong impression of Smart Growth, maybe they gave it to us.
It is not Smart Growth people who show up at zoning commission hearings trying to keep the status quo housing and zoning rules which protect THEIR TURF with NO DEVELOPMENT in THEIR AREA. The really do not care about all the issues, growth, no growth, smart growth, stupid growth ... whatever. All they care about is NO DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR NECK OF THE WOODS. Period.
It is these people in aggregate who stymie growth, not Smart Growth people. Your scenario are NIMBY/s (not in my backyard) people played out in hundreds of thousands of communities across the nation. It is NOT people who realize growth must happen because our population is growing, and who wish that growth to happen in a more planned anc careful manner, not haphazardly by scurrying around NIMBY-sim here there and yon.