Here's a good example: Portland, Oregon. In Portland, they have an urban growth boundary that has forced developers to stay closer to the city center. This caused property values to rise enough that many dilapidated neighborhoods got rehabbed.
If living in the city means living in grimy, overpopulated districts with high crime, then I'm not in favor of "anti-sprawl" or "New Urbanism" either. But if it means living in clean, attractive areas with lots to do, where you can walk to shopping or restaurants or nice parks, fine! Portland is like that. (I myself do live in the suburbs, but only 1.5 miles from work; I would actually prefer living closer to the city center but that would lengthen my commute. I live near Louisville, Kentucky, which is making progress in its efforts to clean up its downtown.)
Portland is fine if you want to see the theft of private property (no growth zones) and rulership by an unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic dictatorship called a regional planning commission (soviet socialism). Critics of the People's Republic of Portland rightly call this disaster "strip mall socialism."
Not my cup of tea.