- I think the biggest issue here is simply that American cities are so overwhelmingly populated by liberals. Consequently folks on the right don't think much about cities and when they do it tends to get lazy and slipshod. Ask a conservative about rent control, and he'll give you chapter and verse on how it distorts things, likely blissfully unaware that rent control is largely non-existent these days. Ask about parking mandates or FAR limits or whatever and you draw a blank stare. I also want to specifically call out Randall O'Toole of the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. I'd like those outfits to be my allies on these topics, but O'Toole is a pawn of the sprawl lobby who's willfully blind to the ways in which current government regulations are anti-urban.
With respect to institutionalized libertarianism, follow the money is a likely explanation, but generally the libertarian lack of concern with things which actually impact the economic freedom that they tend to babble about for large numbers of people is often baffling. Maybe it's just that more complex property rights issues are confusing for them.