Are Catholics too "gregarious"?

Urban-law uber-scholar Nicole Stelle Garnett passes on the following -- which seems relevant to our discussion about cities, law, and the Faith -- from Benjamin Clarke Marsh's An Introduction to City Planning (1909).  (Marsh organized the first American conference on city planning; he was a New York land reformer and early proponent of zoning.)  According to Marsh, planning was a necessary response to urban "congestion", which itself had the following causes:  (1)  Transportation; (2) The growth of commerce; (3) Economic in Manufacturing and Business; (4) Immigration; and (5) Gregariousness.  With respect to (5), he wrote:

This has been a most important factor, particularly in a county which as received so many millions of foreigners iwithin the past few decades.  This quality, however, is not peculiar to the immigrant and although it may be regarded as a serious lapse of the pristine vigor of our people, who used to prefer the hapzards of frontier life to the pleasures and excitements of concentrated populations, nevertheless it must be reckoned as a serious and perpetual factor in social organization.

Da** those gregarious Catholic immigrants.  =-)