Thoughts on the insence guide

You are lucky. There are areas like that in my town but most aren't.

It also might be geared towards GO+ users, as they specifically reference that they prioritize incense spawns.

I accept the argument for Community Day since a lot of people are shiny-checking, but otherwise agree that extra spawns doesn't always necessarily equal stardust/xp per minute.

You are a privileged player. We don't have any actual data, but it should be safe to assume that there's a non-trivial playerbase that lives outside the largest cities. The guide makes a bit more sense when you watch the actual video and they talk a lot about rural play, which they seem to have left out of the article. Still, why would it be misleading? Anyone who doesn't benefit from incense knowing how it factually works will just determine that it's not for them and move on. The article is clearly not trying to brainwash anyone into thinking incense is the new big thing.

For the big city players, incense can be worth it when going outside the normal playing area or like mentioned in the article, during community day to maximize the number of potential shiny encounters.

At the very least the article is a great piece for debunking the stupid myths that have been floating around since forever.

If you are a city player, you should know well by now that the optimal way to use incense (for you) is during a vehicle trip that is too quick to spin stops or catch wild spawns, and get your 30 pokemon.

All I got out of it is that I need to be biking or riding to get full value (and I have to coordinate with this game enough already; I'm not buying a bike or scheduling a chauffeur, FFS). I've walked my idea of briskly with incense many times and didn't get more than a handful of spawns, and even those only matter when I'm in an area without much activity. (And then...why wouldn't I just go to an area with activity rather than spend 80 coins?) The best spawns I've ever gotten have been a Vileplume and Breloom. If they really want people who live in urban areas to buy them, they need to up the chance of spawning more rare Pokemon. Otherwise, these have ZERO value for me.

Of course, that all may be moot anyway, as I'm presumably the last person in town who refuses to spearfish rares using a map, so why would anyone pay for a chance at rares when they can just plug in coordinates and drive to get as many as they want?

I live miles from downtown of a medium-sized city and I've never had issues with running out of things to catch. I go hunting at a few spots like the local community college, community centres, and pedestrian areas with a lot of shops, and in all of those cases I end up having to pick the best things because I'm running out of Pokeballs.

What I got out of it is that it's only worth it in the extremely narrow cases where you're a passenger in a vehicle going fast enough to trigger a new spawn as soon as you're done catching the last Pokemon, and even then you're sacrificing hatching eggs going at that speed. Personally I've only used Incense during community days or the several-day events of 2017, or when I'm in a rare biome for a short time and want to get the most out of it.