Critiquing
Sprawl's Critics
by Peter Gordon and Harry W.
Richardson
Cato
Institute
Peter Gordon and Harry
W. Richardson are professors in both the Department of
Economics and the School of Policy, Planning, and
Development at the University of Southern California.
Executive Summary
Although most Americans
are living better than ever, many now see "urban
sprawl" as the source of most of society’s
problems and "smart growth" as the logical
antidote to those problems. That belief has spawned a
host of local and state initiatives and been popularized
nationally by Vice President Al Gore, who proposes to
make urban sprawl a federal issue.
The assertions by the
critics of urban sprawl do not stand up to scrutiny.
Widely available data undermine most of their claims.
The charge that urban sprawl fosters inequality,
unemployment, and economic blight is disproven by the
fact that lack of human capital, not workplace
inaccessibility, is the main cause of poverty. Moreover,
smart-growth plans exacerbate the problem of workplace
inaccessibility by increasing housing costs for the
poor, making it difficult for them to locate near areas
that are growing economically.
The argument that urban
sprawl gives rise to excessively costly infrastructure,
excessive transportation costs, and environmental damage
is wrong. The facts point directly to the opposite
conclusion.
Finally, the belief that
urban sprawl leads to social pathologies is without
foundation. No one knows the recipe for good or bad
community formations or the best spatial mix of housing
that would accommodate myriad personal preferences.
The American migration to
the suburbs and exurbs can, in part, be seen as attempts
by homeowners to move out of harm’s way and protect
their property rights. The controls proposed by
sprawl’s critics would add to the "push"
forces, resulting ironically in more sprawl rather than
less.
Full
Text of Policy Analysis No. 365 (PDF, 18 pgs, 130 Kb)
© 1999 The Cato
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