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New Study Refutes the Case for 'Smart Growth'

24 January 2000

Cato Institute Study Refutes the Case for More Land-Use Restrictions

    WASHINGTON -- The more activists push to reduce sprawl through restrictive 
local, state and federal initiatives, the more likely they are to increase 
sprawl, say the authors of a Cato Institute study released today.

    In "Critiquing Sprawl's Critics," authors Peter Gordon and Harry W.
Richardson, professors in both the Department of Economics and the School of
Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California,
ote that even though Americans are living better than ever, many now see,
"urban sprawl" as the source of most of society's problems.

    Sprawl, which the authors describe as most suburban and exurban
development, has been linked to a host of social ills, including increasing
income inequality, job insecurity, central-city decline, increasing housing
costs, long commutes, environmental problems (especially global warming),
species extinction, loss of farmland, a sense of isolation, social intolerance
and psychological disorientation.  The authors critique various claims made by
critics of development and suggest that those claims do not withstand
scrutiny.

    "The charge that urban sprawl fosters inequality, unemployment, and
economic blight is disproven," the authors state, "by the fact that lack of
human capital, not workplace inaccessibility, is the main cause of poverty."
Moreover, the authors argue that "smart growth" plans contribute to workplace
inaccessibility by increasing housing costs, making it difficult for the poor
to locate near areas that are growing economically.

    Critics of sprawl have devised numerous schemes to combat it, but, the
authors argue, there is no clear evidence that commuting times have become
much greater over the past several decades, that the quality or quantity of
communal interactions has deteriorated or that mass transit has alleviated
congestion.  The study shows that the average commuting time fell from 22.0
minutes in 1969 to 20.7 minutes in 1995.

    The authors say that advocates of smart-growth communities "offer little
analysis or discussion of the costs, the implied tradeoffs, the consistency of
the vision, or even the consumer's desire for such communities." Sprawl's
critics "presume that people are consistently making the 'wrong' choices and
that they have only poor choices from which to select. Neither proposition is
plausible, and both evince a disrespect (often bordering on contempt) for the
wishes of people whose tastes are not shared by the anti-sprawl activists."

    Policy Analysis 365 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-365es.html).
    The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation
dedicated to broadening policy debate consistent with the traditional American
principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.