If you hate urban sprawl, you’re probably familiar with the complaints of the “smart growth” movement: Roadways blight cities. Traffic congestion is the worst. Suburbanization harms the environment. Fortunately, say these smart growthers, there is an alternative: By piling on regulations and reallocating transportation-related tax money, we can “densify” our urban communities, allowing virtually everyone to live in a downtown area and forego driving in favor of walking or biking.
Smart growth proponents have been gaining influence for decades. They’ve implemented urban growth boundaries (which greatly restrict the development of land outside a defined area), up-zoning (which tries to increase densities in existing neighborhoods by replacing single-family homes with apartments), and “road diets” (which take away traffic lanes to make room for wider sidewalks and bike lanes).
Alas, there are inherent flaws in the “smart growth” approach—beginning with the idea that it makes sense for everyone to live and work in the same small area, writes Bob Poole in the latest issue of Reason.
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