Claire Levy – Urban sprawl drives up the cost of living
Smart Growth: Retarding the Quality of Life
Americans have moved to the suburbs:
The air is cleaner, but road expansion has lagged behind population growth:
A strong anti-suburban movement has developed.
The anti-sprawl movement suggests so-called “smart growth:”
The anti-sprawl diagnosis is flawed:
- Urbanization does not threaten agricultural land:
- Most suburban growth is not from the cities:
- “Walkable” cities are an illusion:
- Open space is expanding more rapidly than urbanization:
Smart growth would intensify the very problems it is supposed to solve.
- Smart growth increases traffic intensity:
- Smart growth increases air pollution intensity:
- Smart growth reduces housing affordability:
From Social Engineering to Freedom:.
- Sufficient road capacity should be provided to accommodate growth:
- People should be allowed to live and work where and how they like:
4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2008
Once again, the Demographia survey leads inevitably to one clear conclusion: the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.
Myth No. 1: Smart Growth is good.
In reality, it’s not. Portland and San Jose, the two top “Smart Growth” cities in the U.S., have more unaffordable housing, higher job losses, higher urban unemployment and greater congestion, with much higher confiscatory tax and fee levels, than before they adopted their “Smart Growth” policies. Yet their leaders proclaim “success” from their policies. Hypocrisy has become the norm – lies and deceitfulness their standard operating procedure for government. Only their union employees and congestion management consultants are profiting – and the bankruptcy attorneys.