The Cato Institute continues to punch holes in liberal Washington's conventional wisdom, this time with a study criticizing efforts claiming to reduce urban sprawl.

According to the study, titled "Critiquing Sprawl's Critics," the more activists push to reduce sprawl through restrictive local, state and federal initiatives, the more likely they are to increase sprawl.

The authors of the study, Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson, are professors in the department of economics and the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California.

"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," the study states.

The authors point out that Americans are living better than ever, yet activists claim urban sprawl is the source of most of society's problems. Sprawl, which is defined by the study as most suburban and exurban development, has been linked to a host of social ills.

The extensive list includes increasing income inequality, job insecurity, central-city decline, increasing housing costs, long commutes, environmental problems (especially alleged global warming), species extinction, loss of farmland, a sense of isolation, social intolerance and psychological disorientation. (Psychological disorientation? You mean that when I get confused, I can blame it on the fact that I live in the 'burbs?)

Rather than solve these problems, "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, the authors argue.

Critics of sprawl have devised numerous schemes to combat it, but 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. In fact, the study shows that the average commuting time fell from 22.0 minutes in 1969 to 20.7 minutes in 1995.

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," the study reports. Further, the authors point out that critics of alleged urban sprawl "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."

In other words, as you've seen many times in the column, there is no evil or immorality attached to those who dare to choose suburban living over raising their children in the downtrodden central business district.

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Published: January 27, 2000

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Lesley Hensell covers commercial real estate and financial issues for Realty Times. Based outside of Dallas, Lesley works with high-tech and real estate clients as an independent marketing and public relations consultant. She also writes for several publications, including the Dallas Morning News. E-mail Lesley at: lhensell@earthlink.net