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I understood your very first post to say that we currently have a free market in housing. If I misunderstood, I'm sorry.

In general, you sound like a country person who doesn't understand that there are people who simply enjoy living in the city because of the vitality, the culture, the ability to get around without a car, and the wealth of job opportunities. When you mentioned earlier that it might be pleasant to live and work on a ranch, it made me smile because frankly a lot of city people find the smells of a ranch pretty off putting. People are different. There should be room in America for people to be able to choose what they want from among vibrant and healthy cities, towns, villages, suburbs, and country life.

I would also submit that the cities are full of crime and congestion because of decades of zoning and redevelopment that have split the cities into business districts, shopping districts, and residential districts. Whereas historically, cities were often made up of street-level shops and businesses with people living above and were safe and vibrant places because lots of people were always around. Government ruined that. Many people don't flee the city because they hate city life. They flee the chaos government created. In addition, current development methods soon bring the very thing they were fleeing to them once again. And so the cycle goes.

I would also like to see the studies about most Americans wanting to live in the suburbs. If the choice is presented as living in the ruins of government's hubris of yesteryear versus a shiny new suburb, then of course they will say the suburb. On the other hand, given options that include a community where you can walk to work, walk to the corner grocery store, hit a bookstore, and then go home and walk the dogs in a vibrant, safe community, I would expect that many Americans would like that choice.

What's not to like about getting out of the cities is that job opportunities are typically very limited. So many times the price of that life is hours in gridlock. I know too many Californians that never get to enjoy their piece of the country because of the commute they have to endure.

"Smart Growth" is a Dumb Idea to Lower Crime
Daily Policy Digest

Environmental Issues / Environment

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Author Douglas Morris and other "smart growth" advocates claim that suburban sprawl contributes to increased violent crime rates. But a comparison of crime rates among cities characterized as "smart growth" and "sprawlers" reveals a different story, say the National Center for Policy Analysis' H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., and Pamela Villarreal:

In 2002, Los Angeles' violent crime rate of 1,349 per 100,000 was more than double that of the Riverside-San Bernardino metro area, considered the country's most sprawling area by Smart Growth America.
Portland's violent and property crime rates of 828 and 7,127 per 100,000, respectively, were much higher than sprawling Raleigh-Durham, N.C., with rates of 455 and 4,416.
Seattle's violent and property crime rates of 705 and 7,298 per 100,000 outpaced sprawling Denver's rates of 534 and 4,994.
In addition, both violent and property crime rates in Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles are much higher in the central city than in the wider metropolitan area including the suburbs. In fact, according to FBI crime statistics there are no suburbs in the country with a higher murder rate than their associated central city.

Smart growth policies have produced mixed results at the neighborhood level as well:

A Raleigh, N.C., study showed that street robberies were less likely in neighborhoods with sprawl-associated features like cul-de-sacs, high rates of home ownership and single family homes.
In New Bedfordshire, England, neighborhoods designed using Europe's equivalent of CPTED averaged more than twice the number of crime and disorder incidents per year (5,200) as traditional neighborhoods of comparable size (1,800).
Even in the face of high impact fees, suburbs continue to grow and develop - because consumers demand them. Market forces, not bicycle paths, create villages, say Burnett and Villarreal.

Source: H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., and Pamela Villarreal, "Smart Growth = Crime, Congestion and Poverty," Brief Analysis No. 473, April 22, 2004.

For smaller communities, this spiel is especially appealing. It offers the comfort of a more controlled environment, replete with sidewalks and mom-and-pop shops – like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s difficult not to be drawn in, especially when the salesman claims that it will actually save you money.

That’s the pitch, but here’s the reality: The tighter land use controls that smart growth advocates push would actually increase housing costs for all Californians. This is due to the fact that they ignore market forces by necessity.

If planners mandate construction of high-density housing projects, they will be creating an artificial supply. After all, if the market was demanding that type of housing, no government intervention would be necessary; developers would be scrambling to meet the demand, and would only desire that bureaucrats get out of the way.

Now supply can affect price, but it doesn’t fundamentally change demand. The simple truth is that most California families aren’t demanding apartments, condos, and lofts, with the result being that prices are higher for what they do want, namely single-family homes. Adding insult to injury, the prices of these are made even higher by the efforts of smart growth advocates curb any development that utilizes more land.

As a result, average housing costs increase, and there’s a glut of housing the likes of which nobody asked for to begin with. That’s smart growth in a nutshell.

http://www.rppi.org/smartgrowthsnakeoil.shtml

Smart growth is a threat to freedom of choice, private property rights, mobility, and local governance. Although smartgrowth policies seem drastic, they are really a natural extension of the zoning laws that cities have adopted since the 1920s. Those zoning laws have been made increasingly restrictive over the years, and smart growth will make them even more prescriptive. Smart growth is clearly an example of creeping social regulation, if not creeping socialism.

Is New Urbanism Creeping Socialism?
--RANDALL O'TOOLE, Thoreau Institute