In this article from American Enterprise Online, the place I love has regained its good name, the sprawling suburbs which embrace the equally sprawling Parkway, creating a wonderfully congruent whole.
Here is an excerpt.
How Sprawl Got a Bad Name
By Robert Bruegmann
There is overwhelming evidence that urban sprawl has been beneficial for many people. Year after year, the vast majority of Americans respond to batteries of polls by saying that they are quite happy with where they live, whether it is a city, suburb, or elsewhere. Most objective indicators about American urban life are positive. We are more affluent than ever; home ownership is up; life spans are up; pollution is down; crime in most cities has declined. Even where sprawl has created negative consequences, it has not precipitated any crisis.
So what explains the power of today's anti-sprawl crusade? How is it possible that a prominent lawyer could open a recent book with the unqualified assertion that "sprawl is America's most lethal disease"? Worse than drug use, crime, unemployment, and poverty? Why has a campaign against sprawl expanded into a major political force across America and much of the economically advanced world?
I would argue that worries about sprawl have become so vivid not because conditions are really as bad as the critics suggest, but precisely because conditions are so good. During boom years, expectations can easily run far ahead of any possibility of fulfilling them. A fast-rising economy often produces a revolution of expectations. I believe these soaring expectations are responsible for many contemporary panics.
Consider, for a moment, the thunderous din of complaints about traffic in Los Angeles. From one perspective, this reaction is bizarre. Even when speeds on the freeway decline to 20 miles per hour, drivers throughout the Los Angeles area move much more quickly than they do by car or public transportation at the center of almost any large, older industrial city in Europe or the U.S.
It is clearly not that congestion is objectively worse in Los Angeles; it is that the highway building program of the 1950s and 1960s was so successful in reducing congestion that people became used to being able to drive across the entire metropolitan area at a mile a minute, dramatically expanding their choices in living, working, and recreation in the process. Since then, L.A.'s population has grown dramatically, but road building has slowed because of political pressures. This squeeze produced the inevitable result: more congestion.
