Law Commons^™

"Five Myths About Sprawl", Michael E Lewyn

ExpressO

The article reviews a recent book about suburban sprawl (Robert Bruegmann’s “Sprawl: A Compact History”), and shows how the book exemplifies a wide variety of misconceptions about the causes and effects of suburban sprawl. For example, Bruegmann argues that the near-universal existence of some suburban development means that sprawl is inevitable in a free society. My article responds that there is a huge difference between fundamentally pedestrian-friendly cities with some suburban development and regions where an automobile is a necessity even for city-dwellers. The article goes on to show how, by promoting auto-oriented sprawl, government made the latter situation common.

How Overregulation Creates Sprawl (Even In A City Without Zoning), Michael E. Lewyn

ExpressO

Numerous commentators have suggested that the spread-out, automobile-dependent urban form (often referred to as “sprawl”) that dominates metropolitan America is at least partially caused by government regulation of land use. But at first glance, the fate of Houston, Texas may seem to rebut that theory. Houston is America’s only large city without a formal zoning code. Yet Houston is as automobile-dependent and sprawling as many cities with zoning. It could therefore be argued that automobile-dependent sprawl is the inevitable result of the free market.

The purpose of my article is to rebut that theory, by showing that land use is …