As the population and wealth of the United States grow, so too do the country’s cities, towns, and suburbs. Farm fields and woods give way to freeways and suburban homes, and formerly pristine wilderness areas become crisscrossed with roads and dotted with houses. Air that was once clean is contaminated with car exhaust, and water that once could be drank directly from a lake or river must now be “treated” before drinking.
In the words of a popular song from the 1960s, we “pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” For a growing number of people, that trade-off is no longer thought to be fair or beneficial. These people are calling for “growth management,” an umbrella term that refers to the use of state authority to limit or direct urban expansion according to a formal plan or planning process.
The growth management debate may sound arcane or of little interest to most people, but in fact it touches on an enormous range of public policies affecting virtually every aspect of our lives. Growth management policies aim to influence where we live and work, how we travel from place to place, whether elected officials or unelected bureaucrats will decide important planning issues, and the character of our local communities.
Policymakers should avoid high impact fees, Portland-style “urban growth boundaries,” and other schemes aimed at limiting suburban development. There is very little to be gained by increasing government’s authority over where people live and work, and much to be lost. Unfortunately, the current policy debate is being driven more by what is visible—farmland being converted into tract housing, for example—than by what is more important but largely invisible—our pending loss of civil and economic liberties.
