The Myth of the Compact City: Why Compact ... - Cato Institute · increasing roadway congestion....

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Proponents of compact development arguethat rebuilding American urban areas to higherdensities is vital for reducing greenhouse gas emis-sions. Compact city policies call for reducing dri-ving by housing a higher percentage of people inmulti-family and mixed-use developments, reduc-ing the average lot sizes of single-family homes,redesigning streets and neighborhoods to be morepedestrian friendly, concentrating jobs in selectedareas, and spending more on mass transit and lesson highways.

The Obama administration has endorsed thesepolicies. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHoodand Secretary of Housing and Urban DevelopmentShaun Donovan have agreed to require metropoli-tan areas to adopt compact-development policiesor risk losing federal transportation and housingfunds. LaHood has admitted that the goal of thisprogram is to “coerce people out of their cars.”

As such, compact-development policies repre-

sent a huge intrusion on private property rights,personal freedom, and mobility. They are alsofraught with risks. Urban planners and econo-mists are far from unanimous about whethersuch policies will reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions. Some even raise the possibility that com-pact city policies could increase emissions byincreasing roadway congestion.

Such reductions are insignificant comparedwith the huge costs that compact developmentwould impose on the nation. These costs includereduced worker productivity, less affordable hous-ing, increased traffic congestion, higher taxes orreduced urban services, and higher consumer costs.Those who believe we must reduce carbon emis-sions should reject compact development as expen-sive, risky, and distracting from tools, such as car-bon taxes, that can have greater, more immediate,and more easily monitored effects on greenhousegas emissions.

The Myth of the Compact CityWhy Compact Development Is Not the Way to

Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissionsby Randal O’Toole

Randal O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of Gridlock: Why We Are Stuck in Trafficand What to Do about It (forthcoming).

Executive Summary

No. 653 November 18, 2009

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Introduction

The Obama administration has endorsedproposals to direct metropolitan areas tobecome more “compact” in order to reducegreenhouse gas emissions. Such a compact-development policy calls for increasing urbanpopulation densities, housing more people inmulti-family and mixed-use developments,investing more in mass transit and less ininfrastructure for personal transportation,and concentrating jobs in selected areas.

The major premises behind this policy arethat people living in compact cities drive less,and that the United States cannot meet targetsfor reducing greenhouse gas emissions with-out reducing the growth of driving. The “trans-portation sector cannot do its fair share tomeet this [greenhouse gas reduction] targetthrough vehicle and fuel technology alone,”says Growing Cooler, a 2008 report from theUrban Land Institute. This is because, thereport explains, the predicted growth in dri-ving is greater than predicted reductions inemissions from more efficient cars and alter-native fuels.1

To reduce driving, Growing Cooler advocat-ed the use of “compact development” com-bined with “expanded transportation alterna-tives.” Compact development, says GrowingCooler, means “higher average ‘blended’ densi-ties” along with “a mix of land uses, develop-ment of strong population and employmentcenters, interconnection of streets, and thedesign of structures and spaces at a humanscale.”2

One month after publication of GrowingCooler, the Brookings Institute released Shrink-ing the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America.The report urged the federal government touse its housing and transportation programsto encourage or require metropolitan areas “toexpand transit and compact development.”3

In 2009, the Urban Land Institute and sev-eral other groups published Moving Cooler, asequel to Growing Cooler. The report claimedthat “smart growth”—a combination of com-pact development and “improved travel op-

tions”—could reduce 2050 greenhouse gasemissions by 9 to 15 percent.4

Another 2009 report from the Center forClean Air Policy promoted “greenhouse gasreductions through smart growth and im-proved transportation choices” and proposedthat cap-and-trade revenues be invested insuch programs. The report went further andargued that such changes would be “cost-effective” and even “profitable.”5

Most recently, a report from the Transpor-tation Research Board, Driving and the BuiltEnvironment, concluded that doubling thedensity of most new development and makingother land-use changes such as concentratingjobs, mixed-use developments, and significanttransit improvements, could reduce miles ofdriving and auto-related carbon dioxide emis-sions by up to 11 percent.6

Coming at a time when Congress is debat-ing both climate policy and transportationreauthorization, these reports are clearlyaimed at promoting a national smart-growthpolicy that would dictate land uses and trans-portation spending for the next several dec-ades. The reports have clearly influenced theObama administration, which has endorsedthe goal of reducing driving through compact-city policies. The secretaries of transportationand housing and urban development havesigned an agreement to require metropolitanareas to adopt compact development policies.7

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood hasadmitted that these policies are designed to“coerce people out of their cars.”8

Yet the reports supporting compact citiescontain major flaws. First, they typically over-state the effects of compact development ongreenhouse gas emissions. Second, theyignore or vastly underestimate the costs ofcompact development, alternative forms oftransportation, and restrictions on personalmobility. Further, they ignore or underesti-mate the risks that compact developmentwill not produce the intended effects or thatunintended consequences will prove far morecostly than any benefits that result.

The reports’ failure to accurately assessbenefits and costs obscures the fact that com-

2

Compact development

policies, admitsTransportationSecretary RayLaHood, aredesigned “to

coerce people outof their cars.”


pact city policies are extremely expensive, yetthey will likely yield negligible (and possiblynegative) environmental benefits. Given limit-ed resources, if other means of reducing green-house gases are more cost efficient, then pro-moting or requiring compact developmentwill make it more difficult to achieve emissionreduction targets.

History of CompactCity Planning

For more than 75 years, architects andurban planners have proposed compact devel-opment as an alternative to low-density sub-urbs, which they derisively term “sprawl.” Inaddition to higher-density housing, mostcompact city proposals also include plans tomake neighborhoods more pedestrian-friend-ly and include investments in mass transitand other alternatives to auto driving. To-gether, compact development and alternativetransportation projects are sometimes called“smart growth.” Although the term smart growth was not

applied to these policies until 1996, the desireon the part of urban planners and some envi-ronmentalists for higher urban densities longpredates that year or any concerns about glob-al climate change. Criticism of low-densitysuburbs dates back at least to the 1930s.9 Firstin Europe and later in the United States, thosecritics have sought to use the power of govern-ment to herd large segments of the populationinto high-density cities and to prevent ownersof rural land from developing their propertyfor residential uses.One of the first to promote such policies

was Le Corbusier, a Swiss-French architectwho promoted the reconstruction of citiesinto vast regions of high-rise apartments thathe called “Radiant Cities.” His ideas so heavi-ly influenced urban planners throughout theworld in the 1940s and 1950s that planninghistorian Peter Hall calls Corbusier “the Ra-sputin of this tale,” both because Radiant Cit-ies turned out to be unlivable and because ofhis authoritarian approach to planning, “the

evil consequences of which are ever with us.”10

In 1947, the British Parliament passed theTown and Country Planning Act, whichcould be described as the first modern com-pact-city law. This law set aside vast regionsof rural land as greenbelts and mandated theconstruction of high-density, high-rise hous-ing within existing cities along Radiant Citylines. Unlike the United States, which built pub-

lic housing only for the poor, the British gov-ernment built these apartments for working-class and middle-class families. Many of thebuildings proved to be so unlivable, observesHall, that “the remarkable fact was how longit took for anyone to see that it was wrong.”11

By the late 1960s, few people were willing tolive in such apartments even at heavily subsi-dized rents, and so by 1970, says Hall, “thegreat Corbusian rebuild was over.”12

The United States built its Radiant Cityhousing exclusively for low-income families,but had the same experience. The housingprojects became so plagued by crime and van-dalism that most have been demolished.13

One of the leading critics of the standardurban renewal practices of the 1950s—clearing“slums” and replacing them with high-risehousing—was Jane Jacobs, author of The Deathand Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs lived in amid-rise, mixed-use, inner-city neighborhoodthat was slated for urban renewal, and shesought to prove that her neighborhood was“lively,” and not a blighted slum that neededto be replaced.14

Urban planners learned a lesson from TheDeath and Life, but it was the wrong one. Insteadof realizing that cities are too complicated to becentrally planned, they concluded that centralplanners should promote Jacobs’s mid-riseneighborhoods instead of Corbusier’s high-rise apartments. This transition is apparent in a 1973

book, Compact City. “The problems of urbandevelopment,” write authors George Dantzigand Thomas Saaty, “are too crucial to thefuture to be left to real-estate developers”—inother words, private landowners who meetmarket demand by building low-density sub-

3

Compact development proposals dateback at least tothe 1930s, and the BritishParliamentpassed the firstcompact-development law in 1947.

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urbs. Central planners should insist on high-er-density development.15

The book’s main proposals were “in somerespects based on Radiant City lines” (whichreveals how slow planners are to learn fromtheir mistakes). As an alternative, however,the authors’ proposed that density could beachieved using Jacobs’s “lively neighbor-hoods.”16 Either way, the authors call for atop-down planning approach that wouldgive property owners and homebuyers littlechoice but to accept the dictates of the sup-posedly omniscient planners.

In the 1980s, a number of architects pro-posed to build Jacobs’s lively neighborhoodsfrom scratch. On the East Coast, Andres Duanysuggested that such “neotraditional” neighbor-hoods would have a stronger sense of commu-nity than traditional low-density suburbs.17 Onthe West Coast, Peter Calthorpe claimed thatpedestrian-oriented “urban villages” would beless “dependent” on the automobile.18 Theseideas soon became known as “New Urbanism.”

New Urbanists, however, soon ran into abrick wall of market reality: surveys and actu-al buying habits have repeatedly shown thatthe vast majority of Americans aspire to livein a single-family home with a large yard.19

While New Urbanists accepted some single-family homes, they wanted to increase thepercentage of people living in multi-familyhousing and build single-family homes ontiny lots. There is a small market for high-density, mixed-use neighborhoods, but inmany cities that market is easily met by exist-ing older neighborhoods.

As a result, many early New Urban devel-opments were financial failures. After the firstdeveloper of Calthorpe’s Laguna West, nearSacramento, went bankrupt, a later developerreconfigured and completed it as a tradition-al suburb. Calthorpe soon went into the busi-ness of helping cities write codes mandatingNew Urban development. Such mandatescame to be known as “smart growth,” a termthat became popular partly because advocatesoften construe anyone who supports proper-ty rights and freedom of choice as promoting“dumb growth.”20

The Solution in Search of a Problem

Throughout most of this history, com-pact development was a solution in search ofa problem. Early advocates claimed thatdenser development was needed to preservefarmlands. Yet the United States has a billionacres of agricultural lands, less than 40 per-cent of which are actually used for growingcrops, while the nation’s urban areas occupyonly about 100 million acres.21 So, compactdevelopment for the purpose of farm preser-vation made little sense.

In the 1970s, advocates of compact devel-opment argued that it would reduce air pol-lution and save energy because people livingin compact cities would drive less. Yet itproved to be far easier to simply build clean-er, more fuel-efficient cars than to complete-ly rebuild American cities.

Between 1970 and 2007, for example, urbandriving increased by 250 percent, but auto-related air pollution declined by more thantwo-thirds.22 Meanwhile, Americans respond-ed to higher gas prices in the 1970s and early1980s by buying cars in the 1990s that were anaverage of 40 percent more fuel efficient thanthose available in the early 1970s.23 In 1991, forexample, Americans drove 41 percent moremiles than in 1978, while using only 3 percentmore fuel.24 After gas prices fell, Americansbought larger cars, but technological improve-ments produced a continuing increase of ton-miles-per-gallon.25 This shows that consider-able progress can be made in improving fueleconomy without reducing mobility.

Another early argument for regulatingsprawl was that the cost of providing infra-structure to low-density communities wassignificantly greater than in higher-densityareas.26 The most detailed study of this ques-tion concluded that low-density suburbandevelopment imposes about $11,000 per res-idence more in urban-service costs on com-munities than more compact development.27

Some have questioned this number.28 Buteven if valid, most homebuyers would gladly

4

After the developer of aNew Urban

project designedby Peter Calthorpe

went bankrupt,Calthorpe wentinto the businessof helping citieswriting codesmandating New Urban

development.


add $11,000 to the cost of a $150,000 homein order to have a good-sized yard and notshare a wall with next-door neighbors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, some New Urbanadvocates argued that denser neighborhoodshad a stronger sense of community. Studieshave found, however, that suburbs actuallyhave more social interactions than densercities.29 Even the data in Robert Putnam’sBowling Alone, which promoted the notionthat Americans were losing their sense ofcommunity, showed that suburbanites hadhigher social participation rates than resi-dents of dense cities.30

In the early 2000s, compact-city supportersjumped on the obesity issue by claiming thatsuburbs make people fat. In fact, even studiesprepared by smart-growth supporters foundthat the differences in obesity rates betweenlow- and high-density areas were trivial. Onestudy found, for example, that about 2 percentmore people in low-density Atlanta are obesethan in high-density San Francisco.31 Morecareful studies have found “no evidence thaturban sprawl causes obesity.” In fact, thesestudies say, compact-city advocates confusedcause and effect: “individuals who are morelikely to be obese choose to live in moresprawling neighborhoods.”32

If all these reasons for supporting compactcities are wrong, then why is the idea so persis-tent? The answer, at least in part, says PeterHall, is that it is a class conflict. Ironically, Hallobserves, before 1920 the main goal of urbanplanners was to move working-class peoplefrom high-density inner-city tenements tolow-density suburbs. No one complainedabout urban sprawl when low-density suburbswere occupied solely by the upper and middleclasses. But when working-class families start-ed moving to the suburbs—more due to HenryFord’s mass-produced automobiles than toanything urban planners did—conflicts be-tween upper- and lower-class tastes led to abacklash.33 While often giving lip service to theidea of mixed-income communities, the elitesdecided to promote policies that made single-family housing unaffordable to all but thewealthy.

Now compact-city advocates have hitchedtheir wagon to the climate-change debate.However, instead of advocating the most effi-cient (and thus resource-conservative) waysof reducing greenhouse gas emissions, theseadvocates have co-opted climate concerns tojustify their preferences for urban planning.Consider:

• The lead author of Growing Cooler, ReidEwing, was also the lead author of thestudy (which he brags is “the most wide-ly reported planning study ever”) thaterroneously claimed suburbs make peo-ple obese.34

•Growing Cooler co-author Keith Bartholo-mew was staff attorney for 1000 Friends ofOregon in 1989, where he directed theLand Use-Transportation-Air Quality proj-ect that developed much of the modernconception of compact development.35

Another co-author, Don Chen, is a formerstaff member of the Surface Transpor-tation Policy Project, which has sought toreduce driving since its creation in 1990.•Many of the organizations behind theMoving Cooler report, including the Ameri-can Public Transportation Association,Environmental Defense Fund, NaturalResources Defense Council, and Environ-mental Protection Agency, have promotedcompact cities for at least 15 years. • Several people listed on the Center for

Clean Air Policy report as having provid-ed “assistance” to the authors have alsopromoted compact cities.

Some, though certainly not all, of the mem-bers of the Transportation Research Boardcommittee that oversaw that organization’sreport have also long been compact-city advo-cates.

In other words, these reports have beenwritten or influenced by people who support-ed compact development long before climatechange became a major issue. Now they areusing climate change to justify imposing theirpreferred form of urban planning on majorU.S. metropolitan areas.

5

No one complainedabout sprawlwhen suburbswere occupiedsolely by upperand middle classes. It wasonly when working-classfamilies moved tothe suburbs thatcritics proposedto force theminto compactdevelopments.


Rebuilding American cities to more com-pact standards would certainly qualify as amegaproject. Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish plannerwho has studied numerous megaprojects,observes that megaproject advocates are oftenguilty of optimism bias, in which they overesti-mate benefits and underestimate costs, andstrategic misrepresentation, in which they skewdata to make their project look more favorablethan it really is.36

For example, Growing Cooler optimisticallyestimated that building 60 percent of newurban development to compact standardswould reduce 2030 carbon dioxide emissionsby 79 million tons.37 Somewhat more realisti-cally, Moving Cooler estimated that building 64percent of new urban development to com-pact standards would reduce 2030 carbondioxide emissions by only 22 million tons,indicating that Growing Cooler overestimatedthe effects of compact development by nearlyfour times.38 In its own example of optimismbias, however, Moving Cooler projects that thecost of building up to 90 percent of all newurban development in the U.S. to compactstandards would be only $1.5 billion.39

Policy advocates who couch their ideas inlanguage that disguises the weaknesses of theirproposals are guilty of strategic misrepresenta-tion. For example, Growing Cooler’s repeatedstatement that transportation accounts forone-third of greenhouse gas emissions (modi-fied to 28 percent in Moving Cooler) obscuresthe fact that urban driving of personal vehi-cles—the form of transportation advocatesseek to reduce through compact develop-ment—accounts for less than 13 percent ofemissions, while the other 20 percent comesfrom freight, mass transportation, and interci-ty travel.40

A careful reading of the various compact-city reports reveal numerous other optimismbiases and strategic misrepresentations thatoverestimate the benefits and underestimatethe costs of these proposals. Correcting thesebiases and misrepresentations reveals thatcompact development would be a wastefuland inefficient way of achieving greenhousegas reductions.

Compact Cities andGreenhouse Gases

All of the reports discussed in this papertake it for granted that the United States mustreduce carbon dioxide emissions by as muchas 80 percent from 1990 levels—which wouldmean 83 percent from 2007 levels. Thoughmany climatologists dispute this goal, suchdisputes are beyond the scope of this paper.41

Instead, the point of this paper is that if theUnited States decides to reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions, there are more cost-efficient policies to achievethis goal than compact development. Given thatresources are limited, any project that reducesgreenhouse gas emissions in a non-cost-effec-tive manner will simply make it more difficultto meet emission reduction targets.

According to a McKinsey and Companyreport, the United States can meet emissionreduction targets by investing in projects thatcost less than $50 per ton of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions. Close to half of thereductions, the company found, would actual-ly have a negative cost: though they mayrequire up-front investments, they would savemoney in the long run by reducing energycosts. These projects would include designingcars and light trucks that are lighter-weightand have less wind and rolling resistance.42

In contrast to McKinsey’s rigorous analy-sis of cost-effectiveness, none of the reportsadvocating compact development show thatsuch policies would be cost-effective, andmost do not even mention cost-effectiveness.In fact, to the extent that compact develop-ment can reduce greenhouse gas emissions atall, it would do so only at a cost far greaterthan $50 per ton. This means it should beamong the last policies to be adopted inresponse to climate concerns.

Growing CoolerGrowing Cooler insists that reductions in the

growth of driving are needed so that trans-portation will contribute its “fair share” ofgreenhouse gas reductions.43 But what is fair?The report implies that, since transportation

6

If the United States

decides to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions, other policies are far more cost-efficient than compact development.


accounts for a third of emissions, it shouldprovide a third of total emission reductions.This ignores the fact that emissions reductionscan be achieved in other sectors much morecheaply and easily, which would be far moreefficient for society. For example, the McKinseystudy found that more than half of the cost-effective opportunities for emission reductionsare in the electricity sector, while transporta-tion offers only 15 percent of such opportuni-ties.44 Unless advocates of compact develop-ment can prove that their policies would costless than $50 per ton, proposals to reduce dri-ving to meet emission-reduction targets arealmost certain to be cost-ineffective.

Even among transportation investments,Growing Cooler provides no evidence thatcompact development is a cost-effective solu-tion to greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, itrelies on a weak metaphor of a three-leggedstool, the legs being more fuel-efficient cars,alternative fuels, and reduced driving. Thefirst two “legs” alone will not meet emission-reduction targets, says the report, so we mustreduce driving.45

The only evidence the report offers that thefirst two legs are insufficient is based on thecorporate average fuel economy (CAFE) stan-dard in the Energy Independence and SecurityAct of 2007, which called for increasing theaverage fuel economy of cars to 35 miles pergallon by 2020. The report also accounts for afederal requirement that alternative fuel use beincreased so as to reduce carbon dioxide emis-sions by about 10 percent. The report showsthat the emission reductions from these twostandards will be offset by increases in driving.This leads to the conclusion that driving mustbe reduced.46

In effect, the report assumes that no fur-ther increases in fuel efficiencies or alternativefuels are possible beyond those in the 2007law. That assumption has already been provenobsolete, because in 2009 auto manufacturersaccepted an even tighter CAFE standard of35.5 mph by 2016. The report further assumesthat auto manufacturers will make no addi-tional improvements in fuel efficiency or alter-native-fueled autos after 2020. Growing Cooler

tracks emissions through 2050, yet it effective-ly assumes technology will freeze after 2020,barely a quarter of the way through the time-horizon of the report. Accepting that this isunlikely greatly shrinks the imperative toreduce driving.

Data buried in the back of Growing Coolersuggest that, to the extent that reductions indriving can contribute at all to greenhouse gasreductions, only a small share of that contri-bution will come from compact development.The report evaluates four policies that togeth-er, it concludes, could reduce driving by 38percent. Of those policies, the two smallestreductions in driving come from increasedinvestments in transit, which would reducedriving by only 4.6 percent, and increased pop-ulation densities, which would reduce drivingby 7.7 percent.

The greatest reduction in driving comesfrom an assumption that fuel prices will rise atrates that are significantly faster than histori-cal levels (possibly through higher fuel taxes),which would reduce driving by 14.4 percent.This is closely followed by a policy of reducinginvestments in new highways, which wouldincrease the growth in congestion and reducedriving by 11.4 percent.47

In other words, two-thirds of the project-ed reductions in driving come from makingdriving more expensive, not from land-usechanges or investments in alternatives to dri-ving. This reveals that compact-city policiesare far less effective than its proponentsimply, and that the compact-city agenda isfar more coercive—relying more on punitivepricing measures than changes to the builtenvironment—than its proponents admit.

In an effort to show that its policies are notnecessarily coercive, Growing Cooler argues thatincreasing numbers of Americans want to livein more compact cities. The report relies heav-ily on the projections of an urban planningprofessor named Arthur Nelson, who claimsthat by 2025 the United States will have a sur-plus of single-family homes on large lots andall new construction will have to be multi-fam-ily housing or single-family homes on smalllots.48

7

Most of thereductions in driving inGrowing Coolercome from policies thatmake drivingmore expensive,not from compactdevelopment.


However, Nelson himself is guilty of opti-mism bias. He claims that only 25 percent ofAmericans want to live in single-family homeson large lots, while 37 percent want small lots(less than one-sixth of an acre) and 38 percentprefer multi-family housing. These numbers,he says, are “based on interpretations of sur-veys” reported by urban planners DowellMyers and Elizabeth Gearin.49 Yet the Myers-Gearin paper completely contradicts Nelson’s“interpretation,” citing survey after surveyfinding that 75 to 85 percent of Americansaspire to live in single-family homes with ayard.50

If compact-city advocates truly believed inNelson’s numbers, they would not need to useregulation to increase densities of Americancities. Builders responding to market demandalone would make cities denser. But in fact,achieving Growing Cooler’s compact-city goalswill require a degree of coercion from the fed-eral government that is unprecedented inAmerican history: limits on rural land devel-opment, mandated changes to existing resi-dential areas, and huge taxpayer-supportedsubsidies to entice people to live in higher-den-sity complexes.

Shrinking the Carbon FootprintThe Brookings Institution report is the

only one considered in this paper that dealswith greenhouse gas emissions from sourcesother than transportation. Not only willcompact cities reduce driving, says the report,but they will also reduce the energy con-sumption and greenhouse gas emissionsfrom housing and other buildings.

Buildings, the report points out, accountfor even more carbon emissions than trans-portation—39 percent vs. 33 percent.51 The re-port advocates compact development to re-duce these costs through “smaller homes andshared walls in multi-unit dwellings.”52

As with Growing Cooler’s demand that wereduce driving, the Brookings report fails toshow that compact development is a cost-effective way of saving energy or reducinggreenhouse gases from residential or otherbuildings. According to the Department of

Energy, single-family homes actually consumeless energy per square foot than multi-familyhomes. Despite their shared walls, two- tofour-unit multi-family homes use 25 percentmore energy per square foot, while residenceswith five or more units use 8 percent more,than single-family detached homes.53

This means the Brookings study is reallyproposing to save energy by forcing Americansto drastically reduce the size of their livingspaces. Yet it is likely that technologicalimprovements—better insulation, designs thattake better advantage of solar heating oppor-tunities, and so forth—could achieve far moreenergy savings at a lower cost without requir-ing dramatic changes in lifestyles. Just as com-pact-city advocates consider technologicalsolutions that make driving more energy-effi-cient to be inadequate, the Brookings reportimplicitly considers technological solutionsthat make single-family housing more energy-efficient to be insufficient.

Cost-Effective GHG ReductionsThe Center for Clean Air Policy report

shares a co-author, Steve Winkelman, withGrowing Cooler—along with many of the latterreport’s arguments. But it also claims to provethat compact development is a cost-effectivemeans of reducing greenhouse gases. In fact,the report claims that reducing per capita dri-ving by 10 percent “can be achieved profitably,when factoring in avoided infrastructurecosts, consumer savings and projected tax rev-enue growth.”54

Typically, the report offers almost no real-world data to support this conclusion. In-stead, it relies on the projections of urban plan-ners in Atlanta, Portland, Sacramento, andelsewhere for how their policies will affect ener-gy consumption and other behaviors. Thoughit calls these “case studies,” the report’s argu-ments suffer from optimism bias and strategicmisrepresentations.55

For example, CCAP reports that Sacramen-to’s “smart-growth plan is projected to reduceemissions [at] a net economic benefit of $198per ton carbon dioxide.” Yet Sacramento hasbeen using smart-growth plans requiring com-

8

Those who believe we should

reduce carbonemissions shouldreject compact development asexpensive, risky,

and likely to distract attention

from more cost-effective

emission-reduction programs.


pact development and investments in transitfor decades, but the environmental gains fromthese efforts seem to be minimal. The region’s2006 plan openly admitted that its smart-growth plans imposed “during the past 25years have not worked out.” Despite buildinglight rail, the share of transit riders who “haveaccess to an automobile [and] can otherwisechoose to drive” is decreasing. Despite effortsto promote compact development, both jobsand residences continued to decentralize.Despite the region’s failure to build new roadsto accommodate growth, “lack of road build-ing and the resulting congestion have notencouraged many people to take transitinstead of driving.”56 Despite the failure of pastplans, Sacramento adopted a plan that contin-ued these failed policies and projected benefitsthat were based more on hope than experience.

The CCAP report breathlessly notes “that$73 million invested in the Portland Streetcarhelped attract $2.3 billion in private invest-ment within two blocks of the line.”57 What itdoes not say is that, at the same time that itbuilt the streetcar line, Portland spent morethan $665 million subsidizing new develop-ments along the line, including building park-ing garages for retailers, subsidizing an aerialtram, parks, and parking garages for a devel-opment near the Oregon Health SciencesUniversity, and providing 10 years of property-tax waivers to many residences that were builtalong the streetcar line.58

Except for the property-tax waivers, mostof these subsidies came from tax-incrementfinancing, which effectively transfers tax rev-enues from schools, fire, police, and otheressential services to property developers. Farfrom being “profitable,” as CCAP claims,such transfers give residents a choice betweendeclining urban services and higher taxes toreplace the funds lost to schools and otherurban services.

CCAP claims that the Atlanta developmentAtlantic Station will reduce greenhouse gasemissions “at a net cost savings, because mu-nicipal tax revenues from the project will begreater than what is required to pay back theinitial project loan.”59 As in the case of Port-

land, the “initial project loan” is a $75 milliontax-increment financed subsidy to the develop-ers.60 What CCAP does not reveal is that the taxrevenues required to repay this subsidy wouldotherwise go to schools and other essentialurban services for Atlantic Station.

The problem with relying on projectionsrather than reality is that the projections areoften made by planners who themselves sufferfrom optimism bias and strategic misrepre-sentation. For example, planners typically por-tray tax-increment financing as a way of “self-financing” economic development. Yet thenew development requires the same urban ser-vices as existing development, but the taxesthat would have gone to those services aretransferred to the developers instead.

In most cases, subsidies to economic devel-opment are, at best, a zero-sum game: if plan-ners subsidize it to take place in a dense sec-tion of a city, it will not take place somewhereelse. So planners cannot claim the benefits ofthat development as a net gain for the city orregion; in fact, the tax subsidy is a net loss. Atworst, such subsidies are a negative-sumgame: by increasing taxes or reducing urbanservices, they discourage employers frommoving to or remaining in the region. As astudy in Illinois found, communities that usetax-increment financing actually “grow moreslowly than those that do not.”61

In Sacramento and Portland, at least, taxincreases ordinarily require voter approval.But tax-increment financing is exempt fromthis requirement. Far from being profitable,cities that use tax-increment financing to sup-port compact development are effectivelystealing from schoolchildren, firefighters, andother recipients and providers of urban ser-vices—and, in turn, stealing from the taxpayerswho agreed to fund those services.

Moving CoolerWhile Moving Cooler is in many ways a

sequel to Growing Cooler, it maintains a patinaof greater objectivity because it was written bya consulting firm, Cambridge Systematics,rather than by employees of organizations thathave supported compact development for two

9

CCAP’s claimsthat compactdevelopment is“cost effective”are based on projects in whichcities effectivelysteal money fromschools, fire, and police to subsidize developers.


decades. Yet Moving Cooler relies on many of thesame sources as Growing Cooler, and back-ground documents specifically cite GrowingCooler as the source of many of the new report’sassumptions.For example, Moving Cooler uses Arthur

Nelson’s projections, “as cited in GrowingCooler,” of the future demand for various typesof housing.62 It based its estimate of the reduc-tions in driving due to “pedestrian-friendlyenvironments” on a paper by Ewing (a GrowingCooler co-author) and Cervero, “also cited inGrowing Cooler.”63

Cambridge Systematics also relied on apaper by the Center for Clean Air Policy fornearly all of its numbers relating to high-speedrail.64 This paper contained many examples ofoptimism bias and strategic misrepresenta-tion. For example, the paper assumed thathigh-speed trains would operate 70 percentfull.65 Yet Amtrak trains in 2008—a banneryear for passenger trains due to high gasprices—were only 52 percent full.66

Unlike most of the other reports consideredhere, Moving Cooler compares compact develop-ment with other ways of reducing vehicle-relat-ed greenhouse gas emissions, including park-ing and highway pricing, carbon taxes, ride-sharing and similar commuting strategies,intelligent transportation systems, and high-way capacity expansions.67 Though the reportestimates the costs and emission reductionsfrom “expanded,” “aggressive,” and “maxi-mum” levels of each strategy, it does not takethe next step of calculating the cost per ton ofabatements. Those costs range from pennies to $5,900

per ton. Of 47 strategies considered, only 21are estimated to cost $50 per ton or less, andin some cases the cost is less than $50 at onlysome levels of implementation. For example,“expanded incident management” costs $37per ton, but “maximum incident manage-ment” costs $161 per ton.68

Even though the report provides readerswith enough data to calculate costs per ton,many of the cost and benefit estimates arequestionable. For example, maximum expan-sions of transit service are estimated to pro-

duce 1.5 billion metric tons of greenhousegas reductions. This seems questionable con-sidering that transit produces about thesame amount of greenhouse gases per pas-senger mile as automobiles.69

To reach this conclusion, Cambridge Sys-tematics assumed that new technologieswould reduce greenhouse gas emissions perpassenger mile from buses by 26 percent andfrom rail transit by 50 percent or more, even ifpassenger loadings remain about the same asthey are today.70 This is extremely unlikely,particularly for rail transit. America’s automo-bile fleet turns over every 18 years, so by 2050we will have two completely new generationsof automobiles on the roads, many of whichwill be lighter and have less wind- and rolling-resistance than today’s cars. But rail transitfleets turn over only once every 30 to 40 years,and there is little reason to think that futurevehicles will be significantly more fuel-effi-cient than the ones on the rails today.71

Moreover, both bus and rail transit vehiclesare significantly less fuel efficient, per passen-ger mile, today than they were in 1980.72 Thisis mainly due to a decline in passenger load-ings that has resulted from expansions of ser-vice into areas that make little use of transit.Cambridge Systematics’ assumption that ahuge expansion of transit service will not re-duce average passenger loads is likely to beoptimistic.The one way in which transit expansions

could significantly reduce greenhouse gasemissions is if the transit were powered bynon-fossil-fuel sources of electricity. But itwould be more cost-effective to dedicate suchelectricity to electric cars and plug-in hybrids,which can be recharged overnight when elec-tricity demand is low, and allow daytime useof that electricity for other purposes.Even with Cambridge Systematics’ gener-

ous assumptions regarding improvements intransit efficiencies, the cost of the maximumtransit expansions is more than $2,000 perton, while the cost of lesser expansions exceeds$1,700 per ton. This is far more than can beconsidered cost-effective under the McKinseyreport’s guideline of $50 per ton.

10

It is more cost-effective

to dedicate renewable energy

to electric carsand plug-in

hybrids, whichcan be rechargedovernight when

electricitydemand is low,

then to use it for transit in

daytime, whendemand is high.

367773r2_PA653_1stClass_3-10:367773r2_PA653_1stClass_3-10 11/12/2009 12:37 PM

According to Moving Cooler, compact-devel-opment strategies are very cost-effective, rang-ing from $1 to $9 per ton. But the costs pro-jected by Cambridge Systematics are extremelylow. It claims that compact developmentnationwide would cost the same $1.5 billionunder the expanded (43 percent of new devel-opment is compact), aggressive (64 percent),and maximum (90 percent) levels of deploy-ment of compact city policies.73 At apparentlyno extra cost, the maximum level is projectedto reduce greenhouse gas emissions by morethan 9 times the expanded level.

This report will show that compact devel-opment will cost far more than $1.5 billion.But even under the maximum level, Cam-bridge Systematics estimates that compactdevelopment will reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions by just 38 million tons in 2030, or abouta half a percent of current U.S. emissions. By2050 this would increase to 73 tons, or about1.3 percent of current emissions.74

Driving and the Built EnvironmentThe Transportation Research Board report,

Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects ofCompact Development on Motorized Travel, EnergyUse, and Carbon Dioxide Emissions, has an evenstronger claim to objectivity than Moving Cool-er. The report was written under the supervi-sion of a 12-member committee that includeda mix of planners and transportation engi-neers. Some members of the committee—mostnotably Dianne Brake of PlanSmart NJ, An-drew Cotugno of Metro (Portland’s metropol-itan planning organization), and Rolf Pendallof the Cornell University City and RegionalPlanning Department—have been unabashedsupporters of compact development, but oth-ers have been more skeptical.

“Evidence from the literature,” says thereport, indicates “doubling density is associat-ed with about 5 percent less VMT [vehiclemiles traveled] on average.” When “other land-use factors” such as mixed uses and pedestri-an-friendly design are taken into account,“reports find that VMT is lower by an averageof 3 to 20 percent.”75

The report compares a base case (no action)

with two scenarios: one in which 25 percent ofall future urban development is built to twicethe existing urban densities and one in which75 percent is built to twice the current densi-ties. The report arbitrarily assumed that resi-dents of compact developments would drive12 percent less than average under the 25-per-cent scenario and 25 percent less than averageunder the 75-percent scenario.76 This is partic-ularly optimistic considering that the report’sown literature review found driving reductionsof just 3 to 20 percent.

Based on these assumptions, the report pro-jects that total miles of driving would be 1 per-cent less than the base case under the 25-per-cent scenario, and up to 11 percent less underthe 75-percent scenario. The report adds that“the committee disagreed about whether thechanges in development patterns and publicpolicies necessary to achieve the high end ofthese findings are plausible.”77

In preparing this report, the committeecommissioned five background papers. Mostof these papers offer little support to thosewho promote compact development as a wayof reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

One paper by University of California econ-omist David Brownstone reviewed the litera-ture on relationships between “the built envi-ronment” and driving (as measured by vehiclemiles traveled, or VMT). He concluded thatthere is a “statistically significant link” betweenthe built environment and VMT—but that theavailable evidence suggests “the size of this linkis too small to be useful.”78 Brownstone alsowonders “why controlling VMT should be apolicy goal,” since mobility has a high value andevidence suggests that people respond to high-er fuel prices by buying more fuel-efficient carsmore than by reducing driving.79

A paper by transportation engineer KaraKockelman (who was also on the TRB com-mittee) and colleagues at the University ofTexas reviews alternative means of reducinggreenhouse gas emissions. The paper con-cludes that policies emphasizing higher fuel-economy standards will be much more cost-effective at reducing emissions than land-usepolicies aimed at reducing driving. In fact, the

11

A literaturereview byUniversity ofCalifornia economist DavidBrownstonefound that thelink between the built environment anddriving is “toosmall to be useful.”


paper says, compact development and transitimprovements could both substantially in-crease emissions rather than reduce them—thefirst by increasing congestion (which leadscars to emit more pollution) and the secondbecause transit construction and operationsboth emit substantial amounts of greenhousegases.80

George Mason University transportationengineer Michael Bronzini wrote a paper onthe relationship between land use and trucktraffic. He concluded that “low-density devel-opment does increase truck traffic” and that“it appears that smart-growth measures couldbe effective in reducing truck VMT.”81 How-ever, Bronzini did not assess the cost-effective-ness of such measures.

A paper on housing trends by John Pitkinand Dowell Myers seriously questions ArthurNelson’s claims that cities should be substan-tially rebuilt at higher densities to meet thedemand for those densities. “Nelson and oth-ers have placed too great an emphasis onchanging preferences as the driver of changingdevelopment patterns,” says the paper. Thereport found “scant evidence of any net shiftof total or elderly population toward centralcities,” where development is typically dens-er.82 Where Nelson projected that changes intastes would lead to substantial reconstruc-tion of urban areas, Pitkin and Myers expect“lower replacement rates” and more relianceon existing housing.83 This suggests that gov-ernment mandates to rebuild urban areas tohigher densities will be far more expensivethan suggested by compact-city advocates.

A paper by urban planner Genevieve Giuli-ano and colleagues at UCLA concludes thattwo-thirds to three-fourths of jobs in modernurban areas are not located either in down-towns or other urban and suburban centers;instead, they are finely dispersed throughouturban areas. This suggests that concentratingemployment, one of the goals of compact-cityadvocates, will be expensive. The paper alsoexpresses doubt that accomplishing this goalwill have significant effects on driving.84

Taken together, these papers suggest thatusing compact development to reduce green-

house emissions is a highly risky proposition.There is no consensus among researchersabout how much compact development wouldreduce driving, and the 25-percent reductionassumed by Driving and the Built Environment’s75-percent scenario is outside the range of lit-erature reviewed by the report. Claims thatdemand for compact development is increas-ing also appear overstated, and there arenumerous uncertainties about the benefitsand costs of such policies as concentrating em-ployment and construction of transit improve-ments. These risks suggest that all the variouscompact-development reports are likely tohave overstated the benefits and underestimat-ed the costs of compact-city policies.

Overstating the Benefits

Growing Cooler says its policies can reducethe growth rate of driving by 38 percent.85

Moving Cooler says that smart-growth policiescan reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by9 to 15 percent.86 In fact, a close reading ofthese and other reports reveals that compactdevelopment has minimal effects on drivingand greenhouse gas emissions.

• Growing Cooler found that building 60percent of new urban development tocompact standards would reduce 2030carbon dioxide outputs by 79 milliontons, or 1.3 percent of current levels.87

•Moving Cooler was far less optimistic,projecting that building 64 percent ofnew development to compact standards,including more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design and “high-quality tran-sit,” would reduce 2030 carbon dioxideoutputs by only 22 million tons, or lessthan 0.4 percent of current emissions. •Moving Cooler’s maximum effort of mak-

ing 90 percent of new development com-pact would reduce 2030 greenhouse gasemissions by 0.6 percent, and 2050 emis-sions by 1.2 percent below current levels.•Driving and the Built Environment project-

ed that building 75 percent of new devel-

12

There is no consensus among

researchers about how much

compact developmentwould reduce

driving, suggesting this is

a highly riskyproposition.


opment to twice current densities wouldreduce 2050 driving by 11 percent, there-by reducing greenhouse gas emissionsby, at most, 1.4 percent below currentlevels.

The similarity between the Moving Coolerand Driving and the Built Environment estimatesdisguises a huge debate among urban plannersand economists over how much differences indriving are due to the “built environment” andhow much are due to “self selection.” Manystudies have found that people who live indense, mixed-use areas drive less than people inlow-density suburbs, but it is likely that a largepart of this is because people who want to dri-ve less choose to live in dense, mixed-use neigh-borhoods with intensive transit service.

Growing Cooler dismissed this concern byciting a literature review of studies of the effectsof density and urban design on driving.“Virtually every quantitative study reviewed forthis work,” the literature review is quoted assaying, “found a statistically significant influ-ence of one or more built environment mea-sures on the travel behavior.”88 Growing Coolerneglected to quote the very next sentence of theliterature review: “However, the practicalimportance of that influence was seldomassessed.”89 In other words, “statistically signif-icant” does not mean “large”; it only means“measurable.” As David Brownstone’s litera-ture review for TRB concluded, the effectsthemselves are likely to be “too small to be use-ful” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.90

Even if the effects projected by thesereports are realistic, they hardly make thecase for implementing compact-develop-ment policies. As one reviewer of the TRBreport concluded, “increasing populationdensity in metropolitan areas would yieldinsignificant carbon dioxide reductions.”91

But if they are so insignificant, how can theauthors of so many of these reports arguethat compact development policies are essen-tial or that they can reduce emissions by 9 to15 percent?

One way is by conflating compact develop-ment with other policies. Growing Cooler

admits that increasing the cost of auto dri-ving, through taxes and congestion, has a fargreater effect on driving than compact devel-opment and transit improvements. Moreover,note that Growing Cooler does not project thatcompact development will reduce emissions,only that it reduces the growth in driving—andthen only by 7.7 percent.

Moving Cooler’s claim that “smart growth”could reduce greenhouse emissions by 9 to15 percent is based on a “bundling” of com-pact development with other policies, includ-ing taxes on existing parking, a freeze on allnew parking, HOV lanes, urban nonmotor-ized zones, and mandates that employersalter their employees’ commuting habits.92

While Moving Cooler claims there are synergis-tic effects between these policies, it never ver-ifies this claim by comparing the implemen-tation of these other policies with andwithout the compact-development policies.

Compact-development advocates are sointent on seeing their policies implementedthat they never objectively assess the cost-effectiveness of those policies by themselves.A careful look reveals that compact-city pro-grams contemplated by these reports couldcost Americans trillions of dollars.

Underestimating the Costs

While advocates of reducing greenhousegas emissions might argue that every little bithelps, the truth is that it only helps if it is cost-efficient; cost-inefficient investments wouldeffectively crowd out cost-efficient programsand make it more difficult to achieve reduc-tion targets. Yet the cost of compact develop-ment is likely to be extremely high.

The Moving Cooler report inexplicablyclaims that compact development will cost amere $1.5 billion no matter whether 43 per-cent, 64 percent, or 90 percent of new devel-opment is compact. But at least one memberof the TRB committee believes costs will bemuch higher. “It’s an enormous amount ofeffort to achieve a tiny amount of outcome,”says Brookings Institution researcher An-

13

Compact-developmentadvocates are sointent on seeingtheir policiesimplemented that they never objectively assess the cost-effectiveness ofthose policies,which could costAmericans trillions of dollars.


thony Downs, regarding the TRB 75-percentscenario. “If your principal goal is to reducefuel emissions, I don’t think future growthdensity is the way to do it.”93

Here are some of the costs that compact-city mandates will impose on Americans:

• Loss of property rights• Reduced geographic mobility•Higher housing costs and lower home-

ownership rates•Higher taxes or reduced urban services

to subsidize compact development• Increased traffic congestion•Higher consumer costs• Reduced economic mobility

Property RightsStates that have attempted to use compact

development to reduce driving have engagedin a substantial amount of coercion, much ofwhich is aimed at limiting the property rightsof private landowners. In 1991, Oregon’s land-use planning commission required metropoli-tan planners to use land-use tools to reduceper capita driving by 20 percent.94 To reachthis goal, the state severely limits what privatelandowners can do in rural areas, while it man-dates high-density development on privateland in urban areas.

For example, private landowners in ruralOregon are allowed to build a house on theirown land only if they own at least 80 acres,they actually farm it, and they earn at least$80,000 per year from farming it. The state’sland-use agency is proud that only about 100homes per year have been built in rural areassince this rule was adopted in 1993.95 Nearly98 percent of the state has been zoned “rural”or some similarly restrictive zone.96

Meanwhile, about 1.25 percent of the statehas been classified as “urban,” or inside of anurban-growth boundary. (The remaining 1percent is zoned “rural residential,” meaning 5to 10 acre minimum lot sizes.) While somecities have expanded their growth boundariesin response to population growth, Portland isinstead intent on “growing up, not out.” Evenwhere the Portland boundary has been ex-

panded, planners have placed so many obsta-cles to home construction that it appears thenew areas will never be developed.97

To accommodate growth without expand-ing boundaries, Portland-area planners haverezoned dozens of neighborhoods of single-family homes for apartments, using zoning sostrict that if someone’s house burns down, theywill be required to replace it with an apart-ment.98 Portland’s mayor, Samuel Adams, sup-ports putting all new residents—an estimated300,000 by 2035—in high-density transit-ori-ented developments “within one-quarter mileof all existing and to-be-planned streetcar andlight-rail transit stops.”99

Naturally, these sorts of policies generatestiff resistance from rural property ownerswho do not want their land “downzoned” andurban homeowners who do not want theirneighborhoods “densified.” Considering theuncertainty about whether compact develop-ment can even have a significant effect ongreenhouse gas emissions, this sort of contro-versy is bound to distract attention from themore serious debate over whether, and by howmuch, emissions should be reduced—a dis-traction that emissions-reduction advocatesshould want to avoid.

Compact-city advocates argue that zoningthat prevents developers from building apart-ments in neighborhoods of single-familyhomes is itself a restriction on property rightsthat should be lifted. But such zoning wasoriginally put in place to protect property val-ues. In the absence of zoning, developers havefound that sale prices are enhanced when theyplace covenants on properties that prevent themixture of single-family housing with otheruses. Historically, most zoning of undevelop-ed areas has been responsive to market de-mand. Once developed, zoning aims to pro-tect existing property values, and as such it ismerely an alternative to such covenants. Com-pact-city zoning is far more prescriptive, oftenmandating unmarketable changes to existinguses that can significantly reduce property val-ues, at least for the current owners.

A case can be made that zoning restrictionsshould be relaxed so that developers can meet

14

Portland’s mayor supportsputting 300,000new residents in

high-densitydevelopments“within one-

quarter mile of allexisting and

to-be-plannedstreetcar and

light-rail transitstops.”


the market demand for higher-density hous-ing. But relaxing restrictions is very differentfrom imposing tighter restrictions that man-date high-density housing. Even when relax-ing restrictions, property owners should begiven the opportunity to form homeownerassociations that can write protective cov-enants that will protect their neighborhood’sproperty values, as has been suggested byUniversity of Maryland professor Robert Nel-son.100

MobilityAmericans are the most mobile people on

earth, and that mobility is an important partof America’s economic well-being. Researchhas proven that there is a strong correlationbetween mobility and economic productivity.Regions in which workers can reach more jobswithin a 25-minute commute, or employershave access to more workers within 25 min-utes, grow faster and provide higher incomesthan less mobile regions.101

Contrary to implications often made bycompact-city advocates, transit is not an ade-quate substitute for automobility. Even thebest public transit systems in the world areslower, reach fewer destinations, and fail togo at all times when automobiles can beavailable. This is revealed by comparing trav-el in Europe with that in the United States.In 2004, the average American traveled more

than 15,000 miles by auto, compared with6,600 miles for the average western European(residents of the fifteen countries in theEuropean Union in 2000). Meanwhile, the aver-age European traveled less than 1,300 miles bybus and rail compared with more than 600miles by the average American.102 The 700 addi-tional miles of bus and rail travel hardly makeup for the 8,800 fewer miles of auto travel.When gasoline prices briefly reached $4 per

gallon in 2008, numerous media reports indi-cated that Americans were driving less andtaking transit more. Yet the increases in transitusage actually made up for only a tiny percentof the decline in driving. In the second quarterof 2008, for example, Americans traveled 25billion fewer passenger miles in urban areas by

car, but transit ridership grew by only 700 mil-lion passenger miles, or less than 3 percent ofthe drop in urban auto travel.103

Even to the extent that transit can replaceauto trips, the cost is very high. Counting allcapital and operating costs, including subsi-dies, Americans spend about 24 cents per pas-senger mile on auto travel.104 By comparison,urban transit costs an average of 81 cents perpassenger mile.105 Nor is it likely that thesecosts will decline if transit use increases. Morethan 40 percent of all American transit rider-ship is in the New York metropolitan area, butNew York transit operating costs per trip orpassenger mile are only about 20 percent lessthan the national average.

HousingPlanners create compact cities by using

urban-growth boundaries or similar toolsthat create artificial land shortages. Giventhe resulting high land prices, higher per-centages of home buyers settle for multi-fam-ily housing where they might have preferredsingle family, or settle for small lots wherethey might have preferred large yards. In short, compact-development policies

greatly increase the costs of all types of housingas well as retail, commercial, and industrialdevelopment. States that have required cities towrite compact-development plans have signifi-cantly less affordable housing than states thatdo not.106 Such states also suffered from theworst housing bubbles in the recent financialcrisis, while states that did not require suchplans tended not to have any bubbles.107

Arguably, at least some of these highercosts are a zero-sum game: for every land orhomebuyer who must pay more, there is aseller who earns a windfall profit because ofthe artificial shortage. But at least some ofthe costs are a deadweight loss to society. For example, in regions with no urban-

growth mandates, cities and counties competefor new development, and the tax revenuesthat it brings in, by keeping permitting costslow and approval times short. Urban-growthboundaries limit this competition, and citiestypically respond by significantly increasing

15

Mass transportation isnot an adequatesubstitute forautomobility, asit tends to be slowand doesn’t gowhere peoplewant to go whenthey want to go there.

367773r1_PA653_1stClass_3-10-15:367773r1_PA653_1stClass_3-10-15 11/6/2009 11:53 AM

permit costs and the risk that property ownerswill never get a permit to build. One studyfound that such policies increased permittingcosts from $10,000 per home in relativelyunregulated Dallas to $100,000 per home inSan Jose, which adopted compact-develop-ment policies in 1974.108

Many cities have responded to the hous-ing affordability problems created by theircompact-development policies by mandatingthat developers sell 10 to 20 percent of theirhomes at below-market prices to low-incomebuyers. This leads to developers to both raisethe price of other homes to make up for thelosses on the share they must sell below mar-ket and to build fewer homes, which createsfurther affordability problems.109

Growing Cooler and Moving Cooler rely onArthur Nelson’s estimate that 89 million newor replaced homes will be built between nowand 2050.110 If 80 percent of this constructiontakes place in metropolitan areas and suffers adeadweight cost of $25,000 per housing unitbecause of compact-development policies, thecost will reach nearly $1.7 trillion.

Even to the extent that someone gainswhen others are forced to pay higher prices forhomes and land, the economy as a whole losesfor several reasons. First, less affordable hous-ing tends to mean lower homeownershiprates. Studies show many positive benefitsassociated with homeownership. For example,children in low-income families that own theirown homes do significantly better in schoolthan those in low-income families that rent.111

Areas with high rates of rental housing aretraditionally associated with higher unem-ployment rates. But research has found thatcompact-city policies can reverse this relation-ship. Artificial shortages of housing increasethe costs of selling and moving, and so dis-courage people who own their own homesfrom relocating to a city with more jobs.112

Urban areas that make themselves unaf-fordable using compact-city policies end upwith dramatically different income distribu-tions from the rest of the country.113 Low- andeven middle-income families are forced tomove out, turning the urban area into “Dis-

neyland for yuppies” (as California demogra-pher Hans Johnson put it) or “boutique citiescatering only to a small, highly educated elite”(as Harvard economist Edward Glaeser putit).114 While that might be good for theregion’s short-term tax revenues, it slows eco-nomic growth and reduces the opportunitiesfor economic mobility that are available tolow-income families in more affordable hous-ing markets.

Taxes and Urban ServicesCreating artificial land shortages that

boost housing costs is not enough for com-pact-city planners in many regions. Most citieshave supplemented this with subsidies tohigh-density, mixed-use developments thatsupposedly reduce driving. The biggest sourceof these subsidies is probably tax-incrementfinancing, which was discussed under theCCAP report.

Other subsidies include property-taxwaivers for favored kinds of development,below-market sales of public land to develop-ers who promise to build at certain densities,and public financing of infrastructure thatwould otherwise have been built by the devel-oper. Many cities also streamline approvalprocesses and/or waive impact fees for denserdevelopments.

While Moving Cooler estimates that the totalcost of increasing the density of 90 percent ofall new urban development in the UnitedStates would be just $1.5 billion, Portlandalone has committed nearly this amount insubsidies to developers of high-density pro-jects. The city has committed more than $230million in subsidies to the famous PearlDistrict (River District) and nearly $290 mil-lion in subsidies to the South WaterfrontDistrict (North Macadam), both of which areon the streetcar line; more than $300 millionto the Interstate Corridor on the Yellow light-rail line; more than $164 million for theGateway District on the Blue light-rail line;$75 million for the Lents District on the Greenlight-rail line; more than $72 million forAirport Way on the Red light-rail line; and $66million to the Central Eastside District, on a

16

By making housing more

expensive, compact-

development policies are likely

to impose a deadweight coston society of at

least $1.7 trillion.


planned streetcar and light-rail line.115 Thisonly counts tax-increment financed subsidiesand not tax waivers, below-market land sales,or other subsidies.

As described above, projects supportedthrough tax-increment financing and prop-erty-tax waivers increase the burdens onPortland schools, fire, police, public health,and other programs, but dedicate the taxesthat would have gone to those programs todevelopers instead. The result is that theseother programs have seen declines in boththe quality and quantity of services they canprovide to the rest of the city.

In many cases, Portland subsidies haveexceeded $100,000 per housing unit. If subsi-dies averaging $25,000 per housing unit areapplied to 60 percent of the new homes builtin metropolitan areas between now and 2050,the total subsidies will exceed $1 trillion. Thisassumes 89 million new homes built betweennow and 2050, as estimated by Arthur Nelson,80 percent of which would be within metro-politan areas. But the Pitkin and Myers papercommissioned for the TRB study calculatesthat Nelson overestimated the rate of newconstruction by 50 percent, which means sub-sidies would have to be even greater to reachcompact-development targets.116

Combined, the deadweight losses fromcompact-development regulations and subsi-dies are likely to exceed $2.8 trillion. If these reg-ulations and subsidies produce the maximumreductions in greenhouse gas emissions pro-jected by Moving Cooler, the cost per ton of abat-ed emissions will be nearly $2,000—well abovethe $50-per-ton cost-effectiveness threshold setby the McKinsey report. Of course, this doesnot count other costs of compact development,such as congestion and effects on consumerprices.

CongestionIncreasing roadway congestion appears to

be a deliberate part of compact-city plans. Ifpeople cannot easily travel long distances,planners hope, they will be more willing to livein denser developments. In 1996, for example,the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council decided

to limit the “expansion of roadways” in thehope that “as traffic congestion builds, alter-native travel modes will become more attrac-tive.”117

Similarly, Portland decided to allow rush-hour congestion to reach “level of service F” (atraffic engineering term meaning stop-and-gotraffic) in most of the city’s highways. Whenasked why, transportation planner AndrewCotugno (who was a member of the TRB com-mittee) responded that relieving congestion“would eliminate transit ridership.”118

Even if congestion were not a deliberategoal of compact-city planners, it would clearlybe a major result of such plans. Using censusdata, Moving Cooler estimated that increasingdensities from an average of 3,000 people persquare mile by an additional 133 percent to anaverage of 7,000 people would reduce per capi-ta driving by less than 15 percent.119 Thatmany more people driving 15-percent lesseach still means a 100-percent increase in totalvehicle miles of travel. Since compact-cityplanners would oppose any new highways toaccommodate that travel, there would obvi-ously be a huge increase in congestion.

Congestion, of course, imposes huge costson commuters and businesses. It also impactsthe environment, as autos in stop-and-go traf-fic consume far more fuel and emit more pol-lution and greenhouse gases per mile thanautos in free-flowing traffic. In fact, the focuson reducing miles of driving is misguidedbecause miles driven are not proportional togreenhouse gas emissions, since congestion isthe leading cause of such disproportionality.

Consumer CostsCompact development advocates often

argue that the loss of mobility resulting fromless auto driving can be mitigated by increasedaccessibility from mixing retail and other useswith, or within walking distance of, residentialareas. Why drive when you can simply walkdownstairs from your condo and go groceryshopping or have a cup of coffee? “Millions ofpeople could be liberated from their vehicles”if neighborhoods were redesigned to makethings accessible without requiring mobility,

17

Compact developmentincreases trafficcongestionbecause largeincreases in densities arerequired to getsmall reductionsin per capita driving.


argues Robert Cervero (who was on the TRBcommittee).120

This ignores, however, the nature of themodern retail industry. Major supermarketsand other stores can offer a wide variety oflow-cost goods only because large numbers ofcustomers can reach them by car. Shrink thepool of customers by limiting them to thosewithin walking distance and costs rise—whilethe variety of goods offered declines. Prices risefurther when people become captives of onestore; the competition that exists when peoplecan reach several stores in one short auto tripencourages retailers to adopt innovative pro-grams that reduce costs.

Moreover, like homebuyers, retailers incompact communities will have to pay morefor land, adding further to consumer prices.Thus, the higher prices that are typicallyfound in “accessible” versus mobile communi-ties are not a zero-sum game: the retailers arenot earning fatter profits; they are merely suf-fering higher costs due to inefficient manage-ment.

Economic MobilitySeveral studies have found that auto own-

ership is a key factor to helping low-incomefamilies move into the middle class. Onefound that people without a high-schooldiploma were 80 percent more likely to have ajob and earned $1,100 more per month if theyhad a car. In fact, the study found that owninga car was more helpful to getting a job thangetting a high-school-equivalent degree.121

Another study found that closing the black-white auto ownership gap would close nearlyhalf the black-white employment gap.122

As a result, numerous analysts have notedthat efforts to reduce per capita driving willhave their greatest impact on low-incomefamilies. “Their most severe effects” of mobil-ity restrictions, says Alan Pisarski, “will fallon those groups that either have recentlyattained mobility or are just now on the vergeof attaining it.”123

Transit improvements will not make up forthis loss in economic mobility. “Public transitis not a reasonable substitute for the private

vehicle for most people, poor or not poor,”says UCLA planning professor GenevieveGiuliano.124 For example, an analysis of jobaccessibility in Cincinnati found that peopleliving in low-income neighborhoods couldreach 99 percent of the region’s jobs within 20minutes by car, but only 21 percent of theregion’s jobs in a 40-minute trip by transit.Furthermore, building light rail, the studyfound, would actually reduce job accessibilityfor low-income workers.125

Economic mobility is the American dream,and geographic mobility is a key componentof that dream. No matter how noble the inten-tions, proposals to reduce mobility should beviewed with the same suspicion as proposalsto reduce freedom of speech or freedom of thepress.

Getting the Prices Right

Compact development is an indirect andrisky way of reducing greenhouse gas emis-sions. It depends on people responding tocompact cities in the ways that plannershope; on the assumption that reduced green-house gas emissions from reduced drivingwill not be offset by increased emissions frommore driving in stop-and-go traffic; and onplanners’ faith that the costs of unintended(and intended) consequences such as unaf-fordable housing, congestion, and reducedworker productivities will not be greater thanthe benefits.

Those who are skeptical of the need toreduce carbon dioxide emissions should natu-rally reject compact-city schemes as an unnec-essary and expensive imposition on personalfreedom and mobility. Those who supportpolicies to reduce carbon dioxide emissionsshould also reject compact-development pro-grams as risky, cost-ineffective ideas that willdivert resources and attention away from gen-uine emission-reduction programs.

One of the most effective ways of reducingcarbon emissions is simply to price themusing a revenue-neutral carbon tax whoseincome is offset by reductions in income or

18

Mobility is a keycomponent of theAmerican dream,and proposals toreduce mobilityshould be viewed

with the same suspicion as

proposals to limitfreedom of speech

or freedom ofreligion.


other taxes. Moving Cooler estimates that car-bon pricing would be 10 times more effectiveat reducing auto-related emissions than com-pact development, and that the vast majorityof that reduction would come from peoplebuying more fuel-efficient cars, not drivingless.126

Carbon pricing would allow people tochoose for themselves whether they respondto higher fuel prices by buying more fuel-effi-cient cars, using alternative fuels, “eco-dri-ving” in a more fuel-efficient manner, or dri-ving less. Those who choose to drive lesscould also decide whether they want to live inhigh-density communities or continue to livein low-density communities but adjust otherdriving habits, perhaps by living closer towork, trip chaining, or shopping at one-stopsupercenters instead of several smaller stores.

Carbon pricing would also have moreimmediate effects on energy use and carbonemissions than compact development, whichwill take decades to implement. Moving Coolerpredicts that, in 2020, maximum use of car-bon pricing would reduce auto-related emis-sions more than 30 times as much as maxi-mum use of compact development, while in2030 it would be 12 times as much.127

These more-immediate effects mean thatcarbon pricing would be easier to evaluate andfine-tune in order to ensure that any emission-reduction targets are met. By comparison, theslow deployment of compact development,combined with the indirect effects it has ondriving and carbon emissions, means thatdecades will pass and hundreds of billions ofdollars will be spent before we know if it iseven working.

Finally, carbon pricing would not only beeasier to implement than compact develop-ment, it would affect all producers of carbonemissions, notably including fossil-fuel-pow-ered electrical plants. This means one tool canaddress far more sources of carbon emissions,while compact development mainly influ-ences urban auto driving, which produces lessthan 13 percent of greenhouse gases.

No policy is immune to political abuse,and carbon taxes could easily turn into just

one more source of pork barrel (as seems tohave happened to the recent cap-and-tradeproposal). If climate change worries provebaseless, a carbon tax is not even necessary.But for those who insist on reducing carbonemissions, a true, revenue-neutral carbon taxmakes far more sense than intrusive govern-ment policies aimed at coercing people out oftheir homes and cars and forcing them to livein politically correct multi-family housingand to ride on politically correct mass transit.

Notes1. Reid Ewing, Keith Bartholomew, Steve Winkel-man, Jerry Walters, and Don Chen, Growing Cooler:The Evidence on Urban Development and ClimateChange (Washington: Urban Land Institute, 2008),p. 1.

2. Ibid.

3. Marilyn Brown, Frank Southworth, and AndreaSarzynski, “Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Met-ropolitan America,” Brookings Institute, 2008, p. 3.

4. Moving Cooler: An Analysis of Transportation Strat-egies for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Washing-ton: Urban Land Institute, 2009), pp. 2–3.

5. Steve Winkelman, Allison Bishins, and ChuckKooshian, “Cost-Effective GHG Reductionsthrough Smart Growth and Improved Transpor-tation Choices,” Center for Clean Air Policy, 2009,p. 1.

6. Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects ofCompact Development on Motorized Travel, EnergyUse, and Carbon Dioxide Emissions (Washington:National Research Council, 2009), p. 96.

7. “HUD and DOT Partnership: Sustainable Com-munities,” Department of Transportation, Wash-ington, DC, March 18, 2009, tinyurl.com/cbfxs4.

8. Alan Wirzbicki, “LaHood Defends Mass TransitPush,” Boston Globe, May 21, 2009, tinyurl.com/ovszpq.

9. Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intel-lectual History of Urban Planning and Design in theTwentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2002edition), p. 79.

10. Ibid., p. 5.

11. Ibid., p. 244.

19

The Brookingsstudy proposes to save energy by drasticallyreducing the sizeof American living spaces.


12. Ibid., p. 246.

13. Ibid., pp. 256–259.

14. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great AmericanCities (New York: Vintage, 1963), p. 3.

15. George Dantzig and Thomas Saaty, CompactCity: A Plan for a Liveable Urban Environment (SanFrancisco: Freeman, 1973), p. 9.

16. Ibid., p. 26.

17. Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk,“The Second Coming of the American SmallTown,” Wilson’s Quarterly, Winter 1992, pp. 19–48.

18. Peter Calthorpe, The Next American Metropolis:Ecology, Community, and the American Dream (NewYork: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993), p. 17.

19. Dowell Myers and Elizabeth Gearin, “CurrentPreferences and Future Demand for Denser Resi-dential Environments,” Housing Policy Debate 12,no. 4 (2001): 635–36.

20. John W. Frece, “Lessons from Maryland’sSmart Growth Initiative,” Vermont Journal of En-vironmental Law 6 (2004 –2005), tinyurl.com/8sj28.

21. 1997 Natural Resources Inventory (Washington:Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2001),tables 1 and 2.

22. “1970–2008 Average Annual Emissions, AllCriteria Pollutants in MS Excel,” EnvironmentalProtection Agency, 2009, tinyurl.com/nkhgad;Highway Statistics Summary to 1995 (Washington:Federal Highway Administration, 1996), table VM-201; Highway Statistics 2007 (Washington: FederalHighway Administration, 2008), table VM-2.

23. Stacy C. Davis and Susan W. Diegel, Transpor-tation Energy Data Book: Edition 28 (Oak Ridge, TN:Department of Energy, 2009), table 2.13.

24. Highway Statistics Summary to 1995, tables MF-202 and VM-202.

25. “Light-Duty Automotive Technology and FuelEconomy Trends: 1975 through 2008,” Environ-mental Protection Agency, 2008, p. 7.

26. Real Estate Research Corporation, The Costs ofSprawl (Washington: Council on EnvironmentalQuality, 1973).

27. Robert Burchell et al., The Costs of Sprawl 2000(Washington: National Academy Press, 2002), p. 13.

28. Wendell Cox and Joshua Utt, “The Costs of

Sprawl Reconsidered: What the Data Really Show,”Backgrounder no. 1770, June 25, 2004, p. 10.

29. Jan Brueckner and Ann Largey, “Social Inter-action and Urban Sprawl,” Center for EconomicStudies/Ifo Institute, Working Paper no. 1843,2006, p. 1.

30. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse andRevival of American Community (New York: Simonand Schuster, 2000), p. 206.

31. Reid Ewing, Tom Schmid, Richard Killings-worth, Amy Zlot, and Stephen Raudenbush,“Relationship between Urban Sprawl and PhysicalActivity, Obesity, and Morbidity,” American Journalof Health Promotion 18, no. 1 (September/October2003): 47–57.

32. Jean Eid, Henry G. Overman, Diego Puga, andMatthew A. Turner, Fat City: Questioning the Re-lationship Between Urban Sprawl and Obesity (Toronto:University of Toronto, 2006), p. 1.

33. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, p. 79.

34. Ewing et al., Growing Cooler, p. iii.

35. Making the Connections: A Summary of theLUTRAQ Project (Portland: 1000 Friends, 1997).

36. Bent Flyvbjerg, How Optimism Bias and StrategicMisrepresentation Undermine Implementation (Trond-heim, Norway: Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenska-pelige Universitet, 2007).

37. Ewing et al., Growing Cooler, p. 10.

38. Moving Cooler, p. 44.

39. Moving Cooler, pp. 24, 41.

40. Calculated by multiplying the 33 percent ofemissions that come from transportation by the 57percent of transportation emissions that comefrom autos and light trucks (see Brown, South-worth, and Sarzynski, “Shrinking the CarbonFootprint of Metropolitan America,” p. 8) and the67 percent of auto and light-truck travel that takesplace in urban areas (see Highway Statistics 2007,table VM-1).

41. See, for example, Patrick J. Michaels and RobertBalling Jr., Climate of Extremes: Global WarmingScience They Don’t Want You to Know (Washington:Cato, 2009).

42. Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: HowMuch at What Cost? (Washington: McKinsey, 2008),pp. 20, 27.


20


44. Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions, p. 21.


46. Ibid., p. 3.

47. Ibid., p. 127.

48. Ibid., p. 19.

49. Arthur C. Nelson, “Leadership in a New Era,”Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no, 4(2006): 397.

50. Dowell Myers and Elizabeth Gearin, “CurrentPreferences and Future Demand for Denser Resi-dential Environments,” Housing Policy Debate 12,no. 4 (2001): 633–59.

51. Brown, Southworth, and Sarzynski, “Shrink-ing the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan Amer-ica,” p. 9.

52. Ibid., p. 11.

53. 2008 Buildings Energy Data Book (Pittsburgh:National Energy Technology Laboratory, 2008),pp. 2—7.

54. Steve Winkelman, Allison Bishins, and ChuckKooshian, “Cost-Effective GHG Reductions throughSmart Growth and Improved TransportationChoices,” Center for Clean Air Policy, 2009, pp. v–vi.

55. Ibid., p. vi.

56. 2006 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (Sacramen-to: Sacramento Area Council of Governments,2006), p. 3.

57. Winkelman et al., “Cost-Effective GHG Reduc-tions,” p. vi.

58. Randal O’Toole, “Debunking Portland: TheCity That Doesn’t Work,” Cato Institute PolicyAnalysis no. 596, July 9, 2007, pp. 8–9.

59. Winkelman et al., “Cost-Effective GHG Reduc-tions,” p. vi.

60. James Murdock, “Next Stop: Atlantic Station,”Commercial Property News, August 1, 2003, tinyurl.com/ydd5kjp.

61. Richard Dye and David Merriman, “The Effectsof Tax-Increment Financing on Economic Devel-opment,” Journal of Urban Economics 47, no. 2(2000): 306–28.

62. Cambridge Systematics, “Updated Assump-tions and Methodology Used in Moving CoolerEffectiveness Analysis,” (memorandum to the

Moving Cooler Steering Committee, December 11,2008), p. 19.

63. Cambridge Systematics, p. 21.

64. Cambridge Systematics, pp. 32, 40.

65. “High Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emis-sions in the U.S.” Center for Clean Air Policy andCenter for Neighborhood Technology, 2006, p. 9.

66. “Monthly Performance Report for September2008,” Amtrak, 2008, p. C-1, tinyurl.com/njlnhr;calculated by dividing “contribution per seatmile” by “contribution per passenger mile.”

67. Moving Cooler, pp. 2–3.

68. Ibid., p. 41.

69. Randal O’Toole, “Does Rail Transit Save Energyor Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?” Cato In-stitute Policy Analysis no. 615, April 14, 2008, pp. 4,14.


71. Steven Polzin, “Energy Crisis Solved!” UrbanTransportation Monitor, July 11, 2008, pp. 8–9.

72. Stacy C. Davis and Susan W. Diegel, Transpor-tation Energy Data Book: Edition 28 (Oak Ridge, TN:Department of Energy, 2009), table 2.14.

73. Moving Cooler, pp. 24, 41.

74. Ibid., p. 44.

75. Driving and the Built Environment, p. 2.

76. Ibid., p. 94.

77. Ibid., p. 96.

78. David Brownstone, “Key Relationships Betweenthe Built Environment and VMT,” TransportationResearch Board, 2008, p. 7, tinyurl.com/y9mro58.

79. Ibid., p. 6, tinyurl.com/y85etbs.

80. Kara Kockelman, Matthew Bomberg, MelissaThompson, and Charlotte Whitehead, “GHG Emis-sions Control Options: Opportunities for Conser-vation,” Transportation Research Board, 2008, pp.57–58, tinyurl.com/yczl8oc.

81. Michael Bronzini, “Relationships between LandUse and Freight and Commercial Truck Traffic inMetropolitan Areas,” Transportation ResearchBoard, 2008, p. 13, tinyurl.com/yaegcpz.

82. John Pitkin and Dowell Myers, “U.S. Housing

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Trends: Generational Changes and the Outlookto 2050,” Transportation Research Board, 2008,p. 4, tinyurl.com/y98hnt9.

83. Ibid., pp. 26–27, tinyurl.com/y98hnt9.

84. Genevieve Giuliano, Ajay Agarwal, and Chris-tian Redfearn, “Metropolitan Spatial Trends inEmployment and Housing,” Transportation Re-search Board, 2008, p. 29, tinyurl.com/yeue8ja.


86. Moving Cooler, pp. 2–3.

87. Ewing et al., Growing Cooler, p. 10. “Current lev-els” of carbon dioxide outputs are about 6 billionmetric tons per year according to “Total Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions by End-UseSector, and the Electric Power Sector, by Fuel Type,1949–2007,” Energy Information Administration,2009, tinyurl.com/59rlos.


89. Xinya Cao, Patricia L. Mokhtarian, and SusanL. Handy, “Examining the Impacts of ResidentialSelf-Selection on Travel Behavior: Methodologiesand Empirical Findings,” University of CaliforniaInstitute for Transportation Studies, 2008, p. 1.

90. Brownstone, “Key Relationships,” p. 7, tinyurl.com/y9mro58.

91. Phil McKenna, “Forget Curbing Urban Sprawl:Building Denser Cities Would Do Little to ReduceCarbon Dioxide Emissions, a New NAS ReportConcludes,” MIT Technology Review, September 3,2009, tinyurl.com/lkbo3c.


93. McKenna, “Forget Curbing Urban Sprawl.”

94. “Transportation Planning,” Oregon Admini-strative Rules 660-12-0035(4)(c).

95. Using Income Criteria to Protect CommercialFarmland in the State of Oregon (Salem, OR: Depart-ment of Land Conservation and Development,1998), p. 2.

96. “Zoning Acres by County,” Department ofLand Conservation and Development, 1995.

97. Amy Reifenrath, “Road to Bigger, Better Dam-ascus Leads to Dead End,” Oregonian, January 16,2009, tinyurl.com/ahwwfa.

98. Dionne Peeples-Salah, “Rezoning for TransitTraps Downtown Homeowners,” Oregonian, Jan-uary 18, 1996, p. A1.

99. Sam Adams, “From Here to Portland’s Tomor-row” (speech to Portland City Club, July 20, 2007),tinyurl.com/ao42ft.

100. Robert Nelson, “Privatizing the Neighbor-hood: A Proposal to Replace Zoning with PrivateCollective Property Rights to Existing Neighbor-hoods,” George Mason Law Review 7, no. 4 (1999):827–80.

101. David Hartgen and Gregory Fields, “Gridlockand Growth: The Effect of Traffic Congestion onRegional Economic Performance,” Reason Foun-dation Policy Summary of Study no. 371, 2009, p.6, tinyurl.com/ydxxxc6.

102. Panorama of Transport (Brussels: EuropeanCommission, 2007), pp. 108–11; National Trans-portation Statistics (Washington: Bureau of Trans-portation Statistics, 2008), table 1-37.

103. “Estimated Individual Monthly Motor VehicleTravel in the United States—2007–2008,” FederalHighway Administration, 2009, tinyurl.com/ybad3xq; passenger miles calculated at 1.6 times vehiclemiles, “Transit Ridership Report, Second Quarter2008,” American Public Transportation Associ-ation, 2008, tinyurl.com/y9cjn7p; passenger milescalculated at 5 times transit trips.

104. “National Economic Accounts,” Bureau ofEconomic Analysis, 2008, table 2.5.5; Highway Stat-istics 2007, table VM-1.

105. 2007 National Transit Database (Washington:Federal Transit Administration, 2007), “CapitalUse,” “Operating Expenses,” “Fare Revenues,” and“Service” spreadsheets.

106. Randal O’Toole, “The Planning Tax: The Caseagainst Regional Growth-Management Planning,”Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 606, December 6,2007, p. 10.

107. Randal O’Toole, “How Urban Planners Causethe Housing Bubble,” Cato Institute Policy Anal-ysis no. 646, October 1, 2009, p. 12.

108. Tracey Kaplan and Sue McAllister, “Cost ofLand Drives Home Prices,” San Jose Mercury News,August 4, 2002.

109. Tom Means, Edward Stringham, and EdwardLopez, “Below-Market Housing Mandates as Tak-ings: Measuring the Impact,” Independent Insti-tute Policy Report, November, 2007, p. 1.


111. Donald R. Haurin, The Private and Social Bene-fits of Homeownership (Americus, GA: Habitat forHumanity University, 2003), tinyurl.com/2nnl6t.

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112. Andrew Oswald, “Theory of Homes and Jobs,”preliminary paper, 1997, tinyurl.com/2pfwvv.

113. Joel Kotkin, “Opportunity Urbanism: AnEmerging Paradigm for the 21st Century,” GreaterHouston Partnership, 2007, p. 37, tinyurl.com/25wj8f.

114. James Temple, “Exodus of San Francisco’sMiddle Class,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2008,tinyurl.com/5ydpnp; Edward Glaeser, “The Econo-mic Impact of Restricting Housing Supply,” Rappa-port Institute, 2006, p. 2, tinyurl.com/6zsovh.

115. “Urban Renewal History Appendix,” Port-land Development Commission, 2006, pp. 1–5,tinyurl.com/yo2zde.

116. Pitkin and Myers, “U.S. Housing Trends,” p.26.

117. Metropolitan Council, Transportation PolicyPlan (St. Paul: Metropolitan Council, 1996), p. 54.

118. “Minutes of the Metro Council TransportationPlanning Committee Meeting,” Metro (Portland,Oregon), July 18, 2000, p. 7.


120. Robert Cervero, “Why Go Anywhere?” in Fifty

Years of City and Regional Planning at UC–Berkeley: ACelebratory Anthology of Faculty Essays (Berkeley:Department of City and Regional Planning, 1998).

121. Kerri Sullivan, Transportation and Work: Ex-ploring Car Usage and Employment Outcomes (Cam-bridge: Harvard, 2003), tinyurl.com/yonw9f.

122. Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll, “CanBoosting Minority Car-Ownership Rates NarrowInter-Racial Employment Gaps?” (Berkeley: Berke-ley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, 2000),p. 2, tinyurl.com/2yeuvq.

123. Alan Pisarski, “Cars, Women, and Minorities:The Democratization of Mobility in America,”Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1999, p. 1, tinyurl.com/yeno7wr.

124. Genevieve Giuliano, Hsi-Hwa Hu, and KyoungLee, “The Role of Public Transit in the Mobility ofLow-Income Households,” Metrans Transporta-tion Center, 2001, p. ii, tinyurl.com/y9 m255k.

125. Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council ofGovernments, OKI 2030 Regional TransportationPlan (Cincinnati: OKI, 2001), pp. 16–10.


127. Ibid., p. 41.

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STUDIES IN THE POLICY ANALYSIS SERIES

652. Attack of the Utility Monsters: The New Threats to Free Speech by Jason Kuznicki (November 16, 2009)

651. Fairness 2.0: Media Content Regulation in the 21st Century by Robert Corn-Revere (November 10, 2009)

650. Yes, Mr President: A Free Market Can Fix Health Care by Michael F. Cannon (October 21, 2009)

649. Somalia, Redux: A More Hands-Off Approach by David Axe (October 12, 2009)

648. Would a Stricter Fed Policy and Financial Regulation Have Averted the Financial Crisis? by Jagadeesh Gokhale and Peter Van Doren (October 8, 2009)

647. Why Sustainability Standards for Biofuel Production Make Little Economic Sense by Harry de Gorter and David R. Just (October 7, 2009)

646. How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble by Randal O’Toole (October 1, 2009)

645. Vallejo Con Dios: Why Public Sector Unionism Is a Bad Deal for Taxpayers and Representative Government by Don Bellante, David Denholm, and Ivan Osorio (September 28, 2009)

644. Getting What You Paid For—Paying For What You Get: Proposals for theNext Transportation Reauthorization by Randal O’Toole (September 15, 2009)

643. Halfway to Where? Answering the Key Questions of Health Care Reformby Michael Tanner (September 9, 2009)

642. Fannie Med? Why a “Public Option” Is Hazardous to Your Health by Michael F. Cannon (July 27, 2009)

641. The Poverty of Preschool Promises: Saving Children and Money with theEarly Education Tax Credit by Adam B. Schaeffer (August 3, 2009)

640. Thinking Clearly about Economic Inequality by Will Wilkinson (July 14, 2009)

367773_PA653_ni indicia:367773_PA653_ni indicia 11/3/2009 9:55 AM

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