FALSE BAWLING OVER SPRAWL

Families who purchased homes in the suburbs to escape the pressures of urban living now find themselves facing lengthening commutes and clogged highways, disappearing open space, and many of the other urban problems they thought they had left behind. Some environmental groups blame suburban spawl on highways. In their view, building new highway capacity to relieve congestion just makes matters worse by encouraging suburbanites to move further out and make even more automobile trips. Their solution is to shut down highway development and force families to live closer in where their transportation needs would be served by mass transit. This article maintains that an antisprawl policy bent on limiting mobility and location decisions by stopping new highway capacity cannot work in a free society or in opposition to the strong economic forces that are decentralizing economic location. The workable alternative is to revitalize our cities in order to make them more attractive places for businesses and households to locate. The American Road and Transportation Builders Association is publishing studies to support the need for highway investment as part of a national strategy for balanced economic growth.