WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In order to convey the thought that America has arrived at a new and unprecedented social moment, I sometimes ask people to conduct the following thought experiment about the urban sprawl controversy: Imagine that you brought back one or more of the architects of New Deal social policy from FDR’s "brain trust," showed them a photo of a new suburban neighborhood, and explained that new neighborhoods like this were going up all over the country. In addition, you would tell our New Dealer that the rate of home
ownership in America was approaching 70 percent--a rate no other nation in the world even comes close to
matching--and that minorities were the fastest-growing demographic group of new homeowners.

At this point our reincarnated New Dealer would puff with pride and say, "By golly, we did it. Our goal of
expanding prosperity and extending it to the working class has met with success." But then if you said--"Oh,
no, you don’t understand; this is nowadays called ‘sprawl,’ and is a huge source of controversy and
discontent. Lots and lots of people, especially liberals, want to stop the spread of suburban housing"--I am sure our New Deal friend would be utterly baffled.

So what’s going on here? Why is the spread of prosperity turning out to be a turn-off for a growing number of Americans?

The answer, I think, can be found in an obscure 1976 book called The Social Limits to Growth by Fred
Hirsch. Hirsch was an economist and journalist who wrote in the aftermath of the infamous Club of Rome
report that suggested Western civilization was bumping up against the physical limits of growth because of
scarce resources, pollution, the population bomb, yadda-yadda-yadda. Hirsch said "nonsense" to this
scenario, but thought it possible that comfortable middle-class people might come to doubt the utility of
further economic growth anyway. This, Hirsch thought, would represent a fundamental change in the social
outlook of modern middle-class democracy.

All of us naturally want the fruits of growth for ourselves; we all want more income, more education, and
other personal amenities. It used to be that this desire led people to be generally pro-growth, which
meant that we were all happy to hear the news that a new factory was going up in town. Somehow or other, we
understood that in a dynamic world, general growth would benefit each of us, even if we were shopkeepers
or insurance agents not directly employed at the new factory. But at some point, Hirsch predicted, the nexus
between general growth and our own personal well-being would be broken. Growing traffic congestion, Hirsch
predicted, would be one of the first causes of this shift. People would also come to see any change to
their suburban communities as a threat to their community’s character.

I think Hirsch is onto something important with this insight, but it also means that "smart growth" land-use
regulation, mass-transit schemes, and other proposals won’t get anywhere near the heart of the matter.

--By Steven Hayward