Marquette law review article on sprawl
84 Marq. L. Rev. 301
SUBURBAN SPRAWL: NOT JUST AN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
Michael Lewyn [FN1]
Copyright ? 2000 Marquette Law Review; Michael Lewyn
I. Introduction: What the Argument is About
Once upon a time, 'city' was not a dirty word in America. Between 1900 and 1950, every American city with over 500,000 people gained population. [FN2] But over the past several decades, metropolitan America has been transformed by suburban sprawl--the movement of people (especially middle-class families) and jobs from older urban cores to newer, less densely populated, more automobile-dependent communities generally referred to as suburbs. [FN3]
At the end of World War II, roughly 70% of metropolitan Americans lived in central cities. [FN4] But by 1990, only about 40% of metropolitan Americans, and only 31.3% of all Americans, lived in central cities. [FN5] Some central cities have been devastated by sprawl: for example, St. Louis has lost 60% of its people since 1950, while Buffaloand *302 Cleveland have lost over 45% of their people. [FN6] The cities that have gained population have grown either by being hubs for immigration from other countries (like New York and Los Angeles) or by annexing newly developed areas that would be considered suburbs in other cities (like Little Rock, Indianapolis and Albuquerque). [FN7] As cities have become smaller, they have become poorer. [FN8] In 1960, central cities contained one-third of America's poor people; by 1990, the central city share had climbed to one-half, [FN9] and thirty-one of America's thirty-seven largest cities had poverty rates above the national average. [FN10] Jobs as well as people have fled to suburbia: [FN11] About 95% of the 15 million new office jobs created in the 1980s were in suburbs, [FN12] and suburbs captured 120% of net job growth in manufacturing. [FN13] Today, two-thirds of all new jobs are created in suburbs. [FN14]
In recent years, Vice President Gore and numerous other commentators (especially within the environmental movement) have criticized suburban sprawl. [FN15] For example, Vice President Gore describes sprawl this way:
*303 Acre upon acre of asphalt have transformed what were once mountain clearings and congenial villages into little more than massive parking lots. The ill-thought-out sprawl hastily developed around our nations cities has turned what used to be friendly, easy suburbs into lonely cul-de-sacs, so distant from the city center that if a family wants to buy an affordable house they have to drive so far that a parent gets home too late to read a bedtime story. [FN16]
Gore complains that sprawl 'has left 'a vacuum in the cities and suburbs which sucks away jobs . . . homes and hope; as people stop walking in downtown areas, the vacuum is filled up fast with crime, drugs and danger.' ' [FN17] A book published by the Natural Resources Defense Council blames sprawl for landscapes lost, traffic congested, air and water polluted, public health endangered, and a potential energy crisis that could make those of the 1970s look mild by comparison. [FN18] A Sierra Club website asserts that sprawl increases traffic; pollutes our air and water; worsens flood damage; destroys parks; farms and open space; wastes our tax money, and crowds our children's schools. [FN19] Such concerns are not new. Decades ago, a California city's zoning ordinance blamed sprawl for 'air, noise and water pollution, traffic congestion, destruction of scenic beauty [and, thus,] disturbance of the ecology and environment.' [FN20]
In the political arena, environmentalists are the leading opponents of sprawl, [FN21] while conservatives tend to be skeptical of anti-sprawl policies. [FN22] Environmentalists typically focus on the environmental costs of sprawl, [FN23] and endorse more extensive government regulation of landuse. *304 [ FN24] Some conservatives and libertarians, by contrast, deny that sprawl is a problem at all, and suggest that sprawl merely reflects the desires of affluent consumers. For example, Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute writes in National Review that 'the threat of sprawl is vastly overblown' [FN25] and accuses sprawl opponents of believing that 'commuting suburbanites are making unenlightened lifestyle choices because they lack the expert supervision that only their betters in government can provide. ' [FN26] Similarly, conservative columnist Thomas Sowell describes sprawl as 'today's contrived crisis' [FN27] and asserts that '[t]he real objection [[[to sprawl] may be that all this is going on without the guiding hand of Big Brother.' [FN28] Thus, the conventional conservative wisdom, as of early 2000, seems to be that: (1) sprawl is merely the result of the free market at work; (2) even if sprawl has negative effects, it cannot be limited without implementation of the liberal/environmentalist agenda of larger and more intrusive government; therefore, (3) conservatives should do nothing to fight sprawl. This article rejects all three propositions. Specifically, I argue that: (1) sprawl is in large part a result of runaway statism rather than the free market; (2) sprawl threatens conservative values such as consumer choice, the work ethic, and social stability, and (3) free-market, anti-spending solutions can limit sprawl and revitalize cities.
II. Background: How Statism Created Sprawl
As noted above, many conservatives believe that sprawl is merely the free market at work. [FN29] But, in fact, sprawl is in large part an unintended consequence of governmental blundering.
*305 Government's pro-suburban bias has been especially blatant in three areas: housing policy, transportation policy, and education policy. In addition, government land use policy has made city and suburb alike more sprawling and auto-dependent than a free market would dictate.
A. Housing: Turning America Into Sprawl Land
Federal housing policy has moved middle-class families out of cities both by subsidizing migration to suburbs, and by turning cities into dumping grounds for the poor.
1. Paying Americans To Move To Suburbs
The federal war against urban America began in the New Deal era, when the federal government inflicted the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program upon American cities.
Before the New Deal, mortgages were typically granted for no more than two- thirds of the appraised value of a home, so buyers needed to acquire at least 33% of the value of a property in order to make a down payment, and usually 50%. [FN30] Most loans had five to ten year terms. [FN31] During the 1930s, this system broke down, as 'financial instability caused many American homeowners to default [on their mortgages].' [FN32] To protect homeowners and home sellers, the FHA has insured long-term, low-down payment mortgages against default since 1934. [FN33] Specifically, the FHA guaranteed over 90% of the value of collateral so that down payments of only 10% of home value became the norm. [FN34] The FHA also extended repayment periods to twenty-five or thirty years, resulting in lower monthly payments. [FN35] These loan guarantees dramatically reduced bankers' risk from mortgage lending, which in turn caused banks to lower interest rates to borrowers. [FN36] By 1974, the FHAhad *306 insured over 11 million home mortgage loans. [FN37]
As a rule, FHA guaranteed home loans only in 'low-risk' areas. [FN38] FHA guidelines defined low-risk areas as areas that were thinly populated, dominated by newer homes, and without African-American or immigrant enclaves nearby--areas that disproportionately tended to be suburban. [FN39] For example, one FHA underwriting manual taught that the FHA should concentrate its efforts on newer, lower-density areas because ''crowded neighborhoods lessen desirability,' and 'older properties in a neighborhood have a tendency to accelerate the transition to lower class occupancy.'' [FN40] Another New Deal creation, the Home Owners Loan Corp. (HOLC), 'redlined' cities by issuing maps placing metropolitan neighborhoods in various categories, from 'green' (the most desirable) to 'red' ('high-risk' neighborhoods where the federal government would not insure mortgages). [FN41] Even areas with relatively small African-American populations were usually given the lowest rating. [FN42]
FHA policies also favored new construction over renovation of existing homes. FHA subsidies for repair were smaller than subsidies for the purchase of new homes, so 'a family could more easily purchase a new home than modernize an old [home].' [FN43] Because the newest suburbs tend to have the newest homes, this criterion also favored suburbs. [FN44]
As a result of the FHA's biases, the FHA generally insured suburban mortgages while refusing to insure urban mortgages. For example, residents of suburban St. Louis County received far more FHA insurance than residents of the city of St. Louis. [FN45] Similarly, theFHA *307 did not insure even one mortgage in Camden, N. J., or Patterson, N. J., until 1966. [FN46]
In the 1960s, Congress replaced New Deal malice with Great Society blundering. In order to undo the damage caused by FHA redlining, Congress enacted the Section 235 Homeownership Assistance Program in 1968. [FN47] This program subsidized low-income homebuyers by providing mortgage insurance and reducing interest rates to as low as 1%. [FN48] From 1969 to 1979, approximately 500,000 homes were purchased under the program. [FN49] But instead of stabilizing cities, Section 235 fueled 'white flight' from cities. In some communities, the federal infusion of capital to the poor fueled 'blockbusting:' Realtors sold 'a few homes to minority purchasers,' then 'spread the rumor that the neighborhood would soon become entirely black,' thus causing 'a wave of panic selling.' [FN50] Whites would sell their homes at artificially low prices, [FN51] and neighborhoods turned from all white to all black in a manner of months. [FN52] Because low-income purchasers were required to put very little of their money at risk, they could afford to buy homes that they could not afford to maintain, and were therefore forced to abandon those houses upon discovering their defects. [FN53] 'By 1979, over ninety-thousand homes, or approximately 18% of the dwellings subsidized under Section 235 [had been] assigned to [the federal government] or foreclosed. ' [FN54]
2. Turning Cities Into Dumping Grounds
While the federal government was bribing middle-class home buyers to leave cities, it was bribing the poor to stay in cities. Another New Deal program, the Housing Act of 1937, [FN55] funded local housingauthorities *308 that provided housing for the poor. The Housing Act provided that any city desiring public housing had to create a municipal housing authority or enter into an agreement to cooperate with one. [FN56] Thus, economically homogenous suburbs were able to avoid public housing by refusing to create or cooperate with housing authorities. [FN57] In fact, the Housing Act made it impossible for some suburbs to build public housing even if they wanted to. This statute's 'equivalent elimination requirement' mandated that one unit of substandard housing be eliminated for each unit of public housing built. [FN58] 'Because most suburbs had little substandard housing, even [suburbs] that wished to participate in the public housing program were sometimes excluded.' [FN59] As a result of these limitations, many suburbs have little or no public housing. [FN60]
In addition to ensuring that most public housing would be built in cities, the federal government also guaranteed that public housing would be packed with poverty. The Housing Act required that public housing be affordable by families of 'low income,' defined as 'families who are in the lowest income group and who cannot afford to pay enough to cause private enterprise . . . to build an adequate supply of decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings for their use.' [FN61] Congress also set income limits for the program that grew more stringent over the years. [FN62] Today, the law requires that 60% of all occupants of existing public housing earnless*309 than 30% of their metro area's median income. [FN63]
In addition to mandating that public housing be dominated by the poor, the federal government also made it less convenient for public housing authorities to deter antisocial conduct. 'In the early years of the public housing program, [public housing authorities] had enormous latitude in admission and eviction decisions,' and therefore could easily screen out or evict 'problem' tenants. [FN64] But in the 1960s, the federal courts forced public housing authorities to give their residents due process protections. [FN65] For example, the courts ordered housing authorities to provide tenants with a hearing, access to records, and an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses prior to eviction. [FN66] The courts also prohibited public housing authorities from evicting tenants who had criminal records or bore illegitimate children. [FN67]
Not surprisingly, public housing projects are 'havens of crime.' [FN68] Nationally, public housing residents are two and a half times as likely as other Americans to be victimized by gun-related crimes--and some projects are even more horrendous. [FN69] For example, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing projects contain only one-half of 1% of that city's population, but account for 11% of the city's murders. [FN70] Similarly, a 1993 study found that 'crime in the Los Angeles housing projects was three times greater than crime rates in surrounding high-crime neighborhoods.' [FN71] Because public housing projects are such undesirableneighbors, *310 the concentration of public housing in cities makes nearby city neighborhoods less desirable to anyone who can afford to avoid them. [FN72] And by concentrating public housing in central cities, the federal government has, therefore, given suburbs a huge competitive advantage over cities.
Paradoxically, the federal government encouraged cities to destroy functional neighborhoods to build these 'havens of crime.' [FN73] The Housing Act of 1949 [FN74] gave mayors broad powers to condemn huge chunks of land in the name of 'urban renewal.' [FN75] Urban renewal projects resulted in the demolition of over 400,000 housing units [FN76] and 100,000 small businesses, [FN77] as well as fostering the deterioration of neighborhoods threatened with such destruction. [FN78] In some cities, government destroyed functional neighborhoods in order to build public housing. For example, in Buffalo, Mayor Frank Sedita destroyed a once-stable Italian neighborhood near downtown Buffalo to build the Shoreline housing project. [FN79]
In other cities, urban renewal destroyed urban neighborhoods without providing those neighborhoods' displaced residents with *311 housing, [FN80] thereby causing those neighborhoods' low-income residents to destabilize nearby areas. For example, in Boston, the federal bulldozer destroyed 2500 units of housing in Roxbury, a low-income African-American community. [FN81] The displaced persons quickly moved into nearby Dorchester, triggering a wave of white flight that turned Dorchester into a racially segregated low-income neighborhood. [FN82]
While the federal government kept the poor locked up in cities, local governments (with assistance from the federal government) tried to keep the poor out of suburbs. In the 1920s, the federal Department of Commerce drafted the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA). [FN83] SZEA, which was quickly enacted by the majority of states, [FN84] granted municipalities power to regulate the location and use of buildings. [FN85] Suburbs quickly used their zoning powers to keep out the poor, [FN86] by limiting apartment construction to keep out 'undesirables' or requiring minimum lot sizes to keep out less expensive homes. [FN87] For example, in1970 *312 more than 99% of vacant land in New Jersey was zoned to exclude multifamily housing, and in Connecticut's Fairfield County 89% of the vacant land was subject to minimum lot requirements of one acre or more. [FN88] The predictable consequences of these regulations is to keep prices high and keep low-income purchasers out of a suburb or neighborhood. [FN89] In fact, the Supreme Court upheld one of the first anti-apartment zoning ordinances in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. [FN90] Just as government keeps the poor in cities, it keeps the poor out of suburbs. Either way, cities become the dumping ground for the poor.
B. Transportation: Putting Suburbs First
Statist transportation policy, like statist housing policy, has consistently favored suburban migration. For most of the 20th century, all levels of government have funneled money into highway construction. By doing so, government destroyed urban neighborhoods both directly (through physical destruction of cities) and indirectly (by draining cities of their middle-class tax base).
1. How Government Put Roads First
Early in the 20th century, state and federal governments began to build new roads. State and local governments could have levied user fees to force drivers 'to reimburse local treasuries . . . for the cost of streets, traffic maintenance, and police services'--but instead frequently chose to subsidize drivers by relying on general taxation. [FN91] Thus,*313 government essentially taxed the general public (including railroads, transit users, and rail users) to support drivers. [FN92] By contrast, streetcar services were typically private and unsubsidized. [FN93] To make matters worse, streetcar fares were often controlled by government and, despite World War I-era inflation, were not allowed to rise. [FN94] Because government regulated streetcars while subsidizing drivers, one-third of American streetcar companies were bankrupt by 1919. [FN95]
Between 1919 and 1929, every state adopted a motor fuel tax and earmarked the revenue therefrom to fund highway construction projects. [FN96] By 1927, 'highways were second only to education as recipients of state and local expenditure,' and 'one-third of state assistance to local government was for highway construction.' [FN97]
In 1921, the federal government began to support highway building, by enacting a Federal Highway Act [FN98] that designated 200,000 miles of road as eligible for federal matching funds, and by creating a Bureau of Public Roads to plan an interstate highway system. [FN99] By that date, government at all levels (federal, state, and local) was pouring $1.4 billion into highways. [FN100] (By contrast, most transit systems were privately owned, received no government assistance, and paid taxes to support the highway system and other government functions). [FN101]
During the New Deal era, government largess to the highways grew. By 1940, government spent $2.7 billion on highways. [FN102] By contrast, at that time the total operating costs of all intracity bus and rail systems (except commuter rail) were $661 million--mostly *314 private rather than government spending. [FN103]
In the postwar years, government intervention on behalf of highways accelerated. In 1950, the government funneled $4.6 billion into highways and virtually nothing into transit. [FN104] In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed a committee on highways chaired by Lucius Clay, a member of the General Motors board of directors. [FN105] Not surprisingly, Clay's committee endorsed a massive highway spending scheme. That scheme was enacted into law as the Interstate Highway Act, [FN106] which created a 41,000-mile Interstate Highway System. [FN107] Under the Act, the federal government paid for 90% of the system's construction and maintenance costs, states paid 10%, and municipalities paid nothing. [FN108] By contrast, the federal government did not begin to subsidize public transit until 1962. [FN109] In fact, between 1950 and 1970 vehicle miles of transit service declined nationally by 37%. [FN110] Today, federal road spending exceeds transit spending by a margin of almost five to one. [FN111] This statistic dramatically understates the 'funding gap' between roadsand *315 transit, because federal transit spending is canceled out [FN112] by a variety of federal mandates that either increase transit agencies' costs or reduce their revenues, including (1) Americans with Disabilities Act provisions mandating that transit agencies install costly amenities to serve the disabled [FN113] (which alone cost transit providers about $1 billion a year in the early 1990s, about one-fourth of federal transit spending), [FN114] (2) labor laws that limit transit operators' ability to reduce labor costs [FN115] (which alone cost transit providers $2 billion to $3 billion per year, [FN116] or about half of all federal transit spending); [FN117] (3) imposition of federally mandated wage rates for federally funded construction; [FN118] (4) limitations upon transit agencies' use of parts manufactured in foreign countries; [FN119] and, (5) limitations on charter and school bus service in competition with the private sector. [FN120] Moreover, some states are even more pro-road and anti-transit than the federal government. For example, some states require fuel tax revenues to be spent exclusively on roads. [FN121]
Henry Ford, one of America's first auto magnates, summed upthe*316 relationship between the highway and the city when he stated: 'We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.' [FN122] Government's obsession with road building has degraded cities and accelerated suburban sprawl in two ways: by the physical destruction of city neighborhoods and by making suburban life more convenient.
2. How Roads Destroyed Cities
During the first decade of interstate highway construction, bureaucrats destroyed millions of homes [FN123] and countless communities [FN124] in order to build interstate highways. For example, nearly 20% of Baltimore's African-Americans had their homes destroyed to make room for I-95 and I-83. [FN125] In Miami 20,000 families were displaced in order to build highways. [FN126] Overtown, one of Miami's African-American neighborhoods, 'was reduced to an impoverished enclave of tenements near downtown Miami. ' [FN127] In Cincinnati, I-75 bulldozed through the city's African-American West End, and the displaced West Enders quickly flooded nearby neighborhoods (causing massive 'white flight' from those areas). [FN128] In Cleveland, an inner-belt freeway displaced 19,000 city residents. [FN129] In Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation destroyed Bronzeville, a hub of local African-American culture, while building I-43, [FN130] and nearly destroyed the Third Ward, anItalian-*317 American neighborhood, while building I-794. [FN131] According to Milwaukee's current mayor, 'Bronzeville has disappeared without a trace.' [FN132] and '[t]wo years after the elevated freeway was built, [the Third Ward] had declined so much that the city contemplated turning the remains of the Third Ward into a pornographic combat zone for strip joints and erotic book stores.' [FN133]
Even neighborhoods not destroyed by highways have been damaged by them. For example, in the 1950s the federal government ruined the Treme section of New Orleans, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, [FN134] to build the I-10 expressway. The community's main street was Claiborne Avenue, which boasted 200 businesses in its heyday and had a 6100-foot-long median. [FN135] The Louisiana Highway Department built I-10 on that street, because Highway Department bureaucrats thought that it was the most direct path from the central business district to eastern New Orleans. [FN136] With the construction of the interstate, the street's median became a strip of dirt, covered with 'a concrete roof 100 feet wide and 25 feet overhead.' [FN137] I-10 became a physical barrier that cut the neighborhood in half, and Claiborne Avenue's oak trees were replaced with concrete pillars. [FN138] Not surprisingly, Treme became a crime-filled slum. [FN139] Thus, the government had nearly destroyed Treme in order to provide commuters with an escape route to the suburbs.
Even the threat of a new highway sometimes eviscerated urban neighborhoods. For example, throughout the 1960s, Buffalo planners debated a city highway known as the West Side Arterial, that (if built) would have destroyed much of the Lower West Side of Buffalo. [FN140] At first, the creation of the West Side Arterial seemed inevitable, because 'throughout the late 1960s . . . city, county, and state planning officials were still enthusiastic about the West Side Arterial.' [FN141] For example, theNew *318 York Department of Transportation engineer Norman Krapf explained: 'It is imperative that we get started on the preliminary layout of a highway that is capable of handling the future highway traffic destined for downtown Buffalo.' [FN142] Banks, insurance companies, and government agencies were not reasonably unwilling to invest in a neighborhood destined for condemnation. For example, in 1971 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) denied an application for a grant to rehabilitate Lower West Side dwellings because, according to HUD, '[t]he project is in the probable roadway corridor of the proposed West Side Arterial.' [FN143] Not surprisingly, homeowners took the hint and left the neighborhood. In 1960, 1900 families attended Immaculate Conception Church in the neighborhood. By 1973 only 500 were left. [FN144]
3. How Roads Built Up The Suburbs
Highways have accelerated sprawl by enabling people to live farther away from downtown jobs, thus giving commuters easy access to central business districts from once-distant suburbs. [FN145] And where highway-driven residential development goes, commercial development inevitably follows, as retail businesses and other businesses move to suburbs in order to accommodate their suburban employees. [FN146] As onefederal *319 court has pointed out, '[h]ighways create demand for travel and [suburban] expansion by their very existence.' [FN147]
For example, Washington's Capital Beltway, a sixty-six mile long highway surrounding the city, was designed to allow East Coast motorists to bypass the city. [FN148] But instead, the Beltway because a magnet for office and retail centers that sprouted near Beltway exits, such as Tyson's Corner, a satellite downtown in Fairfax County, Va. [FN149] And as suburbs grew more populated, they grew more congested, which caused politicians to build even more suburban roads (ostensibly to relieve congestion) then spurring development in even more suburbs. [FN150] A study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project showed that each of the 50 largest metro areas in America added new road capacity in the 1980s and 1990s. [FN151]
Some deny that highways cause sprawl. For example, Ronald Utt, in a paper published by the Heritage Foundation, argues that the interstate highways did not cause sprawl because '[s]uburbanization was well underway in 1960, when the federal interstate highway program hadbeen *320 in existence for just four years.' [FN152] This assertion does not prove that highways are unrelated to sprawl, both because the state and federal governments had begun to support highway building long before the interstate highway system was built, [FN153] and because other antiurban government policies (such as the FHA's antiurban lending policy) had also been in effect for decades before 1960. [FN154] Moreover, Utt's assertion overlooks the fact that American cities' most stunning setbacks occurred after 1960. Of the eighteen American cities which had more than 500,000 people in 1950, every single one gained population between 1930 and 1950. [FN155] By contrast, in the 1950s, thirteen of the cities lost population, and two lost over 10% of their population. [FN156] In the 1960s, fifteen lost population, and six lost over 10%. [FN157] And in the disastrous 1970s, sixteen lost population and fourteen lost over 10%. [FN158] In other words, the sprawl that went along with the interstate system snowballed as interstates were built during the 1960s and 1970s. [FN159]
Utt argues that because some cities in Europe and Japan have also experienced population losses, suburban sprawl is a natural result of affluence. [FN160] But Utt himself admits that sprawl arises fromtransportation *321 policy, arguing that '[i]n Europe and Japan, as well as in many American cities, comprehensive and heavily subsidized public transit systems helped facilitate the exodus of central-city residents to outlying communities.' [FN161] Utt cannot have it both ways: He cannot intelligently argue that public transit facilitated suburban migration without admitting that highways had the same effect. Moreover, even highway-generated sprawl is not confined to the United States. For example, one recent Swedish-planned development has been described as a 'vast linear Edge City of business parks and hotels and out-of-town shopping centres, stretching along the E-4 highway, for twelve miles and more towards the Arlanda Airport. It is almost indistinguishable from its counterparts in California and Texas.' [FN162]
Indeed, even organizations generally regarded as supportive of new roads and suburban expansion concede that highways affect the location of development. For example, in 1999, the National Association of Home Builders (which favors increased road spending) [FN163] conducted a survey that purported to show the popularity of suburban living: The survey asked respondents what amenities would encourage them to move to a new area, and their top choice (endorsed by 55% of respondents) was 'highway access.' [FN164] If highway access makes a suburbmore *322 desirable, obviously building highways to a place makes that place more desirable to commuters and businesses.
C. Education: Making Cities Less Livable
Most readers of this article probably know someone who lived in a city neighborhood in their twenties, but moved to suburbia after marriage or childbirth so that his or her children could avoid urban public schools. [FN165] School-related flight from cities is especially common among middle-class whites: in 1990, seventeen large cities with majority white populations had school systems in which over 50% of pupils were black or Hispanic. [FN166] What went wrong? Why are urban schools so often stigmatized as 'bad schools' and avoided by middle-class parents? [FN167] Here too, government is the problem: Both the bureaucratic rules of the state-run 'public' school system and the blunders of federal judges have driven parents out of cities and into suburbs.
1. Why The System Is To Blame
If schools were left to the marketplace, popular schools, like popularuniversities, *323 bookstores and restaurants, would exist wherever parents were willing to pay for them. For example, many of America's most prestigious universities, such as MIT, Columbia, and NYU, are located in central cities. [FN168] Such schools might be concentrated in more affluent areas--but they certainly would not be limited to certain cities or counties within a metropolitan area, any more than popular bookstores or restaurants are limited to suburbia.
The status quo, of course, is far more hostile to urban parents than my hypothetical libertarian [FN169] world. In most of America, government bureaucrats assign students to schools based on their home addresses; [FN170] urban students must generally attend school within an urban school district, while suburban children attend suburban schools. Thus, a public school's student body typically reflects the city or neighborhood in which the students reside. Because cities tend to be more socially diverse than suburbs, [FN171] the average city school will nearly always have more low-income children than the average suburban school.
Other factors being equal, low-income children are harder to educate and achieve less than middle-income children, [FN172] and schools packed with low-income children have worse reputations (and therefore are less popular with middle-class parents) [FN173] than other schools.
*324 Low-income children are harder to educate because 'socioeconomic status (SES) and family background influence a student's achievement in school. ' [FN174] This is so because 'children reared in lower socioeconomic status [households] tend to be less intellectually stimulated and, consequently, tend to be less prepared for school which ultimately impacts on the child's achievements.' [FN175] For example, Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks has concluded that '[q]ualitative differences between high schools seem to explain about 2 percent of the variation in the students' educational achievement' [FN176] and '[e]qualizing the quality of elementary schools would reduce cognitive inequality [as measured by test scores] by 3% or less.' [FN177] Similarly, a 1960s survey by sociologist James Coleman suggested that everything schools did accounted for only 5% to 35% of the variation in students' academic performances; he concluded that 'the inequalities imposed on children by their home neighborhood and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school.' [FN178] In sum, it may be the case that if suburban children and urban children switched schools, school boards, teachers, and administrators, the suburban/urban achievement gap would be as large as it is now.
This view is supported by the fact that low-income children are harder to educate and achieve less even within the same school or school system. For example, P.S. 24, in Riverdale (an affluent neighborhood on the northern edge of New York City) has two educational programs: a regular program for relatively gifted students, and a 'special' program for slower students. [FN179] The 'special' programsare *325 dominated by children who are poor enough to qualify for government free-lunch programs, while the regular program is dominated by students from middle-class households. [FN180] In other words, poor children achieve less than rich children even within the same school.
It logically follows that even if they are relatively well run, schools filled with poverty-stricken children quickly get a reputation as 'bad schools' and parents tend to avoid them whenever possible. [FN181] And because, as noted above, state and local governments require urban children to go to schools within poverty-packed urban districts, those governments have made urban schools less prestigious than suburban schools.
2. How The Courts Made The Problem Worse
If students had always been assigned to schools based solely upon their address, most urban schools would be more socially diverse (and thus, less prestigious) than most suburban schools, but there would be exceptions: Affluent urban neighborhoods would have homogeneously affluent (and, thus, highly regarded) public schools, and middle-class parents would be clamoring to live in those neighborhoods so their children could attend those schools. But the federal courts have inadvertently foreclosed this option. For the past forty-five years, the federal courts have used a variety of techniques to force racial integration upon city schools but made little effort to integrate suburban schools. Because African-Americans and other blacks [FN182] tend to be poorer than whites, [FN183] a racially integrated urban school typically includes children from low-income households. As a result, parents who want to send their children to schools dominated by other middle-class *326 children (which is to say, most parents) [FN184] will usually seek to avoid integrated urban schools, and will often move to the suburbs in order to do so.
The federal government's attempt to integrate public schools began with Brown v. Board of Education, [FN185] which prohibited state-sponsored segregation of public schools. Over the next fourteen years, local governments and their constituents sought to evade Brown in a wide variety of ways, including closing public schools, violence against African-American students, and a variety of more moderate measures. [FN186] The courts responded by extending Brown. [FN187] In Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, [FN188] the Supreme Court rejected a 'freedom of choice' plan which permitted each pupil to choose a public school, on the ground that the plan had failed to erase segregation. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, [FN189] the Court went a step further and allowed lower courts to create integrated city schools through forced busing, racial quotas and a variety of other techniques. [FN190] After Swann, federal courts have routinely ordered cities to bus students throughout the city in order to create racial balance in public schools. [FN191]
By the mid-1970s, some big-city school systems had become overwhelmingly African-American. [FN192] Thus, urban school systems could not create a large number of integrated schools because very few white students were left in some urban school systems. [FN193] In order to solve this problem, some integrationists urged the courts to adopt 'metropolitan busing plans' which would have discouraged 'white flight' by busing suburban whites into city schools dominated by African-Americans (or vice versa). [FN194] But in Milliken v. Bradley, [FN195] the Supreme Court rejectedmetropolitan *327 busing on the ground that the suburbs involved had never discriminated against blacks [FN196] (despite the fact that many American suburbs have excluded blacks through zoning designed to keep out poor and working-class people, [FN197] who tended to be disproportionately black [FN198]).
Thus, the federal courts, while attempting to split the difference between pre- Brown segregation and massive busing schemes, have in fact adopted a double standard: City schools must be diverse, while suburban schools typically need not be. By imposing differing obligations upon cities and suburbs, the federal courts have presented parents with the following choices: (1) send their children to urban public schools, so that their children would go to school with children from the poorest neighborhoods in the city; (2) stay in cities and spend thousands of dollars on private schools; or (3) move to suburbia and send their children to 'good' (i.e. homogeneously middle-class and usually majority-white) public schools for free. Not surprisingly, most parents prefer choice (3). [FN199]
3. Why Schools Matter
It could be argued that middle-class flight from cities is caused by factors unrelated to education, such as transportation policy, housing policy, and crime. [FN200] But this argument is belied by the fact that middle-class flight from cities has primarily been a family phenomenon. Forexample,*328 in Washington, D.C., a 1967 court decision sought to integrate city schools by busing African-American students into majority white schools and eliminating a 'tracking plan' which placed brighter students (who were mostly white) into separate classes. [FN201] Over the following dozen years, white enrollment in Washington public schools declined by over 70%, [FN202] while the city's population of single whites declined by only 6%. [FN203] Similarly, in Boston, where courts sought to integrate public schools through a controversial busing plan, [FN204] the city's juvenile white population declined by over 50% in the 1970s, while the city's single adult white population decreased by only 3%. [FN205] In other words, white flight from cities has been led by the people who are naturally the most concerned about schools--families with children. This fact strongly suggests that schools and sprawl are closely related.
Moreover, property values are higher in suburban school districts even where houses and crime rates are identical to those of nearby city neighborhoods. For example, in May 1996, USA Today published an article on housing values in various metropolitan areas. [FN206] The article pointed out that property values were consistently higher in areas where school districts had good reputations, even when other factors were identical. [FN207] For example, the article compared a house in an affluent part of Milwaukee with a house less than half a mile away in the suburbof*329 Shorewood. In nearly every possible respect, including crime rates, the houses and locations were comparable. [FN208] Yet the Shorewood house was significantly more expensive, because of the Milwaukee public school system's poor reputation. [FN209] If the alleged high quality of suburban school districts affects suburbanites' property values, it logically follows that prestigious schools make suburbs more popular with homeowners.
D. How Big Brother Makes Suburbia Sprawling
In addition to encouraging migration from city to suburb, government has also made both city and suburb far more sprawling and auto-dependent than the market would dictate. In the absence of government regulation, American suburbs might have looked like Lake Forest near Chicago or Shaker Heights near Cleveland: communities that accommodated the automobile without being totally auto-dependent, communities where roads and sidewalks, pedestrians and drivers, mingled together peaceably. [FN210] But thanks to stifling government zoning codes,
[W]e have separated housing from every other human activity. The result is the familiar pattern we see today in edge-city suburbs--commercial offices in one parking pod, commercial retail in another, light industrial in another, and housing on cul-de-sacs, completely isolated from everything. Housing subdivisions consequently have no corner stores and nothing much else within walking distance, except more housing. [FN211]
The original purpose of zoning was to make crowded, rapidly growing cities more livable by separating polluting industries from *330 housing. [FN212] But over time, zoning laws have spread--both geographically (to non-industrial suburbs) and functionally (to cover even the least polluting land uses). [FN213]
The American version of suburbia was created in part by a few bureaucrats in our nation's capital. In 1921, the federal Department of Commerce formed an advisory committee on zoning and drafted the first Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA). [FN214] By 1925, nineteen states had enacted zoning statutes based on the 1921 Act. [FN215] In 1926, the Commerce Department published a revised version of SZEA [FN216] that was adopted by most states. [FN217] SZEA set up a general grant of power to cities to allow them to restrict building and lot size, the size of yards and other open spaces, the density of population, and the location and use of structures for trade, residence, and other purposes. [FN218] The SZEA declared that such legislation would be designed 'to prevent the overcrowding of land [and] to avoid undue concentration of population.' [FN219] Specifically, SZEA defined zones as parcels wherein all lots conform to the same requirements of minimum lot size, yard size, and distance of buildings from streets. [FN220] By requiring minimum lot and yard sizes for all lots within a given zone, SZEA effectively mandates 'single use zoning' which often keeps stores out of residential zones andvice *331 versa, keeps rental properties out of zones reserved for single family homes, and forces all homes in an area to be roughly the same size. [FN221] The practical consequences of the Enabling Act and its state and local clones are that absent a zoning variance, walkable traditional neighborhoods are outlawed in many American suburbs, because every activity demands a separate zone of its own; people cannot live within walking distance of shopping, and offices cannot be within walking distance of either. [FN222]
Cities as well as suburbs often adopted similar restrictions. In 1916, Dan Hoan, mayor of Milwaukee, stated: 'Congestion of the population is a serious problem confronting our community. This can be overcome only by a spreading out of the population.' [FN223] To remedy this so-called problem, Milwaukee used zoning to restrict 'Polish flats' (three or four-room houses where spare rooms were rented out to boarders). [FN224] And in downtown Sandy, Utah, '[the city's] zoning ordinance says only two words about mixing residential and commercial uses: 'Not permitted." [FN225]
Just as bureaucratic regulation of housing and commerce has made cities and suburbs less pedestrian-friendly, local governments' regulation of parking has also accelerated auto dependence. Governments make neighborhoods more auto-dependent and accelerate sprawl by forcing businesses, apartment buildings, and developers to provide (usually free) parking. [FN226] For example, nearly all building codes require developers to provide two off-street parking spaces per house, and apartment buildings must provide at least one parking space per bedroom and sometimes more. [FN227] Some suburbs are even morerestrictive; *332 Schamburg, Ill. demands that developers provide 1.5 spaces per one bedroom unit, thereby ensuring that apartment buildings have 50% more parking spaces than people. [FN228] Commercial developers are also required to provide parking for stores and office buildings. [FN229] Municipalities typically calculate the amount of 'necessary' free parking based on Institute of Transportation Engineers surveys that count the number of vehicles parked at the time of peak parking demand in areas with ample free parking and nonexistent public transit--in other words, the maximum imaginable amount of vehicles. [FN230] Local governments' free parking mandates create significant costs for developers: 'In Los Angeles, the average construction cost of an office building, excluding the cost of parking, is about $150 per square foot.' [FN231] The installation of four aboveground parking spaces per 1000 square feet of office space (a fairly typical requirement) costs $40 per square foot. [FN232] Thus, free parking requirements increase the cost of office space by 27%, and underground parking is even more expensive. [FN233] Such requirements also increase the cost of housing. For example, a requirement that each apartment include one parking space increases the cost of housing by 12.5%. [FN234]
Governments' parking mandates augment sprawl in a variety of ways. First, when businesses are forced to provide parking, driving becomes cheaper and more convenient, [FN235] and homeowners have a greater incentive to live in auto-dependent areas. In addition, the resulting increases in driving, other factors being equal, cause the roads to become more congested, [FN236] thus giving government an excellentexcuse *333 to build and widen roads [FN237] which (as explained above) [FN238] accelerates sprawl by making it more convenient for motorists to move further away from cities' older areas. Second, government parking mandates make cities and suburbs less pedestrian-friendly and more auto-dependent, by forcing consumers to walk through huge parking lots to shop and work and to share this space with speeding vehicles. [FN239]
It could be argued that such parking mandates are necessary to prevent streets from being deluged with parked cars. Assuming, arguendo, that limiting the number of parked cars is a legitimate function of government, this problem can sometimes be solved without bureaucratic parking mandates. Employers can sometimes reduce demand for parking by allowing employees to 'cash out' their parking benefits. For example, upon moving to new offices in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Washington, the 430 employees of the engineering firm of CH2M Hill were offered the following choice: They could get $40 per month (reflecting the cost of a parking space) if they walked, bicycled, carpooled or took transit to work, or they could get free parking if they drove alone. [FN240] The percentage of employees driving alone quickly nose-dived from 89% to 54%. [FN241] Such arrangements are less frequent where employers by law must provide enough parking for every employee, because such employers have no incentive to economize on parking. [FN242]
Government also makes streets inconvenient for pedestrians through traffic planning. For example, traffic engineers use a standard procedure for grading drivers' experiences at intersections. If driverswait *334 an average of five seconds or less to get through an intersection, they have an 'A' level of service (the ideal). [FN243] If drivers wait fifteen to twenty-five seconds, they have a 'C' level of service, and if they have to wait a minute or longer, they have an 'F' level of service. [FN244] By contrast, engineers have no such scheme for grading pedestrian service, and as a result pedestrians often have to wait sixty seconds or longer to cross. [FN245]
Traffic engineers also make streets unfriendly to pedestrians by making them extremely wide. For example, much of Main Street in Buffalo, N.Y., is six lanes wide--a width that discourages pedestrians from walking across the street unless absolutely necessary. [FN246] By making Main Street too wide to be easily walkable, government's traffic engineers have also hastened the decay of Main Street by depriving its merchants of walk-in traffic. [FN247] By contrast, another commercial street a few blocks away, Elmwood Avenue, is only four lanes wide and is thriving. [FN248]
Finally, traffic engineers make cities less competitive by limiting on-street parking. [FN249] Cities sometimes limit on-street parking in order to accelerate access to freeways (and thus accelerate access to suburbs). [FN250] But the elimination of on-street parking discourages pedestrians from crossing a street by eliminating a buffer between pedestrians and cars (thus effectively widening that street), [FN251] and also discourages downtown business patrons from parking near stores, thus making downtowns lesscompetitive *335 with suburbs. [FN252] For example, in Milwaukee, parking was banned on Wisconsin Avenue in the 1930s to allow an additional driving lane for cars. As a result, '[b]usinesses suffered from the perception of shoppers that there was no place to park, even though a two-thousand space parking ramp was built nearby.' [FN253] According to Milwaukee's Mayor Norquist, Wisconsin Avenue recently became more prosperous after on-street parking was reinstated. [FN254]
E. Alternative Explanations of Sprawl--or, Misguided Counterarguments
It could be argued that despite the pro-sprawl policies outlined above, suburban sprawl is the natural result not of state and federal bungling but of the incompetence of city governments in population-losing older cities [FN255] or Americans' understandable desire for more space. [FN256] It has also been argued that pro-sprawl federal policies are counterbalanced by anti-sprawl federal policies. [FN257] Each of these arguments will be addressed in turn.
1. Blaming the Victims
It has been argued that municipal incompetence rather than suburban sprawl is the cause of cities' problems, and that if cities would only provide their citizens with decent services and lower taxes, they would be able to compete with suburbs successfully. [FN258] This argument has a grain of truth: middle-class Americans abandon cities not just because of the convenience provided by new and widened highways, but also because of crime, high taxes, and public schools with poor reputations. [FN259] Nevertheless, cities are not solely, or even primarily, to blame for their own problems.
*336 a. Confusing Cause and Effect
High taxes, high crime, and poor schools are less a cause of suburban sprawl than a result of suburban sprawl. This is so for a variety of reasons.
First, if a city's middle class migrates en masse to suburbia, its tax base will be smaller and it, therefore, will, other things being equal, have to raise taxes or reduce services. [FN260] So other things being equal, middle-class migration to suburbia may actually cause higher taxes and poor services in cities.
Second, suburban sprawl itself may facilitate the election of urban governments whose policies drive away middle-class taxpayers. Because of middle-class flight from cities, many cities are dominated by African-American and low-income voters, [FN261] who tend to favor left-leaning politicians and high-tax, redistributionist policies [FN262] that might drive outanti-*337 tax upper-income voters. For example, in Washington, the 'white flight' of the 1950s and 1960s [FN263] and the middle-class African-American flight to suburbia of more recent decades [FN264] combined to create a low-income, [FN265] overwhelmingly African-American urban electorate [FN266] that was responsive to Marion Barry's appeals to racial pride, [FN267] and to his attempts to create jobs by inflating the city payroll. [FN268] As a result, Barry was able to emasculate the city's police force, [FN269] get convicted of using crack cocaine, and nevertheless be reelected as mayor of Washington in *338 1994. [FN270] By the mid-1990s, 7% of Washington's population was on the city payroll, far more than in any other large American city. [FN271] Washington's nearest competitor, New York City, clocked in at 5.4%. [FN272] Not surprisingly, Washington's taxes significantly exceeded those of its suburbs: City residents paid 9.5% of their income in city income taxes, as opposed to 5.75% in nearby Virginia. [FN273] The results of Barry's policies were calamitous: Washington lost 27% of its population between 1980 and Barry's departure in 1998, [FN274] while the Washington metro area's population increased by over 30%. [FN275] Between 1990 and 1998, Washington lost 13.8% of its population, [FN276] more than all but two other American cities. [FN277] By contrast, if Washington had not been ravaged by the pro-suburban federal policies discussed above, [FN278] it might have had a more racially diverse, middle-class electorate that would never have tolerated Barry's shenanigans.
Third, the common complaint that 'bad schools' drive people out of cities [FN279] exemplifies how state and federal policies cause 'bad' municipal services. State and federal governments' anti-urban transportation,*339 housing and educational policies have, as discussed above, caused cities to become disproportionately comprised of the poor [FN280] and thereby caused urban schools to become dominated by children from poor households. Because children from low-income households tend to be low achievers in school, [FN281] the 'quality gap' between city schools and suburban schools arises from state and federal incompetence rather than municipal incompetence.
Fourth, cities' high crime rates arise partially from government policy. As explained above, federal housing policy and exclusionary suburban zoning caused low-income households to be concentrated in cities, while a variety of federal, state, and local policies encouraged middle-class flight to suburbia. [FN282] As a general rule, low-income areas in cities are more dangerous than high-income areas. [FN283] If poor areas are more crime-ridden, and government policy caused cities to be dominated by poor people, it logically follows that government policy made cities more dangerous than suburbs.
b. Bizarre Coincidences
The claim that bad city government rather than state and federal misconduct drives middle-class families out of cities is logically, as well as factually, flawed.
As noted above, most older American cities gained population in the 1930s and 1940s and have lost population ever since. [FN284] Thus, to believe that suburban sprawl is the result of municipal incompetence, one would have to believe that dozens of city governments, by an incredibly strange coincidence, became unable to police their streets or improve their schools at exactly the same time--obviously a bizarre proposition.
The 'municipal incompetence' theory also fails to explain why, inmany*340 stagnant metropolitan areas, older suburbs closer to the city have begun to lose population. For example, every suburb contiguous to Cleveland and Buffalo lost population during the 1990s. [FN285] So to believe that municipal incompetence causes population loss, one would have to believe that all of these suburbs became ungovernable at exactly the same time--obviously a proposition too bizarre to be believable. Indeed, this theory is even less plausible than the theory that big cities' incompetence caused their problems. It could perhaps be argued that big cities have become ungovernable because of their sheer size (although the growth of cities that have annexed their suburbs [FN286] and of the nation's very largest cities [FN287] suggest otherwise)--but this argument cannot plausibly be made about inner ring suburbs that are just as small as their rivals further away from central cities.
c. Good Government And Bad Cities
The theory that bad city government causes suburban sprawl rests on the assumption that the most inefficient governments drive out people and businesses while competent city governments do not. Undeniably, high taxes and municipal incompetence are factors that drive out middle-class taxpayers--but far from the only factor. [FN288] Some cities with relatively competent municipal governments are being bled to death by sprawl, while other less well-run cities continue to grow. [FN289]
In 2000, the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs and Governing Magazine graded thirty-five big cities on the management oftheir*341 governments. [FN290] The two highest-graded cities, Phoenix and Austin, [FN291] have gained population in recent decades. [FN292] But not all of the well-run cities are doing so well. Fourth-place Minneapolis has consistently lost population since 1950, as has eighth-place Milwaukee. [FN293] Conversely, some poorly managed cities continue to grow. Columbus was fourth from the bottom according to the Maxwell School survey, [FN294] while Los Angeles was third from the bottom. [FN295] Yet, both cities have gained population in recent decades. [FN296] In fact, of the ten most incompetently managed cities, five (Nashville, San Francisco, Anchorage, Columbus, and Los Angeles) gained population during the 1990s. [FN297]
It could be argued that high taxes rather than incompetent service delivery drives middle-class flight from cities. Although taxes are hardly irrelevant, [FN298] they are not the only factor governing a city's ability to survive sprawl. Cleveland imposes only $593 per capita in taxes, far less than Indianapolis ($688), Seattle ($772), and Denver ($959). [FN299] Yet Cleveland has lost nearly half its 1950 population, while the other threecities *342 have gained population over time. [FN300] Why? Perhaps because the other cities have been able to annex some of their suburbs, while Cleveland is confined within its 1940s boundaries. [FN301] Similarly, Buffalo has lower taxes than its suburbs, [FN302] yet has lost over 45% of its 1950 population. [FN303]
Utt cites New York, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis as examples of cities that have fought suburban sprawl during the 1990s by the simple expedient of electing mayors who have governed more effectively than their predecessors. [FN304] But these three examples show the futility of counting on good government to reverse suburban sprawl. Indianapolis continues to grow because decades ago, it merged with a surrounding county, and thereby took over a great deal of suburban territory. [FN305] (Ironically, Utt condemns the metropolitan government that saved Indianapolis from the fate of Cleveland). [FN306] In fact, the 1990s have been less kind to Indianapolis than prior decades: The city grew by 4% from 1980 to 1990, but only 1% from 1990 to 1998. [FN307] Despite its dramatic drop in crime, New York grew more slowly in the 1990s than in the 'bad old days' of the 1980s: by 3% in the 1980s and by only 1% in the 1990s. [FN308] And in Milwaukee, the 1990s have been a difficult decade: After losing only 1% of its population in the 1980s, the city lost 8% of its population in the 1990s--even though it has cut taxes by 21.4% during the 1990s. [FN309] It may be that with less charismatic and competent mayors, these cities would have been in much deeper trouble. But nevertheless, these cities' anemic growth in the 1990s suggests that factors other than the competence of a city's leadership underlie urban decline.
In fact, the cities that have rebounded most impressively in the 1990shave *343 done a mediocre job of fighting major urban problems. Of the fifty largest American cities, only four gained population in the 1990s after losing population in the 1980s: Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, and Kansas City. [FN310] According to the Maxwell School study, these cities have thoroughly mediocre governments: Chicago was No. 16 of 35 in governmental competence; Denver, No. 17; Kansas City, No. 20, and Atlanta No. 22--and all finished behind seemingly doomed cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore (both of which have lost about 30% of their 1950 population). [FN311] Similarly, the 'comeback cities' have not done an especially good job at fighting urban problems such as crime. In 1997, three of the four 'comeback cities' (Chicago, Atlanta, and Kansas City) had higher murder rates than supposedly better-governed Milwaukee, and all four had higher murder rates than New York City. [FN312] While New York's murder rate declined by almost two-thirds between 1991 and 1997 (from 29.3 per 100,000 to just 10.5 per 100,000), Denver's murder rate declined by 29% (from 18.4 to 13.1 per 100,000), Chicago's murder rate declined by 16% (from 32.9 to 27.4 per 100,000), Atlanta's by 30% (from 50.9 to 35.6 per 100,000), and Kansas City's by 28% (from 30.8 to 22.1 per 100,000). [FN313] (Nationally, the murder rate declined by about 30%, from 9.8 per 100,000 to 6.8 per 100,000). [FN314] Yet three of these four cities grew faster than New York City in the 1990s. [FN315] In sum, the quality of a city's government is undeniably relevant to the speed of suburban sprawl, but is only one relevant factor among many.
2. Another Counterargument: The 'Natural Desire' Theory
It could also be argued that even if government has discouraged city living in a variety of ways, the status quo was nevertheless inevitable because Americans, when empowered by prosperity, naturally desire the bigger houses and bigger lots they get by choosing low-density suburban living, [FN316] and the effects of pro-sprawl government programsare *344 thus minor. [FN317] This argument requires one to believe that even if cities had crime rates, school systems, tax rates, and government services identical to those of suburbia, they would still be as depopulated as they are now--a proposition that should seem highly questionable to everyone who has known anyone who moved to suburbia for the schools. [FN318]
More importantly, this argument overlooks a simple fact: that livable city neighborhoods have sky-high property values. Neighborhoods like Buckhead in Atlanta, Cleveland Park in Washington, D.C., and Boston's Back Bay are more expensive than many suburban neighborhoods. [FN319] For example, in 1998 the average home price in Buckhead was $364,952--more than the average home price in all but one of greater Atlanta's suburbs. [FN320] Similarly, the average home in the Back Bay cost $444,000 in 1996, more than twice the metro Boston average, [FN321] and the average home in the zip code that includes Cleveland Park cost $571,095 in 1996, [FN322] more than three times the cost of the average Washington-area home. [FN323] If 'good' city neighborhoods areexpensive, *345 the demand for such neighborhoods obviously exceeds the supply. [FN324] In other words, despite cities' 'bad' schools and higher crime rates, there is a huge pent-up demand for city living. And if government had not turned city schools and neighborhoods into crime-ridden warehouses for the destitute and the dispossessed, the demand for city living would be higher still.
3. The Most Bizarre Counterargument: Does The Government Favor Cities?
One commentator has argued that 'critics of sprawl overlook the many policies that favor central cities, such as downtown renewal, subsidized stadia placed in central cites, and heavily subsidized downtown-focused rail transit systems.' [FN325] But none of these policies are tremendously helpful to central cities.
As explained above, the federal 'urban renewal' program destabilized central cities by destroying housing and displacing people and businesses. [FN326] And although rail systems mitigate the effect of sprawl upon the carless poor [FN327] and make it easier for suburban commuters to reach downtown jobs, their impact on cities is unclear: Like highways, rail systems that extend into suburbia make it more convenient for central city workers to live in the suburbs (as opposed to urban neighborhoods near downtown), and thus may actually accelerate sprawl under certain circumstances. [FN328] And the idea that sports stadia counterbalance pro-sprawl policies requires one to believe that a significant number of families scared out of cities by crime-ridden public housing projects [FN329] and poverty-packed schools, [FN330] and lured out of cities by convenient highways, [FN331] will nevertheless move back to a city to be a few miles closer to a ballgame. To state such a bizarre proposition is torebut *346 it. [FN332]
III. Sprawl as a Conservative Issue: Or, Why You Should Oppose Sprawl Even if
You Are Not an Environmentalist
As noted above, environmentalists have traditionally fought sprawl, while conservatives have often criticized anti-sprawl policies. But in fact, even the most anti-environmentalist conservatives [FN333] have excellent reasons to fight suburban sprawl. As explained below, sprawl reduces, rather than enhances, consumer choice, dissolves social stability, and increases welfare dependence.
A. Economic Freedom vs. Suburban Sprawl
Economic conservatives claim to favor more consumer choice and less government; [FN334] but sprawl, as explained below, means less freedom and higher taxes.
1. Sprawl vs. Freedom
Conservative economist Milton Friedman has argued that the market is superior to government not just because it is more efficient but also because it produces 'unanimity without conformity'--that is, because millions of consumers can satisfy their diverse needs without imposing their desires on others. [FN335] And in some metropolitan areas (such as the American cities of the first half of the 20th century, or many Canadian and European cities today) consumers can choose among a wide variety of options: they can live in city or suburb, and can live with no cars or plenty. [FN336] Such diversity, such unanimity without conformity,*347 is what supporters of economic freedom should support.
But in most of metropolitan America, conformity is the rule in two respects. Sprawl has made auto ownership mandatory in most of America, and has made suburban living mandatory in large chunks of America. [FN337] To quote one newspaper article, 'the suburban sprawl that started after World War II forced Americans to go everywhere by car. Traditional, walkable communities are mostly a thing of the past.' [FN338]
a. Drive or Die
In a free society, government generally should not force a particular mixture of products down consumers' throats: Consumers should be free to spend half their income on mortgage payments and take the bus to work, or live in a rundown trailer park and throw their money at a BMW. But in fact, government-induced sprawl has forced most American adults [FN339] to spend thousands of dollars on one product: a functional automobile.
In a few cities, like New York and Washington, one person can comfortably survive without a car. But in most cities and suburbs, government policies have made auto ownership virtually mandatory. [FN340] As explained above, government has, through the highway system, the education system and the FHA, lured middle-class people and their jobs to the suburbs, and then used zoning and traffic engineering to make those suburbs as auto-oriented as possible. [FN341] Government has further rigged suburban life in favor of the auto by building roads for drivers but providing minimal public transportation to nondrivers. [FN342] Thus, suburbanites often need a car even if they live in regions with relatively well-developed transit systems, and in most smaller and Sun Belt citieseven *348 city residents can barely function without them. [FN343] Because two-thirds of all new jobs are now created in suburbs, many workers need a car just to get to work. [FN344] In fact, a survey by the U.S. Department of Commerce shows that only 54.4% of American households have any public transit at all available, and that only 28.8% claim to have satisfactory public transit. [FN345]
Even in metropolitan areas with extensive transit systems, the majority of entry-level jobs are not transit-accessible. [FN346] For example, the Boston region has a central city with a well-developed transit system and a commuter train system that serves many of its suburbs. [FN347] But even in Greater Boston, just 32% of entry-level employers are within one-quarter mile of transit, 43% are within one-half mile, and 58% are within one mile. [FN348] Just 14% of entry-level jobs can be reached by transit within an hour from Boston's poorer neighborhoods. [FN349]
The situation is even worse in Sun Belt cities. For example, Atlanta's second-largest suburban county (Gwinnett County, which had 522,000 people in 1998) has no public transportation whatsoever, [FN350] and even some neighborhoods within the city limits have virtually no bus service. [FN351] Even in areas with bus service, the absence of sidewalks (or even lawns that one can walk on) prevents would-be riders from walkingsafely *349 from residential areas to the bus stop. [FN352] Not surprisingly, less than half of Atlanta-area entry level jobs are located within a quarter-mile of a public transit route. [FN353]
And in smaller cities, a non-driver's life is more desperate still. For example, in Macon, Georgia, 16% of city households [FN354] (and 14% of households in the county that includes Macon) [FN355] lack cars, yet city buses only operate until 6:45 p.m. in the evening on weekdays, Saturday service is limited, and there is no service on Sundays or holidays. [FN356] Because many entry-level employers require their newest employees to work evening and weekend shifts, this system virtually shuts many of Macon's carless residents out of the job market. [FN357]
And many employers are not transit-accessible at all: Macon's largest employers are located in the area's periphery far from any bus line: Brown & Williamson (cigarettes), Riverwood (paper mill), Cagle's (chicken processing), Cigna (insurance data processing) and the hotel operators and fast food establishments among major streets. [FN358] As a result, Macon's employers of unskilled labor often ask would-be employees whether they have a car--and if the answer is no, the applicant won't be hired. [FN359]
Macon's transportation system limits a wide variety of other activities as well. The largest supermarket chain in the area, Kroger, is not efficiently served by the buses. While two of the system's routes pass Kroger stores, the routes do not swing down access roads and intothe *350 store parking lots to permit less agile riders (such as children and senior citizens) to reach the stores. [FN360] The two largest Kroger stores in the area are not on bus lines, nor is a large discount supermarket, FoodMax, or a new Publix supermarket. [FN361] Conversely, a largely abandoned shopping center where anchor tenant K-Mart closed in 1991 is served by the system--but the new K-Mart is not. [FN362] Churches are not served by the system at all, because churches tend to be most active on Sundays and weekday evenings, when the bus system is shut down. [FN363] Even on the bus system's limited routes, the frequency of service is so minimal as to discourage use. For example, students who use public transit to attend Macon College must devote the entire day to the ordeal. After rising before 6:00 a.m. to catch the first bus from their homes to the downtown transfer station, students must catch a morning bus from downtown to the college at 7:30 a.m. Later in the day, they have only one opportunity to return home. [FN364] Needless to say, drivers suffer from none of these limitations: Government has built a toll-free, twenty-four hour system to serve them, and by building highways further and further away from downtown Macon, has encouraged employers to relocate to areas not served by bus routes. [FN365]
In sum, in most of America (especially in suburbs and small cities) government has rigged transportation systems to make driving a necessity for anything resembling a normal life, by building roads that shifted development to newer areas without creating bus routes or rail lines to serve those highway-created suburbs. Free enterprise devotees would certainly oppose a law ordering consumers to spend thousands of dollars a year on television sets, housing or ice cream. It logically follows that they should oppose policies that have the effect of forcing consumers to spend thousands of dollars on automobiles. [FN366]
*351 b. Suburbia or Else
Just as government policies have forced Americans to buy more cars than they might otherwise buy, government policies have forced Americans out of cities and into suburbs. The tyranny of the automobile arises in part from a second tyranny: the tyranny of suburbia. In a few metro areas urban decay has advanced so far that cities are essentially not an option for any consumers but the most adventurous. [FN367]
This fact is reflected in the mainstream media: all too often 'suburban' is used as a synonym for 'white,' 'respectable,' 'moderate,' or 'middle-class,' [FN368] while the word 'urban' is used as a synonym for 'poor,' 'dangerous,' or 'black.' [FN369] In the most degraded cities, like Detroit and Newark, urban decomposition is so advanced that even single people are unwilling to live in the city. For example, an elite [FN370] prep school in Connecticut, Choate Rosemary Hall (CRH), has dozens of alumni in New Jersey suburbs and hundreds in New York City--but not one who lives in Newark. [FN371] And in southeastern Michigan, CRH has about twenty alumni in Detroit's suburbs--but not one who lives in the city of Detroit. [FN372] By contrast, healthier big cities are jam-packed with CRH alumni, especially younger alumni. For example, about 1000 CRH alumni live in Manhattan, and 180 more live in New York City's other boroughs. [FN373]
*352 Even where single people can live in the city, families often cannot. For example, in Cleveland even the most open-minded Clevelanders were unwilling to stay in the city after marriage, because of the state of the city's public school system (which was unusually disreputable even by the low standards of urban public school systems) [FN374] and because nearly all of the area's private schools (except for a few parochial schools) are in the suburbs. [FN375] As a result, in Cleveland only 4% of households earning over $100,000 live in the city. [FN376] Even institutions that would be urban in other communities are suburban in Cleveland. For example, the city's major bohemian-oriented shopping street, Coventry Road, is in the suburb of Cleveland Heights, [FN377] as is the office of EcoCity Cleveland, one of the area's leading anti-sprawl groups. [FN378]
In sum, suburban life is often not an option but a virtual necessity for Middle-class Americans, because of the shortage of safe city neighborhoods and reputable city schools. So by fighting sprawl and preserving cities, Americans can actually expand, rather than limitconsumer *353 choice.
2. Sprawl Means Higher Taxes
Over the past two decades, taxes have become a defining issue in American politics, like the New Deal in the 1930s. [FN379] Conservatives and Republicans have generally opposed higher taxes; liberals and Democrats have not. [FN380] As explained below, sprawl is more likely to raise local taxes than to lower them.
a. Taxes in the Cities
Although suburban sprawl is not generally thought of as a tax issue, sprawl in fact means higher taxes and bigger government. Here's why: As cities lose middle-class residents and retain the poor, they become poorer. [FN381] In the metro areas encompassing the twenty-three American cities that David Rusk designates as 'zero elasticity' cities (that is, cities that have been unable to annex their suburbs) city per capita income is, on the average, only 66% of suburban per capita income. [FN382] And in most older cities, the city-suburb income gap has widened over time. In every single one of America's twenty-four most distressed cities (which Rusk defines as cities that have lost 20% of their 1950 population, are over one-third black or Hispanic, and have average income levels less than 70% of suburban income levels), [FN383] the gap between the average suburban income and the average city income widened during the 1980s. [FN384]
Common sense dictates that as a city becomes poorer, its tax basewill*354 decline, and tax hikes will thus become more tempting. [FN385] For example, between 1972 and 1987, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland and its older suburbs) lost $1.5 billion worth of payroll, while Cleveland's newer outer suburbs gained over $1 billion. [FN386] Moreover, poorer cities will typically have to spend more money to obtain the same quality of public services as affluent suburbs, because poorer populations will need more money for public assistance and poverty-related health care than would the population of a more affluent city, and poorer people are more likely to commit crimes (thus causing higher criminal-justice related spending). [FN387]
And as a city (and more recently, its inner suburbs) [FN388] becomes dominated by poorer voters, its electorate will be more likely to be dominated by liberals and Democrats who will prefer higher taxes to reductions in the size of government. [FN389] For example, between 1976 and 1996, in the city of Buffalo, the Republican percentage of the two party presidential vote nosedived from 37% to 17%--a twenty percentage point drop that dwarfed the national four point drop in the Republican vote (from 49% to 45%). [FN390] In Buffalo's population-losing inner ring suburbs, Republicans suffered comparable losses between 1976 and 1996. For example, the Republican nominee lost fourteen points in Lackawanna (from 35% to 21%), Cheektowaga (from 45% to 31%), and West Seneca (50% to 36%) as well as nineteen in Tonawanda (from 56% to 37%). [FN391] By contrast, in Clarence, a still-growing outer suburb, the Republican nominee lost only eight points (from 64% to *355 56%). [FN392] In the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Republicans suffered an eleven point drop (48% to 37%) in the mature suburb of Montgomery County, and only a four point drop (50% to 46%) in booming Howard County. [FN393] In Philadelphia, the Republicans lost fifteen points (from 32% to 17%). The Republicans lost twelve points in Delaware County, a stagnant Philadelphia inner suburb (from 56% to 44%) but only five points in booming Chester County (61% to 55%). [FN394]
In sum, suburban sprawl causes cities and older suburbs to become poorer, which means they have a smaller tax base, which means that (a) their politicians will be more tempted to raise taxes, and (b) their voters will be poorer, more politically liberal, and thus less fiscally conservative.
b. Taxes in the Suburbs: Or, Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Sprawl and Sprawl
It could be argued that even if city residents face higher taxes from the redistribution of people and jobs caused by sprawl, suburbanites do not. After all, suburbanites often live in growing areas with few poor people to make demands on government or elect pro-spending politicians. [FN395] But even in suburbia, sprawl's impact on the public fisc is at best ambiguous. [FN396] A fast-growing suburb benefits from a larger residential and commercial tax base, but suffers when its new residents demand additional schools and roads to serve them. [FN397] For example, in *356 rapidly-growing [FN398] Loudoun County near Washington, D.C. the annual tax rate increased by 11% from 1997 to 1998 in order to pay for new services. [FN399] Likewise, Prince William County, another high-growth Washington suburb, [FN400] has the highest real estate tax rate of any county in Virginia. [FN401] Such tax increases arise from the infrastructure expenses caused by population growth. In Prince William County, for example, schools are so overcrowded with new residents' children that students are crammed into more than 100 classroom trailers. [FN402] Some suburbs also try to temporarily limit or avoid tax increases by taking on huge debt loads. In Loudoun County, debt payments rose from 3.3% of the county budget in 1990 to over 10% in 1999. [FN403] In rapidly expanding Howard County, [FN404] between Baltimore and Washington, debt nearly tripled from $130 billion to $384 billion from 1987 and 1997. [FN405] In Montgomery County, Maryland, some areas are growing while others are shrinking. So to accommodate these population shifts, the county built seventy new schools during the 1980s, while closing sixty-eight. [FN406] Thus, Montgomery County had the worst of both worlds: the money it spent building the now-closed schools had become a waste of money, yet the county also had to throw money at new schools.
Some suburban cities and counties try to finance the costs of increased residential development by encouraging increased commercial development. For example, Howard County's planning goals state that commercial development should account for 25% of the county's tax base because those developments provide revenue without adding students to the school system. [FN407] This strategy, although helpful if it works, is quite risky: Because many commuters wish to live close to work, any increase in commercial development may create a demand for nearby residential development, which in turn increases the costs ofgovernment *357 services. [FN408] And if a suburb tries to solve this problem by limiting such residential development, workers will have to commute from other areas, which in turn means more traffic congestion, which creates political pressure for more roads, which in turn means higher spending and higher taxes. [FN409]
In fact, groups generally recognized as supportive of suburban expansion openly admit that sprawl means bigger government. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), hardly an anti-sprawl organization, [FN410] has issued a policy statement endorsing a so-called 'Smart Growth' strategy that includes '[p]lanning and constructing new schools, roads, water and sewer treatment facilities and other public infrastructure in a timely manner to keep pace with the current and future demand for housing. ' [FN411] NAHB does not pretend that developers will bear these costs. [FN412] Instead, it asserts that
[a]ppropriate bodies of government should adopt capital improvement plans . . . designed to fund necessary infrastructure required to support new development. Ensuring that infrastructure is funded equitably and that the cost is shared equitably throughout all segments of the community--existing residents as well as newcomers--is an even greater challenge. [FN413] *358 In other words, NAHB admits that sprawl (or as NAHB calls it, 'new development') means higher government spending for schools, roads, and other 'infrastructure' designed to 'support new development.' As NAHB claims, Americans may be entitled to 'have a free choice in deciding where and in what kind of home to live.' [FN414] But developers and home buyers are not necessarily entitled to finance that 'free choice' by taxing others.
c. The Car Tax
In 1997, the average American household spent $6060 on car-related expenditures: $2736 on new and used vehicle purchases, $1098 on gasoline, $293 on finance charges, $682 on maintenance and repair, $755 on car insurance, and $501 on leasing costs, rental costs, and license fees. [FN415] Households with teenage children must spend even more, because they 'need' cars not just for both parents, but for the children as well. [FN416] As explained above, Americans live in areas where autos are a daily necessity not because of free choices made in a free market, but because of government policies that have made daily life without a car impossible for many drivers. [FN417] It logically follows that American auto dependency is an unfunded mandate analogous to the thousands of pages of federal regulations contained in the Federal Register, and that most auto-related spending is a form of indirect taxation just as much as if government enacted a law requiring consumers to spend $6060 per household on automobiles (a sum equaling 89% of the average federal income tax payment). [FN418] And if auto-related spending is a tax paid by consumers, it further follows that any efforts to reduce auto dependency reduce the burden of government upon the American people. Or to put the matter another way: if the average American could avoid owning a car, he or she would get the equivalent of an 89% income tax cut to save, invest, or spend on other consumer goods.
In sum, sprawl means higher taxes, plus a continuation of the car taxthat *359 squeezes so many American households.
B. Sprawl and Cultural Conservatism
Suburban sprawl also affects two values commonly associated with cultural conservatism: social stability and the work ethic.
1. Sprawl vs. Stability
As Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation has pointed out,
Community is of significant value to most cultural conservatives, for very good reason. Without it, there are few mechanisms to uphold morals and maintain standards of behavior. Traditionally, when most people were part of a community, they behaved for fear of community sanctions. But where there is no community, community sanctions cannot exist. [FN419]
And for community to exist, there must be stability: Today's stable, safe neighborhoods must be tomorrow's stable, safe neighborhoods, so their residents and their children and grandchildren can build a community rather than being driven out by the next wave of urban decay.
But sprawl creates constant instability: Today's suburbs can quickly become tomorrow's slums. Some of today's poor city neighborhoods were once rich, outlying areas comparable to today's suburbs--neighborhoods that were created by streetcars just as today's suburbs were created by highways. [FN420] For example, in Detroit, 19th century tycoons built mansions near Woodward Avenue-- an area that in the late 20th century became, in one commentator's words, 'something worse than a slum' where the remaining 'hopelessly decayed mansions stand in these blocks like inscrutable megaliths in a wilderness of rubble. ' [FN421] Cleveland's Euclid Avenue has met a slightly less horrible, yet nevertheless unfortunate, fate. In 1892, fifty-three of sixty-eight millionaires named in the New York Tribune's list of America's richest people called Euclid Avenue home. [FN422] And in the first half of the 20thcentury, *360 Euclid became a thriving commercial strip, 'a regional retail nexus with trolley cars feeding six department stores, live theater, and downtown offices.' [FN423] But by the late 1990s, one-third of the 8.2 million square feet of upper-floor office space on Euclid Avenue was empty, [FN424] seventeen storefronts were empty, [FN425] and the blocks of Euclid Avenue east of the city's business district were a 'weed-filled wasteland[].' [FN426]
And as sprawl has accelerated, the decay of city neighborhoods has accelerated. The number of high-poverty census tracts (that is, tracts where over 40% of the inhabitants have incomes below the federal poverty line) [FN427] in metropolitan areas increased by 131% between 1970 and 1990, [FN428] and the number of persons trapped in these slums nearby doubled. [FN429] The spread of urban decay was fastest in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest: in 1970, these areas had 379 high-poverty tracts (164 in the Northeast, 215 in the Midwest) and in 1990 they had 1471 (578 in the Northeast, 893 in the Midwest). [FN430]
Milwaukee presents one of the most extreme examples of urban decay. In 1980, the city had only nine high-poverty census tracts, all packed tightly around downtown Milwaukee. [FN431] In 1990, the city had forty-two, most of which were also close to downtown and to the original nine ghetto tracts. [FN432] The sudden decay of Milwaukee's core was due partially to a regional economic downturn, and partially due to 'racial succession' (i.e. white flight to outlying areas). [FN433] In the tracts where poverty exploded during the 1980s, the number of white residentsdeclined *361 from 1767 per tract in 1970 to 613 per tract in 1990. [FN434]
Many other cities suffered similar 'ghetto explosions' from 1970 to 1990: for example, in Buffalo the number of high poverty tracts increased from 3 to 26, [FN435] in Pittsburgh from 14 to 42, [FN436] in Rochester from 4 to 20, [FN437] in Chicago from 48 to 184, [FN438] in Minneapolis from 7 to 33, [FN439] and in Cleveland from 20 to 69. [FN440]
Admittedly, the Rust Belt's urban decay arises partially from regional economic decline as well as from suburban sprawl. [FN441] But if regionwide economic decline was the only cause of urban decay, the economic gap between city and suburb would have remained constant over the years. But in fact, per capita city income has dropped from 96% of suburban income in 1973 to 84% in 1990. [FN442] Similarly, city population has typically declined far more rapidly than suburban population. For example, the population of metropolitan Buffalo decreased by 6% between 1980 and the mid-1990s, [FN443] while the city population declined by 16%. [FN444] And in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Rochester, city population declined in recent decades while the suburbs continued to grow. [FN445] Moreover, even some growing cities suffered from growing blight as the middle class moved to the city's fringes: for example, Columbus, Ohio (whose citywide population has consistently grown in recent decades) [FN446] had six high-poverty census tracts in 1970 and twenty-four in 1990. [FN447]
In turn, the decline of the oldest, closest-in city neighborhoods has set in motion a chain of events that endangers newer city neighborhoods and even suburbs. As the oldest neighborhoods decay, they become *362 occupied by the poor, and nearby middle-class neighborhoods become uncomfortably close to city slums, which in turn causes them to become less appealing and eventually decay, which in turn starts the cycle in another nearby neighborhood. And by using its powers to drain cities of middle class taxpayers, government has accelerated this cycle. [FN448]
In recent decades, urban decay has spread out beyond the central city line. The most troubled suburban municipalities near cities as varied as Los Angeles, Detroit, and Miami have crime rates higher than those of the nearby big cities themselves. [FN449] For example, in 1997, Highland Park, Michigan, had 53 murders per 100,000 people (15% more than nearby Detroit) and 1196 robberies per 100,000 people (over 30% more than Detroit). [FN450] Similarly, Compton, Ca., had 66 murders per 100,000 people (more than four times as many as nearby Los Angeles), and 807 robberies per 100,000 (nearly 40% more than Los Angeles). [FN451] And Opa Locka, Fl., had 41 murders per 100,000 (over 50% more than nearby Miami) and 1369 robberies per 100,000 (18% more than Miami). [FN452] Although these municipalities are extreme cases, city crime has increasingly spread to some suburbs. In 1991, for instance, nine of Chicago's suburbs had higher crime rates than the city of Chicago. [FN453] Poverty as well as crime has spread past the city line: today, both the ten poorest and the ten richest incorporated cities in America are suburbs. [FN454] For example, both Chicago and St. Louis have suburbs with median household incomes 40% lower than those of the cities themselves. [FN455]
And even where older suburbs are not as poor or as dangerous as nearby cities, they are often in decline. For example, most of Cleveland's inner suburbs have experienced dramatic declines inhousehold *363 income relative to other suburbs. In Cleveland's poorest inner ring suburb, East Cleveland, household income declined from 77% of the metro area mean in 1970 to 57% in 1990. [FN456] Other suburbs experiencing similar declines include Bedford (101% to 87%), Bedford Heights (106% to 84%), Brooklyn (109% to 81%), Brook Park (127% to 101%), Euclid (103% to 82%), Fairview Park (136% to 113%), Garfield Heights (100% to 82%), Lakewood (99% to 93%), Maple Heights (103% to 85%), Mayfield Heights (103% to 85%), Middleburg Heights (138% to 114%), North Olmsted (124% to 115%), Parma (111% to 96%), Parma Heights (114% to 89%), Seven Hills (148% to 121%), South Euclid (117% to 106%), and Warrensville Heights (104% to 84%). [FN457] All but two of these suburbs lost population during the 1990s, [FN458] as did all of Cuyahoga County (which includes seventy-seven square miles within the city of Cleveland [FN459] and 381 square miles of suburbia) [FN460]--not because metro Cleveland as a whole lost population, but because 'outer counties' like Geauga, Lake, and Medina sucked away middle-class Clevelanders. [FN461] In fact, Cleveland's decay is not limited to the inner ring of suburbs (that is, those suburbs that are contiguous to the city). Of the declining suburbs listed above, several (Bedford, Bedford Heights, Mayfield Heights, Parma Heights, Middleburg Heights, Seven Hills, South Euclid, and North Olmsted) are second- and third-ring suburbs: that is, they border inner ring suburbs but not Cleveland itself. [FN462]
Cleveland is not alone; suburbs in other metro areas, especially slow-growth areas in the Midwest and Northeast, are experiencing similar problems. The major inner ring suburbs of older cities such as Buffalo, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Chicago lost population during the 1990s. [FN463]
*364 In sum, suburban sprawl, like the French Revolution, devours its own children. Sprawl creates inner ring suburbs, only to destroy them a few decades later by creating outer suburbs to skim off their elites. So as long as cities and older suburbs continue to lose their most affluent citizens to newer suburbs, no community is truly safe from the ravages of neighborhood decay, and no stable community can endure.
2. Sprawl vs. Work
Conservatives claim to believe that people should be independent rather than relying on government for handouts. For example, it took a Republican Congress to enact the welfare reform bill that limited the amount of time anyone can spend on welfare. [FN464]
But sprawl punishes work and rewards welfare dependency. Here is why: Thanks to suburban sprawl, most low-skill jobs are located in areas that are inaccessible by public transportation or nearly so. [FN465] In small cities like Macon, many jobs are inaccessible without a car either because the public transportation system does not reach major employers or because the buses stop running early in the evening. [FN466] And even in the relatively transit-friendly Boston metropolitan area, just 32% of entry-level employers are within one-quarter mile of transit, 43% are within one-half mile, and 58% are within one mile. [FN467] Just 14% of entry-level jobs can be reached by transit within an hour from Boston's poorer neighborhoods. [FN468] So to get off welfare and get a job, a welfare recipient often needs a car which she probably cannot afford (otherwise she would not be on welfare in the first place). [FN469] The recipient may be stuck in a vicious cycle: she needs the car to get a job, but she can't get a job unless she has a car first. Thus, the dispersion of employment opportunities caused by sprawl frustrates welfare reformand *365 encourages welfare dependency. [FN470]
Even if one assumes that a welfare recipient can somehow obtain a car, the costs of auto ownership encourage welfare dependency at the margins. For example, suppose that welfare recipient A can earn $700 a month on welfare and $900 after taxes at work, but would have to spend $250 a month on a car if she gets a job. On balance, A would be better off on welfare because the cost of a car reduces her overall pay to $650 ($900 in wages minus $650 in auto expenses). Thus, the auto dependency caused by sprawl discourages work and encourages welfare dependency.
IV. Solutions to Sprawl: Or, Stopping Sprawl Without Empowering Government
Conservative hostility to anti-sprawl measures is based on the delusion that there is no way to limit sprawl without increasing government spending or government regulation of land use. [FN471] In fact,*366 even if conservatives must agree to disagree with environmentalists on some fiscal and regulatory issues, they can still fight sprawl in other ways consistent with conservative values.
For example, conservatives can focus on (1) eliminating highway spending that encourages sprawl, (2) breaking the link between residence and schooling, so that families can live in cities without being trapped in urban schools, and (3) limiting sprawl by reducing rather than increasing government regulation of land use.
A. No New Roads
If state and federal policy caused our urban crisis, the logical solution is to stop the policies that led to the crisis. Because highway spending has been a significant cause of suburban sprawl, [FN472] we can take a significant bite out of both sprawl and big government by eliminating sprawl-generating highway spending.
Specifically, state and federal governments should prohibit the use of their funds to build or widen roads in newer suburban areas. Because highway spending totaled $101 billion in 1997, [FN473] such a 'paving moratorium' would give taxpayers a significant break (including, ironically, drivers, whose fuel taxes pay for more than half of government highway spending). [FN474] A paving moratorium would not prevent settlement in existing suburbs--but would prevent government from creating new suburbs by building more highways, and would thus prevent government from turning today's suburbs into deserted slums.
Government justifies new and widened roads on the ground that more roads, not fewer, are needed to deal with traffic congestion. [FN475] Butthe*367 claim that new roads eliminate congestion is at best speculative. Admittedly, if new and widened roads did not affect development patterns, a new or widened road might reduce traffic congestion. But in reality, highway building affects where people live and work. If government builds highway X to suburb Y, homeowners and businesses will soon move to subdivisions near X's interchanges, thereby increasing traffic along the interchanges. [FN476] Thus, '[b] uilding more highways to reduce traffic congestion is an exercise in futility. Whenever it is done, more people take to their cars, and before long the roads are as clogged as ever.' [FN477] Even people and groups sometimes identified as pro-sprawl admit as much. As Joel Garreau of the Washington Post has written, '[t]he more capacity you add, the more likely you are to make the place more popular . . . creating more traffic.' [FN478] Mr. Garreau is hardly an anti-sprawl activist; for example, he has described the status quo as the 'manifest pattern of millions of individual American desires over seventy-five years.' [FN479] Similarly, the National Association of Home Builders (which advocates accelerated road construction) [FN480] conducted a survey that reveals that highway access would influence 55% of respondents to move to a new community--more than any other amenity. [FN481] By admitting that highways encourage movement to areaswith *368 highway access, the NAHB has effectively conceded that highways shift development to suburbs (thus making those suburbs more rather than less congested). [FN482]
Numerous studies suggest that 'induced traffic' eliminates some or all of the reduction of congestion caused by new roads and road widenings. For example, Mark Hansen, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, used statewide California statistics in concluding that new road capacity is almost entirely offset by induced traffic within five years. [FN483] A study conducted by Robert B. Noland, a former transportation analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, similarly found that a 10% expansion in roads produced a 2.8% rise in travel over two to four years. [FN484] These traffic increases arise because in the short run, motorists switch from other routes, because they abandon mass transit and drive instead, and because development may shift people and jobs to areas near the highway. [FN485] In fact, studies such as Hansen's, if accurate, may actually overestimate the benefits of new roads by failing to account for the medium- and long-run changes in development plans caused by new and widened roads (that is, the changes that occur more than four or five years after the road is built or widened).
For example, in 1991, Montgomery County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington) widened Interstate 270 to as many as twelve lanes to reduce traffic congestion. [FN486] According to Sidney Kramer, Montgomery County executive from 1986 to 1990, '[y]ou saw a tide of development go forward because of that improvement.' [FN487] One of the high-growth suburbs created by the I-270 widening, Germantown, Maryland, grew from just over 41,000 people in 1980 to 70,000 people in 1998. [FN488] In turn, the growth of Germantown and nearby suburbs caused traffic to increase. In fact, traffic along I-270 has surpassed the levels statehighway *369 planners forecast for 2010 in their 1984 study of the proposed widening. [FN489] The Maryland highway department reported that the '1997 volume at Route 28 in Rockville was 193,000 vehicles [per] day-- 2,000 more than the 2010 projection.' [FN490] According to David Palank, an area real estate broker, '[w]ith all the lanes that are there, it just doesn't seem to be moving that quickly . . . I haven't found any relief at any time. It seems like it was congested and continues to be congested.' [FN491]
If I-270 was an aberration, areas that increased road space would have experienced a reduction in congestion during the 1990s, or at least less congestion than areas that did less road-building. But recent studies show otherwise. The Hartford, Ct., and Providence, R.I., areas experienced similar population growth between 1982 and 1997. [FN492] But Hartford's road capacity stagnated, while Providence increased its road mileage by 59%. [FN493] If road-building reduced congestion, Providence would have far less congestion than Hartford. But a study by the Texas Transportation Institute (the official research agency for the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Railroad Commission) [FN494] revealed that the two areas had similar levels of traffic growth and traffic congestion. In 1997, the cost of congestion per eligible driver was $390 in Hartford and $360 in Providence (Nos. 49 and 50 of 68 areas surveyed). [FN495] Rush-hour congestion increased by 200% from Hartford and 225% in Providence between 1982 and 1997. [FN496] Annual delay per driver increased by 283% in Hartford and 320% in Providence between 1982 and 1997. [FN497] In other words, Providence built far more roads, yet congestion increased in Providence just as rapidly as in Hartford.
The correlation between free-flowing traffic and free-spending road builders is equally weak in fast-growing metro areas. For example, Charlotte and Fresno had comparable population growth rates (64% and 57%). [FN498] But Charlotte increased its highway mileage by 113hile *370 Fresno's road-building lagged behind its population growth (with only a 27% increase). [FN499] Charlotte's congestion cost $680 per driver, while Fresno's cost only $315. [FN500] Annual delay per driver increased by 356% in Charlotte and only 171% in Fresno, [FN501] while peak hour congestion increased by about the same amount in both areas (229% in Charlotte and 225% in Fresno). [FN502]
Ironically, drivers are sometimes the biggest losers from road-building: When states favor road-building over routine street maintenance, roads become rutted and packed with potholes. A recent survey by The Road Information Program, a group financed by the road construction industry, shows that 35% of roads in Detroit and New Orleans are in poor condition. [FN503] Over 30% of roads were in poor condition in three other metro areas (Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and San Jose), and 20% to 30% of roads were poor in fourteen others (San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Sacramento, Grand Rapids, Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Oklahoma City, Denver, Dallas, Houston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Austin). [FN504] By an odd coincidence, all of these areas increased highway capacity in the 1980s and 1990s. [FN505] For example, Detroit's highway mileage increased by 21% (far ahead of its anemic 5% population growth) while New Orleans's highway mileage increased by 45% (despite that region's 4% population growth). [FN506] It, therefore, appears that some states are letting existingroads *371 deteriorate so that they can build new roads instead.
In sum, both common sense and actual experience support the view that suburban road-building creates sprawl without mitigating congestion. Thus, continued road widening and roadbuilding is pointless, if not harmful.
B. Ending the Urban School Crisis
As Mayor Norquist of Milwaukee has pointed out, '[a] major factor in the extreme separation of rich and poor in the United States is that people who are rich avoid city schools.' [FN507] As explained above, a 'bad' school (one with a poor reputation) is typically 'bad' at least partially because of its disadvantaged student body. [FN508]
Indeed, many suburbanites implicitly admit as much by fighting attempts to enroll urban children in suburban schools, on the ground that the admission of such children would 'ruin' their schools. [FN509] For example, Cleveland's suburban public schools have locked out urban children by refusing to participate in Cleveland's voucher program, [FN510] and some states have even created the crime of 'enrollment fraud' to criminally punish urban parents who seek to sneak their children into suburban schools. [FN511] If suburban schools would in fact be adversely affected by the enrollment of urban students, suburban school districts' alleged superiority obviously rests upon the background of their pupils rather than the excellence of their teachers and administrators. Thus, even suburbanites know that the quality of their 'good' schools rests on the absence of low-income students rather than on the superiority of their teachers or administrators.
It logically follows that even if government can improve poverty-packed urban schools slightly by spending more, raising expectations, or other reforms, [FN512] it probably can never make such schools as attractive to middle-class families as homogenous suburban schools. It further follows that if government wishes to stop driving middle-class families out of cities, it must stop forcing parents to choose between middle-class-dominated schools and city living. The most market-orientedremedies *372 for the urban education crisis (other than the complete abolition of government-funded education in city and suburb alike) are various forms of the voucher system.
Under a voucher system in its purest form, 'money spent on schooling [would] go directly into the pockets of families with school-age children, who could spend their voucher wherever they pleased--in either public or private systems. ' [FN513] Less radical voucher plans might require the government to pay only part of a student's private school tuition, just as college students obtain tuition assistance through government-backed loans and grants. [FN514]
Any form of voucher program, other than one limited to the poor, [FN515] would discourage middle-class flight by ensuring that parents could live in the city and nevertheless send their children to selective private or suburban schools for free (or at least at a lower price, depending on the generosity of the program). [FN516]
*373 Some criticize the voucher system as a repudiation of the American ideal of the 'common school' where children of different backgrounds cross paths and learn about one another. [FN517] And indeed it is arguable that a public school system that in fact educated children of different backgrounds together might 'teach [children] respect for opposing points of view and ways of life, and to provide them with the intellectual skills necessary to evaluate ways of life different from their parents.' [FN518] It follows that in pre-suburban America, this 'common school' argument might have had some relevance to reality. But in major metropolitan areas, the common school concept has been assassinated by sprawl: Middle-class families live in middle-class suburbs with homogeneously middle-class schools, while poor families live in cities or poor suburbs with homogeneously poor schools. [FN519] By contrast, a voucher system will increase children's exposure to diversity by enabling parents to live in or near diverse neighborhoods without sending their children to widely feared urban schools. For example, suppose Mr. and Mrs. X are willing to expose their children to city life but fear city schools. Under today's educational system, when the X children reach school age, they would reluctantly leave the city in order to avoid city schools. Under the voucher system, Mr. and Mrs. X would be able to live in a diverse city neighborhood and send their children to schools similar to those that their children would attend if they lived in suburbia. [FN520]
*374 A related argument is that competition between city schools and private schools would be 'unfair,' because private schools could exclude the least desirable students. [FN521] This argument is beside the point, because many of the most 'desirable' students (i.e. high-achieving students from middle-class households) will be segregated in any event as long as the middle class continues to avoid city schools, [FN522] and because suburban schools can exclude some of the least desirable students by using zoning and the resulting high property values to exclude low-income households [FN523] whose children are more likely to be slow learners. [FN524] Whether middle-class children go to exclusive urban schools or exclusive suburban schools, those schools will be segregated by class as well as ability; but under the status quo, this segregation creates the additional evil of urban decay. In other words, the status quo equals class segregation plus sprawl, but vouchers would at worst create class segregation minus sprawl. Because two social evils are worse than one, the voucher system is obviously preferable to the status quo.
Indeed, the 'unfairness' argument leads to absurd results. One commentator argues that vouchers are unfair because '[i]f they [private schools] choose not to help children with discipline problems, they can turn those students away. ' [FN525] Presumably, the author of this article believes that it is 'fair' for children in urban public schools to share their classrooms with a horde of bullies, while other children are able to learn in a more orderly environment. This hardly seems like a fair result. The author's remark exemplifies the kind of societal double standard that has made many American cities unattractive to the middle class: Cities have become the dumping ground for the destitute and the disorderly, while social justice demands nothing of suburbanites except pious proclamations.
*375 Voucher critics predict that an increased demand for private schools might cause private schools to raise tuition and make vouchers so fiscally impractical as to make private schools financially unaffordable, [FN526] and that vouchers will naturally lead to government overregulation of private schools. [FN527] These arguments overlook the fact that the United States already has a modified voucher system at the college and university level: the intricate web of grants and loans that help Americans attend private as well as public colleges. [FN528] If vouchers reduced access to college or made colleges worse, America's college and university system would be inferior to that of other countries. In fact, Americans attend college in greater numbers than citizens of other affluent countries, [FN529] and our university system, far from having been crushed by government regulation, is so superior that in 1995, 452,599 foreign students came to American universities to learn. [FN530] Thus, vouchers have worked well at the university level, and accordingly, should be provided for younger students. Moreover, it is unlikely that government funding would endanger the quality of private schools, for the simple reason that the government must regulate its own schools, but at least has the option of not regulating private schools. [FN531] Thus, government would probably not regulate private schools as extensively as it regulates public schools. [FN532] America's experience with charitable tax deductions suggests that government subsidies to private schools wouldnot *376 lead to overregulation. Though the federal government certainly attaches some strings to the charitable deduction, charitable institutions are certainly not regulated as extensively as government-run schools. [FN533]
Another common anti-voucher argument is that vouchers violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment [FN534] by subsidizing church-run schools. [FN535] This assertion is quite controversial, and is rejected even by some constitutional law scholars generally regarded as liberals. [FN536] Even if this argument is correct, a voucher system could still pass constitutional muster if it was confined to secular institutions. [FN537] It could be argued that the exclusion of sectarian schools would make any voucher experiment useless, because most existing private schools are either parochial schools or elite schools for the rich. [FN538] This argument is questionable because if government paid a significant amount of tuition [FN539] for private schools, entrepreneurs might create non-sectarianschools. *377 Just as the public demand for food and drink has encouraged entrepreneurs to form restaurants and taverns, the voucher-generated public demand for schooling would create a market that private entrepreneurs would fill. [FN540]
It could be argued that government can 'save' city schools by spending more money on them. [FN541] But there is little correlation between school spending and educational achievement. Although some city school systems spend less than suburban schools, [FN542] others do not. ''[I]n 1989-90, big-city schools systems as a group spent over $5447 per pupil in 1989-90, compared with $5427 in suburban areas and $4507 in rural communities.' [FN543] '[E] ven when adjustments are made for' [cities' greater expenses,] 'per pupil spending' by [city] 'schools, on average, is only 1%' [below] 'that of their suburban competitors.' [FN544]
Moreover, there is little evidence that well-funded urban schools are significantly superior in any way to their underfunded counterparts. For example, Milwaukee public schools spend more than the state average per pupil and more than some suburbs, yet most middle-class parents avoid them. [FN545] And in Kansas City, Missouri, a desegregation decree mandated that the city be granted a bonanza of funds: between 1987 and 1992, the state devoted $1.5 billion to the school district. [FN546] As a result, the Kansas City school district spends at least 30% more than the most well-funded suburban districts, and over twice as much as less well funded suburban districts. [FN547] Although students' test scores improved modestly in absolute terms, their performances on statewide tests did not improve relative to their peers in other school districts throughout the state of Missouri. [FN548] Thus, it appears that even where urban schoolsoutspend*378 suburban schools, student achievement does not improve enough to make urban schools attractive to middle-class parents.
A related argument is that vouchers would drain money from government-run schools. [FN549] This argument, even if true, is beside the point for two reasons. First, if, as suggested above, government-run schools do not consistently benefit from spending increases, [FN550] they might not be significantly harmed by spending cuts. Second, this 'harm' merely eliminates an unfairness to private school parents, who would no longer have to pay twice for education, once for their own child's schooling and once (through taxes) for the schooling of children in government-run schools. [FN551]
In order to give governments a chance to evaluate the validity of opponents' concerns, any voucher plan which includes private schools should be limited to the group that needs vouchers most--residents of cities where the school system drives out the middle class. Thus, a state or federal voucher plan might give vouchers only to residents of cities above a certain size that had lost population in recent decades or that have higher poverty rates than their region as a whole. If the voucher system worked well enough, governments could follow up by expanding vouchers to all children. [FN552]
1. Vouchers Lite
A less radical plan would be a 'public schools only' voucher plan. Under such a system, the federal or state government could radically expand consumer choice by enacting the following statute: 'No publicly funded elementary or secondary school receiving state [or federal, depending on who enacted the statute] funding shall discriminate in its admissions on the basis of residence.' Under a 'public schools only' voucher plan, parents would be free to send their children to suburban or urban schools, no matter where they lived. This plan would increase consumer choice without creating the practical, constitutional, and fiscal difficulties of a voucher system that included private schools. [FN553]*379 However, a 'public schools only' voucher plan would do less to combat sprawl than a pure voucher plan, because parents with children in suburban schools might be tempted to move to suburbs in order to reduce their commutes to suburban schools.
C. Housing and Land Use Policy
Although a libertarian, non-coercive land use policy cannot dictate where people live, such a policy can give Americans the opportunity to live in more pedestrian- and transit-friendly environments. As explained above, traditional, walkable neighborhoods have been virtually outlawed in much of America, thanks to local zoning laws dictating that almost nothing may be within walking distance of anything else, that commercial streets must be built for the happiness of cars rather than people, and that densities must be lower than a free market could tolerate. [FN554]
One remedy for this problem might be the complete abolition of zoning laws. [FN555] The abolition of zoning would maximize individual freedom and reduce housing costs by allowing developers to build as they pleased, without any interference from government. On the other hand, the abolition of zoning might be even more politically impossible than any reforms discussed below, and would have the added cost of eliminating sprawl-limiting ordinances (such as those limiting development in newer suburbs) as well as sprawl-creating ordinances. [FN556]
*380 A narrower remedy to zoning-generated sprawl would be a Pedestrian's Bill of Rights, which would target zoning laws that encouraged sprawl and discouraged the creation of walkable neighborhoods. Such a statute would limit localities' zoning powers by eliminating many of the most onerous sprawl-creating zoning restrictions. For example:
(1) States should outlaw government-imposed minimum lot sizes, yard sizes, house sizes, or setbacks (that is, the distance between a house and the street). [FN557] Where lots, yards and setbacks are humongous, houses are so far from each other that their occupants cannot walk from one house to shopping, or even to other houses. [FN558] If people want to live in such an environment, they can certainly try to do so--but there is no reason why government should encourage them to by ordering developers to create unwalkable subdivisions.
(2) States should outlaw municipal restrictions on residential development in commercial zones, and allow some retail development in apartment buildings and other residential areas. [FN559] Under the status quo of single-use zoning, suburbanites who would like to walk to work or to shopping often cannot do so, because the dead hand of government prohibits would-be landlords from building or renting apartments in commercial zones. [FN560] It follows that if shop owners or office park developers were consistently allowed to rent surplus space to residential tenants, more Americans would be able to walk to work, shopping, and other opportunities. Similarly, states could allow some commerce in residential areas while preserving their residential nature by allowing retail development in residential zones up to a certain percentage of a subdivision's or apartment building's square footage (up to, say, 10%) so that homeowners could walk to some amenities withouthaving *381 their neighborhoods completely transformed. [FN561]
(3) Duplex homes and apartments should be permitted by law in all residential construction. [FN562] If a homeowner wants to rent out his basement, he or she should be allowed to do so. Restrictions on rental use of homeowners' property increase housing prices, [FN563] are far more intrusive than similar restrictions on commercial use, and increase auto dependency by artificially reducing population density.
(4) Municipalities should be required to permit home offices and telecommuting not involving show windows or exterior display advertising. [FN564] Just as Americans should be allowed to walk to work, they should be allowed to work at home.
(5) Municipalities should not be allowed to require businesses to provide more free parking than the market would dictate. [FN565] This rule would prevent government from subsidizing drivers by artificially increasing the supply of free parking, and would make streets more pedestrian-accessible by encouraging on-street parking (which buffers pedestrians from traffic). [FN566] Similarly, streets should be narrower so that pedestrians could cross more safely, [FN567] and on-street parking should be allowed as a matter of course. [FN568]
As a rule, metro areas with few zoning restrictions have cheaper housing. [FN569] For example, Houston has no zoning at all and is more affordable than other big cities. [FN570] It logically follows that in addition tomaking *382 American cities and suburbs more walkable and increasing property owners' freedom, zoning deregulation would have one other beneficial side effect: increasing the supply of low-rent, affordable housing and thereby limiting or even eliminating the demand for public housing [FN571] (which, as explained above, has turned cities into dumping grounds for the poor).
V. Conclusion
Suburban sprawl is not an invention of environmental extremists, but an issue that should cut across ideological lines. Sprawl exists in large part because of government policies favoring suburbia and forcing auto dependence, and can be at least partially remedied by policies that make government smaller and less intrusive. More importantly, sprawl reduces rather than enhances consumer choice--because when an American family moves to a suburb because they feel that they have to do so to educate their children decently, or buys an extra car because they think they cannot live without one, we are all a little less free.
(Footnotes omitted due to length of article)
Posted by lewyn
at 3:09 PM EST
