I don’t pretend to know anything about city planning or community development, but I picked up an interesting account of the history of urban sprawl in a book I am reading. It is easy to think that the whims of developers and market pressures have created urban sprawl, but that is not so. Sprawl is the product of government regulations.
The genesis of sprawl had the best intentions: Federal Housing Administration loan programs which encouraged new home construction after World War II. At the same time, a federally subsidized 41,000 mile interstate highway program made commuting longer distances via automobile possible for millions of people. This brought folks out of the cities to newly created suburbs. Zoning laws were created which demand “bubbles” of land uses (residential, retail, office parks, governmental) all interconnected by major collector roads. Thus, through single use zoning and an unsustainable fascination with building homes and roads, government regulations have brought about urban sprawl.
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