The phenomenon of urban sprawl has become a major controversy throughout the United States. The Political Economy Research Center (PERC) recently brought a number of scholars and writers to the Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, Montana to address the issue.
At the meeting’s close, participants distilled their conclusions into the following brief statement of principles. The authors have called this statement the “Lone Mountain Compact,” and invite other writers and scholars to join them in endorsing its principles. ? Preamble The unprecedented increase in prosperity over the last 25 years has created a large and growing upper middle class in America. New modes of work and leisure combined with population growth have fueled successive waves of suburban expansion in the 20th century.
Technological progress is likely to increase housing choice and community diversity even further in the 21st century, enabling more people to live and work outside the conventional urban forms of our time. These choices will likely include low-density, medium-density, and high-density urban forms.
This growth brings rapid change to our communities, often with negative side effects, such as traffic congestion, crowded public schools, and the loss of familiar open space. All of these factors are bound up in the controversy that goes by the term “sprawl.”
The heightened public concern over the character of our cities and suburbs is a healthy expression of citizen demand for solutions that are responsive to our changing needs and wants. Yet tradeoffs between different policy options for addressing these concerns are poorly understood. Productive solutions to public concerns will adhere to the following fundamental principles.
Principles for livable cities
1. The most fundamental principle is that, absent a material threat to other individuals or the community, people should be allowed to live and work where and how they like.
2. Prescriptive, centralized plans that attempt to determine the detailed outcome of community form and function should be avoided. Such “comprehensive” plans interfere with the dynamic, adaptive, and evolutionary nature of neighborhoods and cities.
3. Densities and land uses should be market driven, not plan driven. Proposals to supercede market-driven land use decisions by centrally directed decisions are vulnerable to the same kind of perverse consequences as any other kind of centrally planned resource allocation decisions, and show little awareness of what such a system would have to accomplish even to equal the market in effectiveness.
4. Communities should allow a diversity in neighborhood design, as desired by the market. Planning and zoning codes and building regulations should allow for neotraditional neighborhood design, historic neighborhood renovation and conversion, and other mixed-use development and the more decentralized development forms of recent years.
5. Decisions about neighborhood development should be decentralized as far as possible. Local neighborhood associations and private covenants are superior to centralized or regional government planning agencies.
6. Local planning procedures and tools should incorporate private property rights as a fundamental element of development control. Problems of incompatible or conflicting land uses will be better resolved through the revival of common law principles of nuisance than through zoning regulations, which tend to be rigid and inefficient.
7. All growth management policies should be evaluated according to their cost of living and “burden-shifting” effects. Urban growth boundaries, minimum lot sizes, restrictions on housing development, restrictions on commercial development, and other limits on freely functioning land markets that increase the burdens on lower income groups must be rejected. 8. Market-oriented transportation strategies–such as peak period road pricing, HOT lanes, toll roads, and de-monopolized mass transit–should be employed. Monopoly public transit schemes, especially fixed rail transit that lacks the flexibility to adapt to the changing destinations of a dynamic, decentralized metropolis, should be viewed skeptically.
9. The rights of present residents should not supercede those of future residents. Planners, citizens, and local officials should recognize that “efficient” land use must include consideration for household and consumer wants, preferences, and desires. Thus, growth controls and land-use planning must consider the desires of future residents and generations, not solely current residents.
10. Planning decisions should be based upon facts, not perceptions. A number of the concerns raised in the “sprawl” debate are based upon false perceptions. The use of good data in public policy is crucial to the continued progress of American cities and the social advance of all its citizens.
| The Lone Mountain Coalition* | ||
| Jonathan Adler Arlington, Virginia Ryan Amacher, Ph.D. Terry Anderson, Ph.D. Angela Antonelli John A. Baden, Ph.D. Michael B. Barkey Bruce Benson John Berthoud Robert Bish Clint Bolick Samuel Bostaph J. C. Bowman Jerry Bowyer Gordon L. Brady, Ph.D. James Burling H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. Henry N. Butler William N. Butos Jon Caldara F. Patricia Callahan Jim Cardle Anthony T. Caso John Charles Kenneth W. Chilton, Ph.D. J. R. Clark Daniel Coldwell Michael Coulter Wendell Cox Louis De Alessi, Ph.D. Robert de Posada Sean Duffy Becky Norton Dunlop Jefferson G. Edgens, Ph.D. William A. Fischel B. Delworth Gardner Michael Gilstrap Peter Gordon, Ph.D. |
Grant Gulibon Commonwealth Foundation Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Paul Guppy Robert L. Hale Rick Harrison Jake Haulk, Ph.D. Steven Hayward, Ph.D. Andy Herr P. J. Hill Randall Holcombe, Ph.D. John Hood Stephen L. Jackstadt Jeff Judson Jo Kwong, Ph.D. George Landrith, III Robert A. Lawson Donald Leal Dwight Lee Stanley Liebowitz Edward Lopez John Lunn J. Stanley Marshall Nancie G. Marzulla Roger J. Marzulla Ken Masugi, Ph.D. John McClaughry Robert McCormick Kelly McCutcheon Ed McMullen Roger Meiners, Ph.D. William H. Mellor John Merrifield Edward Moore John C. Moorhouse Lucas Morel, Ph.D. Andrew Morriss |
Henry Olsen Manhattan Institute New York City, New York C. Kenneth Orski Randal O’Toole Daniel C. Palm, Ph.D. Gary Palmer E. C. Pasour Mitchell B. Pearlstein, Ph.D. Steve Pejovich Roger Pilon, Ph.D., J.D. Dennis Polhill Lawrence W. Reed David W. Riggs, Ph.D. Thomas A. Rubin Peter Samuel E. S. Savas, Ph.D. Peter W. Schramm, Ph.D. Jane S. Shaw Daniel R. Simmons Randy T. Simmons, Ph.D. Fred L. Smith, Jr. Vernon L. Smith Sam Staley, Ph.D. Richard Stroup, Ph.D. David J. Theroux Gordon Tullock Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D. Malcolm Wallop John Weicher Bob Williams Robert Whaples Bruce Yandle
*The Lone Mountain Coalition is an ad hoc, informal consortium of individuals committed to the principles contained in the Lone Mountain Compact. Endorsement of the Lone Mountain Compact does not necessarily imply unanimous agreement with every principle. Organizational names are for identification purposes only, and do not necessarily imply any organizational endorsement of either the Lone Mountain Compact or the Lone Mountain Coalition. |
For more information . . .
on these principles, see A Guide to Smart Growth: Shattering Myths, Providing Solutions, edited by Jane S. Shaw and Ronald D. Utt (PERC/Heritage Foundation, 2000). The book is available for $11.50 (a 10 percent discount!) from Heartland’s online store at www.heartland.org, or call Cheryl Parker at 312/377-4000.
To register your support for the Lone Mountain Compact, visit The Heartland Institute’s Web site at www.heartland.org and click on the “I support the Lone Mountain Compact” button.
