OPINION/COMMENTARY

Smart Growth: Surrendering the American Dream

Many people don't realize it, but if you exclude countries smaller than Peoria, Illinois, the United States is by far the wealthiest nation in the world on a per-capita basis. Our per-capita income, adjusted for purchasing power, is higher than anyplace else, and our lead is growing. There are good reasons for that. William Lewis of McKinsey Global Institute describes in his book, The Power of Productivity, the two principal reasons why the U.S. economy is so strong relative to our competitors: our relatively free home-building industry and our largely free retail industry. What does this have to do with smart growth and sprawl? When they try to implement their strategies, as they did in Portland, Oregon, the anti-sprawl activists immediately attempt to draw urban growth boundaries and do other things to restrict land development. Those efforts inevitably reduce the supply and raise the prices of homes. Or they try to restrict the development of big-block stores, like Wal-Mart, which epitomize the success of American retailing. The two things that are anathema to the smart growth movement are the very secrets of our comparative advantage in the United States. We had better be very careful, then, about adopting policies that deliberately handicap and cripple these two sectors of our economy....