Self-identified libertarians who fall into this trap are the most odious sort. The fact of the matter is that in 99% of lots in this country, we enforce suburban development – the only force being applied is that which leads to YOUR preferred lifestyle, not that of the Manhattanites. (Even in Manhattan!)

NYC is fantastic. I love to live there but I can also see why some people wouldn’t. It is sort of weird to be stuck on wanting all cities to look or work that way but I do think there are a lot of pro’s that can be used to improve other places.

I think this is a wonderful example of the irony that any “let’s use big government programs to solve a problem” folks should keep in mind, especially the global warming/climate change folks.

The national highway system has, in fact, enabled the sprawl by reducing the cost (or at least the perceived cost) of transportation and automobile ownership (to the individual) compared to what it might have been had the government not built a “free” highway system. If automobiles are a chief source of CO2 and the number of cars and miles driven can be directly traced back to this big government project, then this is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences.

My own speculation is that if Ike hadn’t launched this program, there likely would be far fewer roads and highways across the country. Longer distance travel would have been more cumbersome, time consuming an expensive. The incentive to own a car would have been diminished (not eliminated). People would likely have owned fewer cars (and driven them less). Having fewer cars might have reduced the amount of suburban sprawl. But these are all simply speculations. It’s no doubt things would have developed differently, if only just more slowly. The sprawl may still have occurred for different reasons. The collective choices people make are complex and widely varied.

But don’t get me wrong, there may very well be grand benefits from this program. Even benefits that outweigh the costs. This would be very difficult to calculate in either direction at this point. My point is simply that sometimes when you fail to let the free-market solve problems and, instead, solve them by government fiat/force/edict, you may have much bigger (negative) consequences than ever considered. This could be an example.

Some of the suburban neighborhoods in the DC area are rail or bus-friendly, but others are not – to get from downtown DC to Kemp Mill, in Silver Spring, for instance, it’s rail to bus to walk 1 mile. That’s not a serious option for most people, and certainly it wouldn’t work for going shopping. So that neighborhood ends up being entirely car-based, and it’s a bedroom community for DC. I know a bunch of folks who live there, and many are not happy about the lack of transit options, and there are universal complaints about the length and quality of the commutes – but what’s the option?

If the Montgomery county planning folks had been a little more on the ball, they could have set up more effective bus service, or could have nudged the neighborhood a little bit closer toward the rail lines, or build some mondo garages at the rail stations, etc etc etc.

Sometimes the two sides compromise on stopping all construction. The resulting housing shortage is blamed on greedy landlords and is used as an excuse for more regulations.

That said I have no desire to inflict upon you, or any other confused person, city life.

I am no environmentalist. But I do wonder about the extent to which our involvement in the Middle East is a function of Eisenhower’s push to create a national highway system, from which suburbia was spawned.

The obvious riposte to an argument such as this is that the national highway system has, indirectly, created billions in wealth for millions of people: Home Depot and Wal Mart, among others, could not exist without the advanced transportation networks that Eisenhower’s project foisted upon America.