Second, the composition of schools affects metropolitan growth. Their departure further weakens declining communities and creates more pressures on rapidly developing outer suburbs. Federal and state spending programs, tax expenditures, and regulatory and administrative policies shape metropolitan growth patterns. Most highway funds in Greater Washington have been invested in the growing western suburbs, hastening decentralization without resolving the traffic problems faced by older communities. Although substantial resources have gone to expanding the area's Metrorail system, the benefits from this investment have been blunted by the rapidly decentralizing economy.
Federal programs can also exacerbate the concentration of the poor.
The housing voucher program, which now subsidizes rents for thousands of low-income families in Greater Washington, is administered by 10 separate bureaucracies. Although the housing market is fundamentally metropolitan in nature, such governmental fragmentation makes it hard for low-income recipients to understand, let alone exercise choice in, that market. The current smart growth discussion must move beyond questions of traffic congestion and the loss of open space to take into account the full array of forces that drive growth in some parts of a region and not in others. To curb sprawl and balance growth, regions must wrestle, first of all, with the problem of affordable housing. The challenge is particularly vexing because of persistent racial and ethnic discrimination in the marketplace.