Improving air quality has been a major rationale for growth management and other anti-sprawl measures, often by quoting Los Angeles. But air quality in Los Angeles has been improving dramatically year by year, even during its rapid growth phase of the 1980s. There were only seven smog alerts in the 1996 smog season compared with 121 in 1977. The telecommunications revolution is allowing jobs to move to where people want to live, unlike in the past when people followed the jobs. An increasing proportion of mobile households choose to live in high amenity-low density settings.
Most job growth is now in rural areas.
Growth gets a bad rap, both when it happens and when it stops. In either case, intelligent discussions must take place if sound policy choices are to be made. Getting the facts right is a good beginning. So much of the so-called New Urbanism and the compact city movement rests on wishful thinking of social engineers who try to override individual preferences.