Now this might seem to be a conservation success, and I must concede that I enjoy the open space that is available on this tract. But I cannot help thinking that the houses that would have been built there will now pop up on the three-acre lots in the more rural parts of town. By foreclosing development of land that was close in, we have probably induced development in areas less environmentally sensitive but in a pattern that can only be described as rural sprawl. The buyers of homes in those rural places will have more land around their homes, but, if the market is any test, they attach very little value to the extra acres. Here I advert to the more thoughtful anti-sprawl arguments.
People spread out in low-density areas remain strangers to their neighbors.
It is harder to get much sense of community if one lives in a spacious version of Ted Kaczynski s Montana cabin. Moreover, excessively low-density metropolitan areas lose much of the agglomeration economies that make cities productive places in which to work. Establish an urban growth boundary around the compact area and eliminate building outside it. Even if our Constitution did not protect at least some property rights from public expropriation, this would be problematic. To foreclose development in the rural areas would cartelize the housing market.