Poorer areas decline for lack of reinvestment and infrastructure funding. Combine that with Byzantine taxing and subsidies and we are always playing catch-up to deal with growth. This is how urban sprawl really happens. But surely there was. There were many in fact.
People like and have huge investments in their low-density, car addicted lifestyles.
But only one had the temerity to stand up and address it publicly. At least someone was willing to tell the truth about it, because he is exactly correct that our current approach to development has been to create urban sprawl. This dynamic is what has pushed the county to the lead the nation in the number of threatened and endangered species. People push out and nature and farmlands lose. Habitat is destroyed, pollution outputs and demands on the watershed increase.