In 1902, the great socialist Eugene Debs proclaimed Chicago was too crowded. That was the common view of progressive-era urban reformers who saw firsthand how oppressive it was to be crowded into tenements. But now that the drift to the outer ring has become a mass movement, it tends to destroy the value of both environments without producing anything but a dreary substitute, devoid of form. Environmental arguments take over Most suburbanites believe their well-kept homes and lawns do possess a definite form. As a result, less obviously class-biased arguments have since become more popular.
Sprawl is alleged to be inefficient or environmentally damaging.
That would certainly explain the conspicuous failure of the anti-sprawl movement to define what it's against. It would also explain why 40 years and more of anti-sprawl agitation has accomplished so little. Whatever we may say in public, when we plan our own lives, most of us agree with Debs. In an era when everyone feeds off the government table, it would be astonishing had this majority not written some freebies for themselves into the law. Anti-sprawl activists repeatedly assert that if sprawl subsidies were abolished, sprawl would be too, but wishing will not make it so.