"...[M]any of the people who now grouse about sprawl themselves live in spacious houses, own an SUV, owe their good fortunes to the growth economy, and would be entirely outraged if there were not ample roads, stores, restaurant, and parking wherever they want. They wish everybody would get off the highway so that they can have the road to themselves." Gregg Easterbrook, "Suburban Myth," The New Republic, March 15, 1999

"It appears this [sprawl] message is being amplified by the confluence of two population segments. People in newly developed areas are clamoring for improved services, managed growth and some relief from the increasing burdens of auto dependency. People in built communities -- largely central cities, inner ring cities and urban counties -- want more help for their particular needs, like updated infrastructure and facilities, including rehabilitation of parks and libraries, and pedestrian- and neighborhood-oriented improvements. People in existing communities also want more attention to their needs now that we have spent more than two generations investing in and building up the suburbs." -- Honorable Paul Helmke, Mayor of Fort Wayne on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, 3/17/99.

"Evidence on suburbanization and low density development suggests suburbanization does not significantly threaten quality of life for most people..."
--"The Sprawling of America: In Defense of the Dynamic City," Report Number 251, Reason Public Policy Institute.

On Election Day, 1998, voters spoke loudly in favor of improving quality of life across the nation by overwhelmingly approving more than 200 initiatives to curb urban sprawl.  In New Jersey, a voter-approved constitutional amendment set aside $98 million for the next 30 years to help protect half of the state's developable land.  In California's Bay Area and Ventura County, voters approved a slew of urban growth boundaries. -- See "Livability at the Ballot Box: State and Local Referenda on Parks, Conservation, and Smarter Growth, Election Day 1998," by Phyllis Myers, State Resources Strategies

"The urban growth boundary forced construction to move within city limits on smaller lots. That brought more congestion to the city and sent housing prices soaring: Last year, Portland was the second least-affordable city in the country, behind San Francisco, according to an NAHB ranking." 
   -- "Smart Growth: Builders are Using Reason and Sound Statistics to Loosen the Current Stranglehold on Growth,"  Builder, July 1998.

"In recent boom years, the cost of housing has been sharply on the rise in Portland. Opponents of the growth boundary like to point out that Portland land prices, which were 19% below the U.S. average in 1985, were 6% above it in 1994, and Portland has gone from being the 55^th most affordable city to a ranking of 165^th out of 179. They are less likely, however, to point out that housing prices in some cities without growth boundaries have risen even more sharply than those in Portland. Indeed, the question of how much of Portland's increase is attributable to the growth boundary and how much stems from the city's prosperity is in dispute." 
 -- Christopher Leo, Mary Ann Beavis; Andrew Carver; Robyne Turner, "Is Urban Sprawl Back on the Political Agenda? Local Growth Control, Regional Growth Management, and Politics," Urban Affairs Review, Nov. 1998 Vol. 34 No. 2  p. 179

"The threat of sprawl is vastly overblown....The anti-sprawl crusaders...are myopically focusing on small corners of the country. Developed land accounts for less than 5 percent of the total land area in the continental United States. And for all the rhetoric about "vanishing farmland," the amount of farmland isn't declining significantly. The rate of farmland loss -- which is driven more by falling commodity prices than by development pressures -- is actually lower today than in the 1960s and '70s." -- Steven Hayward, "Suburban Legends," National Review, March 22, 1999.

"Yet the numbers ignore the fact that much of the agricultural land converted to urban uses is prime cropland located near cities. Of the total U.S. agricultural production, 58% comes from counties in, or adjacent to, metropolitan areas (Grossi 1993). In a study of 135 fast-growing counties (see Vesterby, Heimlich, and Krupa 1994), 43% of the counties' cropland was identified as prime (land most efficiently suited to producing row, forage, and fiber crops). Of the cropland already converted to urban use in the 135 counties by the 1970s, 40% was prime farmland. Although some cropland converted to urban uses can be replaced by forest and rangeland, the agricultural productivity of converted land is lost permanently. Once land is converted to an urban use, it tends to stay urban (Vesterby, Heimlich, and Krupa 1994)." -- Christopher Leo, et al., "Is Urban Sprawl Back on the Political Agenda? Local Growth Control, Regional Growth Management, and Politics," Urban Affairs Review, Nov. 1998 Vol. 34 No. 2  p. 179

"President Clinton and VP Gore announced January 12th a $1 billion per year program for land acquisition. It is called the "Lands Legacy Initiative" and will ultimately help convert the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) into an unappropriated trust fund....Land acquisition has always been used as a weapon to regulate and control private landowners" -- American Lands Right Association.

"It is ironic that developers use 'property rights' to counter efforts to combat sprawl. Most property owners in this country are homeowners, and many are watching their property values and property rights decline as uncontrolled growth clogs highways, damages the environment and undermines quality of life. Limits on sprawl promote the property rights of most property owners." 
   --Timothy Dowling, Chief Counsel, The Community Rights Counsel, 1/18/99. 

"Highway construction, mortgage policies, flood plain insurance, fragmented property tax systems, and favorable tax treatment towards house sales and mortgage all shape the "market" to encourage sprawl." Ed McMahon, Planner Commissioners Journal, Issue 26, page 4.

"The annual costs of building and maintaining highways and roads are paid by governments at all levels. In 1989, federal, state, and local governments spent roughly $33 billion constructing improving and rehabilitating highways, streets, and roads." James J. MacKenzie, Roger C. Dower and Donald D.T. Chen, The Going Rate: What It Really Costs to Drive (World Resources Institute, June 1992), section IV, page 9

"Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration mortgage guarantees are estimated to have financed more than a quarter of all single-family homes built in the postwar period." Pietro S. Nivolo, "Fat City: Understanding American Urban Form from a Transatlantic Perspective,"Brookings Review, page 17.