Land-use bill advocates failed to supply concrete evidence of sprawl’s environmental costs

Evidence

To overcome so many obstacles, the supporters of land-use legislation surely needed to provide unforgettable examples of the hazards of unregulated development. The costs of inaction had to become at least as clear as the dangers of living with polluted air and water. Yet the witnesses in the congressional hearings on land use rarely provided detailed evidence of the environmental impact of sprawl. The evidence was there, but the advocates of regulation too readily assumed that the problem was obvious, and only the solution needed to be debated. In the words of the official report on the 1973 Senate hearings, “little discussion was directed to the question of whether or not a national land-use policy was desirable.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 985

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Land-use regulation failed because political actors wrongly equated it with antipollution lawmaking — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 980