CHAPTER 6

Market Urbanism: Pro-Market Solutions

To Anti-Market Sprawl

Abstract This chapter summarizes the market-oriented reforms pro-

posed in earlier chapters. The chapter proposes making cities more
attractive by reducing highway spending, increasing parents’ educational
options, and deregulating urban zoning. The chapter also proposes that
government make cities and suburbs more pedestrian-friendly by elim-
inating minimum parking and setback requirements, allowing narrower
streets, abolishing anti-jaywalking laws, and allowing children to walk to
school and other destinations.

Keywords Roads
Parental Choice
Single-Use Zoning
Wide Streets

At the start of this book, I promised to discuss anti-sprawl strategies

that make government less expensive or less intrusive. I have done so
throughout this book; this chapter is merely a summary. In particular, I
propose:
*Reductions in government highway spending. In particular, gov-
ernment should stop building city-to-suburb highways, and should
stop widening existing roads in still-developing suburbs. Limits on
sprawl-generating highway spending would not eliminate existing
sprawl, but would at least make it harder for government to create
new sprawl.

© The Author(s) 2017 149

M. Lewyn, Government Intervention and Suburban Sprawl,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95149-9_6
150 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION AND SUBURBAN SPRAWL

*Policies designed to increase parental choice in education, so that

families could live in cities while avoiding urban public schools with
poor reputations. Such policies could take the form of traditional vou-
cher systems that allow urban families to attend private schools at lower
cost, open enrollment policies that allow urban children to attend
suburban schools, or expansion of charter and exam schools so that
parents might have better options within urban public school systems.
All of these policies would make government less intrusive, in the sense
that parents would be able to choose the right schools for their children
without feeling forced to move to suburbs with prestigious public
schools. However, some of these policies might increase education
budgets.
*State legislation that partially revokes zoning enabling acts. In parti-
cular, I propose that in the most expensive large cities, states should
prohibit cities from limiting residential density, and should prohibit zon-
ing laws that exclude any form of housing from areas already zoned for
housing or nonpolluting commercial uses. This reform would both make
government less intrusive (by allowing more private housing construction)
and reduce housing costs.
*Even where housing is not unusually expensive, state governments
should limit density regulation in order to allow the creation of more
walkable neighborhoods. If this was the case, developers would be free
to build neighborhoods compact enough to support walking, bicycling
and public transit. In general, states should prohibit density regulation
with certain exceptions (such as rural or environmentally sensitive
areas).
*Single-use zoning need not be completely eliminated, because small
single-use residential zones can still be within walking distance of com-
merce. However, multifamily housing should generally be allowed in
nonindustrial zones, and small-scale retail (such as corner stores and very
small restaurants) should generally be allowed in residential zones. In
other words, landowners should be free to mix housing and commerce
to a greater extent than is currently the case.
*Minimum parking requirements and setback requirements should be
abolished. Abolition of these rules would give landowners more freedom
to decide what to do with their land, reduce housing costs by allowing
landowners to build more housing with less parking, make cities more
 6 MARKET URBANISM: PRO-MARKET SOLUTIONS TO ANTI-MARKET SPRAWL 151

compact and thus more walkable, and enable pedestrians to reach their
destinations without having to cross a sea of parking.
*Government generally should not build or mandate streets wider than
four lanes, or longer than 600 feet; similarly, government should not favor
cul-de-sacs. Wide streets make walking dangerous by enabling fast traffic;
cul-de-sacs and long blocks make walking uncomfortable by forcing
pedestrians into a few major streets rather than giving them a wide variety
of travel options.
*Laws against jaywalking should be eliminated. Such laws make walk-
ing unpleasant and unsafe—unpleasant because these laws force pedes-
trians to worry about the risks of legal liability whenever they cross the
street, and unsafe because midblock crossings are sometimes safer than
crossing at lights or crosswalks.
*States should save families from frivolous child neglect prosecutions
by explicitly allowing school-age children to walk on their own. Currently,
some local police and bureaucrats interpret vague “child neglect” statues
as a command that children may never be allowed more than a few feet
from their parents. Such behavior reduces parents’ freedom to bring up
their children as they see fit, impairs child health by forcing children into
inactivity, and increases other social harms (such as car crashes and vehicle
pollution) related to automobile-dependent development.