Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism Kindle Edition

This is a thoughtful and though-provoking book that clearly took years of work on the part of Mr. Ross, about a subject that has received extensive treatment. In fact, I picked it up somewhat hesitantly given all I know and have read already. I was richly rewarded for taking the time and effort to read it.

First, Mr. Ross's knowledge base is encyclopedic, and he deftly integrates insights from many leading thinkers in the field. He is able to build on the large body of literature thanks to years of study.

The book is also informed by his own experiences here in Maryland, promoting rail transportation. I have met many of the people he acknowledges at the end of the book, including Action Committee for Transit's Harry Sanders (although I didn't know he had sadly passed away). These activists, and others across the nation, inform the narrative. Development rules that restrict freedom (e.g., exclusionary zoning) and put a heavy thumb-on-the-scale in favor of a "windshield" view of planning (e.g., parking minimums) won't disappear without effort by coalitions and communities interested in a bigger picture.

In short, Mr. Ross knows that good policy can only prevail when undergirded by good politics. That means achieving smarter community development isn't just an inside game for planners and engineers, it must be complemented by an outside game which involves a larger circle of citizens (e.g., tenants and not just landowners).

This is what breathes life into a narrative that also contains plenty of wonkery for those of us who are really into that kind of thing. It adds warmth to the light he sheds.

I would have given it more stars but for the fact that I think it could have benefited from some trimming, and that I am not wholly convinced by the argument in his last chapter that rail belongs at the center of any smart growth renaissance (although I am a big fan too).

Like many other books, this book explains the role of government subsidies and regulating in creating automobile-dependent suburban sprawl. Nevertheless, this book is unique in a few respects:

1. Unlike other books focusing on suburbia, this book discusses NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) resistance to infill development. NIMBYism creates an artificial shortage of urban housing, thus forcing the middle class into suburbia and raising rents for the poor. Ross suggests that NIMBYism is not always motivated by purely tangible concerns such as traffic and property values. Instead, homeowners crave social status- which can be retained not only by excluding the poor, but also through a collective belief that their neighborhood has a unique "brand." So where people believe their neighborhood is unique and unconventional, they will preserve their social status by objecting to development even if it is manifestly harmless or raises property values.

2. Ross discusses the essential dishonesty of zoning law. In theory, zoning is supposed to involve neutral regulation for the public good. But in heavily regulated places, it is really "tollbooth zoning"- a developer has to pay off NIMBYs to get anything built, thus ensuring that only the deepest-pocketed landowners can build anything. Perhaps the best chapter in the book is Chapter 12, which unmasks the essential fraudulence of most public discussion of land use regulation. For example, cities claim that zoning is designed to keep out "incompatible" land uses. But as Ross points out, reliance on compatibility creates a circular argument- whatever cities keep out is by definition incompatible. NIMBYs claim to be keeping out undesirable impacts- but this word conflates "purely psychological desires, among them the wish to keep away from people with lower incomes, with physical detriments like smell and shade."

While one wouldn't normally expect that a book on land use planning would be interesting to wide audience, I found it extremely fascinating. As a political science major, the book providing a clear explanation for why people act the way they do in the public sphere. Normal economic explanations fall by the wayside as people are motivated more by perceived status than either economic productivity or even comfortable living. It a sad commentary on our human existence that we let racism and snobbery stand in the way of our economic well-being. I hope policy makers and anyone who cares about how and where we live in cities and and suburb will read this book. Ross is not some misguided environmentalist or pretentious liberal asking for us to sacrifice on behalf of some lofty principle. Instead his prescriptions are for the world that we want to live in like walkable communities, nice neighborhoods, reasonable commuting options, and a comfortable home.

Benjamin Ross became an expert on suburban sprawl as an advocate for a streetcar line in Montgomery County, Maryland. But this book shows that he has gone far, far beyond this presumably parochial issue. Using hundreds of examples from the earliest days of suburbia (U.S. and British style) up to today, he convinces one that what we know as sprawl is a consequence (today) of peoples' quest to enhance or maintain their social status vis a vis others in their vicinity, coupled with (yesterday) misbegotten ideas of what cities were likely to become which spurred policies that starved center cities of the resources to maintain themselves.

He highlights peoples' quest to maintain status, even though doing so directly and immediately damages their economic interest by depressing property values.

Everyone who cares about cities should read this work.