Quote of the day: Urban containment doesn't work

From a profile by Aaron Renn of demographer, Wendell Cox:

Wendell also denies that he’s anti-urban, but does believe development should be allowed on the fringes. “I love cities. I’ve lived in three of the four European and American megacities. Only London have I not lived in. I’ve lived in Paris, LA, and New York…I am not a proponent of low density or high density. I am a proponent of those arrangements that get us great affluence and less poverty. And that means low land prices. The big problem with urban planning in the United States…[is that] the competitive market for land has been absolutely destroyed on the urban fringe and we have seen unbelievable two and three times increases in the price of housing relative to incomes in some cities. I couldn’t care less quite frankly about sprawl or densification, though at the same time I do believe that in the United States we’ve made some major errors in failing to put some limits on the extent of sprawl, but that doesn’t mean we should be doing things like green belts or urban growth boundaries because those inherently destroy the market and destroy housing affordability.”

Absolutely - great profile piece too.

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