The Antiplanner

The Compact City Myth

18th November 2009

The Compact City Myth

Can smart growth — compact development combined with alternatives to the automobile — play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Five recent studies — from the Urban Land Institute, Center for Clean Air Policy, Brookings Institution, Cambridge Systematics, and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) — argue that it can.

Today, the Cato Institute releases a review of these five reports that shows that smart growth is an expensive and risky way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will take decades to implement and even longer to determine whether or not it is working.

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