P. J. O'Rourke Writes about Urban Sprawl

• The September issue of Delta Airlines' in-flight magazine has an article by New York Times reporter Tim Egan singing the praises of Portland's planning.
• The September issue of United Airlines' in-flight magazine has an article by Charles Lockwood decrying sprawl and promoting smart growth.

The VP has been sounding like a mom trapped in a Honda Odyssey with the third-grade soccer team that forgot to take its Ritalin. Here he is, earlier this year, announcing a 'livability agenda' at the White House: 'The freedom of the open road can explode into communting-induced road rage.' An interesting comment from somebody who goes everywhere at fifty miles per hour in a siren-blaring motorcade with an armed escort. In my own suburban Washington, DC, neighborhood, I've seen Al create a lot of road rage just by going out for a spin. 'A gallon of gas can be used up just driving to ge ta gallon of milk,' said Gore. If I had known that was where the Veep was headed in his motorcade -- which woke the baby, scared the dog and created a huge traffic jam on Connecticut Avenue -- I would have gladly walked over to where the Gores live, at the Naval Observatory, and brought them a couple of quarts of Lo-Fat. The Naval Observatory, by the way, sprawls all over Northwest Washington but provides little urban green space, because it's closed to the public.

also laments "suburbs so distant from commercial centers that if a family wants an affordable house, a commuting parent often gets home too late to read a child a bedtime story." Or maybe Gore is proposing shroter versions of bedtime stories. Which is fine with me. " 'Smart-growth' policies kept the three little pigs waiting for months to get building permits. So the wolf ate them all. Now go to sleep."

The Solon-like city-council persons of Portland, Oregon, have had an urban-growth boundary in place for a quarter-century. It's an interesting concept: Keep your figure by encasing yourself in concrete, then eat what you want. And it's caused some problems, such as a doubling in home prices, the forced exit of poor people.

Later, O'Rourke cites worries that sprawl is paving over America and notes that,

If we ever bothered to get off I-80 at someplace other than those factory-outlet stores, we'd know this isn't true. The Department of Agriculture classifies 95.2 percent of the land area of the United States as undeveloped. And that's not including Alaska.

Between 1985 and 1996, the National Park System grew by 1.7 million acres. Should we be worried about park sprawl? Pretty soon we won't be able to go anywhere without being pestered by those rustic wooden signs saying NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES and that stupid bear who keeps trying to put out my cigarette.

But halting America's suburban sprawl by leaving your car on the median strip and moving downtown is not going to help. Randal O'Toole, an economist with the Cato Institute libertarian think tank (libertarians think Al Gore should carry a couple of Secret Service agents around on his back for a week and then tell voters what a terrible thing the automobile is), has done some research on the subject. It turns out that the number of vehicle miles traveled actually increases with urban density. Somehow that 'gallon of gas . . . to get a gallon of milk' is burned even when the milk is brought right to the apartment door by that strange and shifty-looking kid who delivers things from the delicatessen. This makes sense, if you think about it. How did that milk get to the city? You never see a cow in a New York dairy cooler. And consider the ten percent bike-and-hike brat-transport problem: You may live right on Fifth Avenue, but the streets are scary, the Schwinn's been swiped, and the precious moppet is sure to get lost in the subway. So he goes everywhere by car -- if not in Mom's Cherokee, then in a yellow cab.

Sad to say, I don't usually read Rolling Stone. Thanks to Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute for alerting me to O'Rourke's article.