The frustrations of traffic congestion, loss of open land in urban areas, and many other ecological and economic concerns are driving a search for alternatives to urban sprawl. The challenge is to design development that is compact and sustainable, yet environmentally compatible despite our predominant car culture. The root of the problem lies in the space required by automobiles, which results in paved environments relatively devoid of landscaping-a significant drawback for residential development, which is pivotal to the to the use of public transit. Advanced transit engineering solutions alone are not enough to induce the public to choose more compact development for residential purposes. Solutions can be found in various forms of traffic restraints. These may be made more restrictive for higher densities, if accompanied by appropriate transit systems. In the case of new development, APM shuttles and loops, with their capabilities of short headways and around-the-clock operation, are ideal tools for creating urban infill with compact, auto-free, and landscaped communities. While in most areas of the U.S., the centrifugal momentum of urban sprawl continues to trump initiatives aimed at more compact development, it is a gross simplification to assume that sprawl is the inevitable outcome of technological progress, free choice and the free market. Notwithstanding the powerful, sprawl-inducing incentive of land speculation in outlying areas, wherein profits are often measured by a factor of five (RERC, 1974,) sprawl would have never occurred in its present and growing dimensions without massive government and corporate-sponsored investments and subsidies that have encouraged private motoring, and a tax code in which an anti-urban bias has played a central role. The past and present influence of these investments and subsidies, and the potential for shifting our future financial support toward new priorities, cannot be dismissed in any discussion of the subject. The "Iron Law of Urban Decay" is a creation of political choice and not of nature. The most effective tool we could employ for curbing urban sprawl would be a shift of government investments in urban infrastructure, away from highways and toward a variety of forms of public transit networks. If moratoria were placed on the construction of new highways and utility infrastructure on the urban fringe, sprawl would quickly begin to loose its momentum. This would need to be followed by changes in those zoning laws that currently literally force strip-commercial and large-lot-residential development. But these would be political, and not just planning design decisions, for land speculation, particularly in concert with new transportation access, has long been one of the most lucrative and politically protected enterprises of the powerful.
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