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Its more than just zoning codes that go into sprawl. There are also the highway design manuals, fire codes, and similar items. It is actually illegal to build a traditional town because it violates the highway design manual and doesn't allow fire/rescue vehicles to barrel around corners at full speed.

And as you note, there are social factors weighing heavily in favor of breaking up old neighborhoods for political reasons. This is still happening in Philadelphia, and it has been proceeding with a vengence since Clinton's accession to office in 1993 with the housing policies dictated by Section 8 starting under his administration - namely flooding stable Republican/Catholic/Conservative Protestant neighborhoods with criminals and undesirables through this program.

I don't buy the liberal arguement that the cure for sprawl is more planning. The cure for sprawl is an end to planning and letting people and developers use their own land however they wish. Most Americans I think, for example, would not build a neighborhood and then exclude Churches from being built as part of it. Zoning codes do. So does giving other people vetos over the plans of developers and homeowners.

The biggest single problem though, is that instead of growth through the founding of more towns and villages within the countryside, we see growth by the elimination of the countryside. Who ever has heard of a real new town being developed recently (not just some amorphous suburb, but a real town)? I cannot figure out why this is, but there has to be something that has forced such a drastic change in the human environment.

I agree with your concluding comment that there was a divergence at some point - I would by nature prefer the life of a small town or village to ever-expanding citie-states. For others, though, the anonymoty and diversity of cities provide a false but attractive sense of freedom.

I still believe, though, that the appeal of cheaper housing through economies of scale had more to do with the growth of massive box subdivisions than a central plan. And further growth is driven by the need for available land just beyond the city's edge - a constantly moving horizon. It is also difficult to ignore industrial change in the transition from rural village to central city. Jobs are the primary factor in deciding where to live for most people.

My only faint hope is that the long-promised flexibility of communications technology, along with the loss of manufacturing, will allow for a gradual revival of village living.

Given your profession, I presume you are far more familiar with the various ordinances and codes which regulate development than I am. I'd like to encourage you to develop your line of thought here into an article for publication. Maybe not for the ULI newsletter, but it would be a worthwhile exercise in any event. I'm having some difficulty seeing a common, nefarious agenda linking highways and emergency codes in a common effort to atomize human life, but I'd be interested in reading anything you can suggest on the subject.

It's been some time since I've read Marx, but my recollection is that his primary complaint against the cities of his day was the lack of services provided to the working class. Yet he still praised them for curing "rural idiocy."

Anyway, I think my upstairs neighbors have finally reached cessation, perhaps I can get some sleep now.