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fighting sprawl

Your beef should with your politicians who make corrupt deals with developers to promote smart growth. When individuals are allowed to develop their own land, and individual lots are sold for individuals to develop, you get reasonable densities and usually the character and charm that an individual can apply to their property.

When you "fight sprawl" you are allowing the government to control the housing market and development and you tempt elected and other officials to corruption when they start making sweetheart deals with large developers. New London Connecticut is a prime example.

In California, "green developers" cut deals with corrupt politiicans and shut the individual single family home buyer out of the market for land (not pre-built homes).Because the government is controlling the housing market, individuals who wish to purchase homes have to buy homes on the postage stamp sized lots that the government considers appropriate density. There is no choice in these developments if a person wants 1/3, 1/2 or a one acre lot.

If you love your county and the land you live on, you would oppose the high densities that smart growth requires. High densities create more pollution, more congestion and less privacy than most Americans want. By creating unnatural "edges" around cities and neigborhoods (smart growth principles do not allow town to merge into country but must have well defined boundaries) you create a fortess look and psychology for the town or neighborhood,rather than a more natural blending of the two. This psychological feel is intended by smart growth developers, because their goal is behavior modification.

Smart growth promoted by government is out of place in a free country populated by free people. It is very much in place with the Soviet Union and collective centralized government control of housing.