[dufekin]

Regulations designed to stop sprawl and implement smart growth instead generally encourage and even cause sprawl. A city, for example, may decree a minimum lot size of 10 acres with the ostensible purpose of preserving farmland on its fringes. Developers then either use 10-acre lots when they otherwise might put a house on half an acre, or they place neighborhoods beyond the city limits in jurisdictions with more favorable regulations. Both these strategies create sprawl and all its attendant problems.

Families generally want a house to call their own in an area with low crime and good schools, preferably (especially in this era of high gasoline prices) as close to work as possible. If the cities decay into gang-infested ghettos with dysfunctional schools, then non-criminal families of sufficient economic means will move to areas with performing schools outside the gangs' usual range of operations. Most families generally prefer to relocate close, say, three miles away; however, if "green space" and restrictive zoning regulations effectively disallow affordable (reasonably priced) housing within a 30-mile radius of gang central, then families will relocate to the fringes and bear the congestion and commute.

[squarebarb]

That's exactly it.

Nobody wants to live in the inner cities and expose their children to crime, the homeless, high taxes, and wierdo homosexual educational agendas.

Instead of fighting it politically, they just move away.