[Dan from Michigan]

I'm a little biased. When I was younger, Livingston County was an area with forests, farms, small towns, and country living. I used to be able to take my shotgun across the street from my dad's house and go hunting. Now, I'd hear the sound of sirens, and will be getting a nice DNR type ticket for firing a weapon 400 yards from an occupied dwelling.

I don't want to be the next Oakland County.

[Diddle E. Squat]

But increasing suburbanization is the price of the free market, growth, private property rights, and economic prosperity. A landowner has a right to develop his property to its best and highest use(subject to nuisance spillover issues that would effect neighboring properties), zoning and other regulatory measures often restrict that. Or say a town zones for low density, that just pushes growth to other areas, because demand is still there as the population grows and more move up the economic ladder and are able to afford the single-family detached home in a safe neighborhood.

The liberal solution is to regulate and take away a city's ability to choose how it wants to develop, and to restrict supply beyond whatever boundary they decide upon. The conservative solution is to let the free market work, in that housing will be built in a manner most economical to the situation. At some point commute distance become so great that demand for housing in the outlying areas drops to near nil the further out one goes. But if demand is still there, than businesses move to the outer areas, affordable housing is again in reach, and the development boundary extends outward. Maybe we don't like that, but to me its preferable to have this and local control than the liberal solution where far fewer are able to afford their own home or even a choice of how and where to live.

Of course there is another partial solution. If the central cities would adopt conservative principles of efficient and limited gov't, and allow the free market to work without interference, the central cities could revitalize far quicker and draw more back in. Not everyone is looking for a large yard suburban home, but most ARE looking for safe neighborhoods, reasonable tax rates, and many are looking for decent schools. Outward sprawl is simply the market reacting to corruption, waste, degredation, racial polarization, crime, poor schools, etc. And even now, many metro areas are seeing central city revitalizations, the market still squeezes through. Maybe not as much in Detroit, but look at Manhattan, Hoboken, Atlanta, Dallas, Fort Worth, even Houston is booming inside the loop.