Good to see a shout out to Wendell Cox’s latest work via a column by Steven Greenhut in today’s Uptown paper of record. Cox, you’ll recall, came to Charlotte way back in 2000 to warn that CATS was seriously underestimating the cost of its light rail dreams. The Uptown crowd, of course, gave Cox’s warning the brush off.
Now Cox is back with a direct attack on the smarmy acolytes of Smart Growth and New Urbanism. His book War on the Dream makes clear that cities like Charlotte which embrace Smart Growth are headed for disaster:
The principal purpose of this book is to highlight the serious consequences of currently popular land-use policies. The urban planning community is implementing — and proposes to expand — strategies that are already seriously eroding housing affordability and intensifying traffic congestion. This could result in substantial economic reverses, because homeownership is so central to the creation of middle-income wealth and because traffic congestion reduces productivity.
Read it and then send a copy to your favorite Uptown drone. It’ll be the best gift they’ll ever receive — should they choose to accept it.
