Berkeley Planning Journal

The recent upsurge of interest in metropolitan regionalism-catalyzed by concerns about growth management, ecological sustainability, and suburban-central city equity disparities and found in the writings of Peter Calthorpe, Anthony Downs, Myron Orfield, Douglas Porter, and David Rusk--often focuses on the question of how planners can help create a more compact, transit-oriented metropolis. To many this seems to set an impossible goal. Indeed, a few observers such as Peter GordoJ:i and Haryr Richardson even argue that compact development is not necessary, believing that plenty of land and resources exist for suburban development and that traffic and efficiency problems are benign. A much larger number of planners believe that suburban sprawl does jeopardize equity, environmental, and even economic objectives, but have little hope of changing current land use and transportation patterns anytime soon.