RALEIGH — North Carolina communities continue their flirtation with “Smart Growth” urban planning polices. From the outskirts of Charlotte (Davidson) to the outskirts of Raleigh (Cary) to the outskirts of sanity (Chapel Hill), the same bad ideas keep getting prettied up for the great unwashed and sold as the latest trend.
Only, elsewhere in the country where high-density development, mass transit, growth boundaries, and the like are coercively implemented, the results are undeniably adverse. The urban planners are showing themselves to be urban also-ranners. Their ideas fail.
The latest example can be found in San Jose, California, where a combination of urban growth boundaries and a rail system overlaid on top of a naturally low-density, highly elastic development pattern has led to unaffordable housing and unaffordable transit.
A new study by Adrian Moore, director of the Reason Public Policy Institute, chronicles the damage. The study found that the growth boundaries helped push housing prices up by an astronomical 936 percent from 1976 to 2001 — the highest increase in the nation during that span.
And instead of expanding the freeways that most people use, San Jose opted for a light rail system that is incompatible with its design and commuting patterns. As a result, San Jose’s light rail system is the least productive in the nation and its operating costs are more than twice the national average for similar light rail systems.
Light rail carries just .17 percent, less than one percent, of total motorized passenger miles in San Jose. Gosh, even Charlotte’s upcoming rail system might beat that mark.
So, North Carolina policymakers, do you know the way to San Jose?
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.