The Washington Monthly

January 8, 2004

SMART GROWTH....Via Blake Hounshell, this article in USA Today a few days ago is pretty interesting. Apparently the building trade unions are starting to embrace growth controls:

A study released last month by Good Jobs First, a non-profit research center in Washington, D.C., found that over a 10-year period, metro areas with growth controls had nearly a third more construction than areas without such policies. Rehabilitating buildings, developing idle urban land and reclaiming toxic sites for building — all smart-growth priorities — were more labor-intensive than sprawl, the study found.

....Along with arguments that it creates more jobs, smart growth complements other union priorities. Labor fights "big-box" retailers such as Wal-Mart because they're non-union. Labor's smart-growth allies blame those companies for hastening sprawl.

I don't have anything especially insightful to say about this, but it's both interesting and counterintuitive. I wonder how much impact it will have?

—Kevin Drum 2:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks

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