Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money

By Joel S. Hirschhorn, Ph.D. Sterling & Ross Publishers, 2005, 400 pp., hardcover $25.95 When a big idea bursts upon the American scene, it often takes two different forms: first a carefully argued book for serious readers, and second, a vastly simplified message aimed at a mass audience. Last year the public health and urban planning experts Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson produced a fine example of the former: Urban Sprawl and Public Health, a gracefully written book that identified Smart Growth, and by extension New Urbanism [reviewed in the October 2004 New Urban News], as good methods for protecting the physical and mental health of millions of people. This year, Joel S. Hirschhorn gives us Sprawl Kills, which makes some of the same points, but in much cruder fashion. “Sprawl creates a host of unhealthy behaviors,” says Hirschhorn, who served as director of environment, energy, and natural resources for the National Governors Association. “Preventable deaths from the sprawl sedentary lifestyle are five times greater than deaths from microbial agents, like bacteria and viruses, more than three times greater than deaths from alcohol, and two times that of deaths from firearms, illicit use of drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, and motor vehicle accidents.” Much of Hischhorn’s argument boils down to the idea that if Americans built walkable, better-connected communities, people would be more physically active — and less subject to stress, disease, and premature death. That may well be true for quite a few Americans, but Hirschhorn often pushes his arguments beyond their limits. Sometimes he sounds like a conspiracy theorist. “On the side of sprawl is much of the retail industry that feeds off roads, especially national fast food and big box chains,” Hirschhorn declares. “Do not ignore the pharmaceutical industry that benefits from selling drugs to manage the ill effects of physical inactivity and sprawl stress. Home lawn care businesses also benefit from sprawl. Then there are all the industries making electronic products for making home refuges more comfortable for couch potatoes.” Hirschhorn may be right that these industries benefit from the automobile-dependent, single-use development pattern that has been the norm for several decades. But I have a hard time believing that companies like Merck, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly play a role in transportation and community planning decisions. And yet, Hirschhorn does focus a spotlight on an important matter: the question of who is opposing smart growth and New Urbanism, and why. Sprawl does not come about simply because of “the market,” as its apologists claim. Sprawl is, to a considerable extent, authorized and encouraged by government policies — on road-building, sewer system extension, school construction, and by a plethora of planning and zoning decisions. Powerful interests — including conventional developers, homebuilders, real estate investors, and the auto industry — profit from the prevailing system, and use their clout to get what they want. Hirschhorn peppers his opening chapter with examples of developers, builders, and others using political contributions and other instruments of influence. “Corruption is a tool of the sprawl industry,” he charges. He contends that many of the conservative and libertarian institutes and foundations that attack smart growth and New Urbanism — such as the Buckeye Institute, Cascade Policy Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, John Locke Foundation, National Center for Policy Analysis, Political Economy Research Center, Reason Foundation, and Thoreau Institute — are “shills for the sprawl industry and property owners hoping to cash in on sprawl development.” He points out that when Wendell Cox, a prominent critic of smart-growth policies and an advocate for roads, wrote a paper associating smart growth with Communist regimes in Russia and Romania, “it was published by the Heartland Institute that receives funding from the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Asphalt Institute, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and many home builders.” Does this prove that Cox was bought? No. Does it suggest that institutes and foundations of this sort may be mouthpieces for economic interests that profit from sprawl? It does look that way. But Hirschhorn has a habit of overstating his case. Too bad. I’d like to know the inside story of the “think tanks” that seem so opposed to healthier living patterns.