> But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the subu

> But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the suburban school districts, it can be all kinds of things. And yeah, if people had control, the suburbs wouldn't sprawl forever. It would be just their nice suburban neighborhood and everybody else could be jammed into the city. That's pretty much it. Everyone who lives in a suburb likes a different subset of suburban features, and that all aggregates together to result in the kinds of suburbs we have. It makes sense to consider zoning law to be a reflection of people's preferences rather than a constraint on them. In many cases zoning laws are the result of established homeowners trying to preserve the suburban features they like.