Smart Growth Not So Lite

The Smart Growth folks can be hard to pin down. Sometimes they plug tough top-down land use controls. Sometimes they claim that they simply want large-lot and similar requirements out of the way so that innovative designs that respond to markets can come to pass.

Paul Weyrich takes them at their word, that it's the latter, and endorses a conservative New Urbanism.

Trouble is that when one looks at the charter of the Congress of the New Urbanism, one cannot square the stated ambitions with the simple idea that government simply has to get out of the way so that developers can cater to markets.