Toronto Star: The Apostle of Sprawl

Is sprawl good for us, as Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau and Cato Institutes would have us believe?

In the March 8 edition of the Toronto Star, writer Christopher Hume explores the mental health effects of live in both suburbia and in densely-populated urban areas.

Hume writes about O'Toole's belief that Americans demand suburban sprawl because of our deep-seated needs for safety and privacy.

But research shows that the long commutes, loss of free time and loss of social capital can be damaging to suburbanites' mental health.

In making comparisons to urban living, Hume seems to go to great lengths to stress the social dislocation that occurs in large, dense, low-income housing projects - even arguing that, even though many of these blighted towers are being razed for mixed-income, medium density developments, residents continue to suffer from stress, anxiety and depression because they remain poor.

Completely missing from the conversation is the idea that one can live in a dense urban district and not be impoverished.

The commonly held and widely shared idea that "urban = poor" is absolutely killing our cities by causing disinvestment, avoidance, or, at its worst, disinterest.