The mail.(Letter to the editor)

Your article on sprawl ("How Sprawl Got a Bad Name," June) is so, so right and a pleasure to read. I have been a local councilman in Nottinghamshire, England for 40 years--40 years of hearing bawling opposition to any building anywhere. I have thought everything your writer expresses, but lacked his eloquence to use against wrongheadedness. False altruism masks fear and hatred of one's fellow man in these arguments. There is also greed by some for the benefits of an artificial shortage of building land. The advantages go to the haves, the disadvantages fall on the have nots.

Brian Gunn

Nottingham, England

In this month's TAE, the cover stories assert that American sprawl is the natural result of individual freedom, and that critics of sprawl are "snobs" who want to dictate Americans' land use choices. Not so! Land use regulation virtually dictates sprawl in most of America.

Zoning laws prohibit housing in many commercial zones, making it harder for people to walk to jobs and shops; mandate low density, making transit ridership impractical; require that businesses and apartment complexes be surrounded by parking, making pedestrian trips time-consuming; mandate that major commercial streets be so wide that most sane people will not cross them on foot; and mandate that intersections be few and far between, so pedestrians have to go out of their way to cross those eight-lane arterials or find nearby side streets.

If anyone is a "snob," it is the bureaucrats who created these regulations and, in doing so, effectively decided that non-drivers would be second-class citizens.

Michael Lewyn