"Special forces have ziplined into Poway city hall. Under cover of night, Jerry Brown himself stands resolute on the prow of a PT boat, Sutter at his heel, motoring up the American River towards Folsom. There, an unhinged planning director has gone native, grilling freshly slaughtered meat in a backyard. From atop the Coit Tower, you can hear it: the strafing has begun in San Rafael.

May God have mercy on all our souls.

So implies the latest essay by Wendell Cox, “California Declares War on Suburbia,” published in this past Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. In it, Cox takes aim at Senate Bill 375, California’s landmark law promoting compact development patterns for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Any regular reader of CP&DR knows that over the past year the state’s “Big Four” metropolitan planning organizations--in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and the Bay Area--have been producing regional plans to comply with SB 375. Lamenting that 1.6 million people moved out of California in the 2000s, Cox contends that these plans will force housing prices up and thus drive more people out of the state.

SB 375 is naturally irresistible to Cox, the outspoken libertarian urban scholar who, on a roughly annual basis, announces the results of such-and-such new study or analysis that conclusively proves the evils of smart growth."

For the complete article, please click here. For the original article by Wendell Cox, please click here.