Dirt Into Dollars

American cities have always been about growth. A hundred years ago, boosters organized boomtowns to exploit resources like minerals and cattle. Today, growth coalitions design New Urbanist towns to maximize value while deflecting political backlash by husbanding resources like farmland and road capacity. But from Sunbelt cities to suburbs everywhere, growth is the logic, the politics, and the policy of American places. Mark Alan Hughes is a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and a senior fellow of the Robert A. Fox Program in Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania. This article draws from previous research conducted with Rebekah Cook-Mack with the financial support of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the William Penn Foundation.