20/20 On The 'Urban Sprawl Myth'

ABC News 20/20 reporter John Stossel offers his list of "things you may have been led to believe are true — but aren't." Number two on his list is the "myth that urban sprawl is ruining America."

"...Suburban sprawl is evil. The unplanned growth, cookie cutter developments is gobbling up all the space and ruining America. Right? Wrong... s open space disappearing in America? No, that's a total myth. More than 95 percent of the country is still undeveloped."

Stuart Sirota, a participant on an email listserv called the Practice of New Urbanism, writes: "I just got finished watching a special edition of 20/20, entirely devoted to John Stossell "dispelling"common myths and misconceptions in America. His #2 Top myth was "Sprawl", in which he used the most extreme libertarian arguments to dismiss sprawl as a problem (e.g. "95% of the US is undeveloped", "suburbia is what peopleprefer", "so-called sprawl creates opportunity for home ownership", etc,etc.) During the piece, Stossell included an extremely edited-down interview he conducted with ... [James Howard] Kunstler. The editingwas so badly butchered and unbalanced that it was obvious it was made tolook like Stossell had the upper hand over Jim in a debate over sprawl.Among the things he said, Stossel attacked Portland's urban growth boundary and berated Jim saying, "the rules that YOU people have imposed there have driven up land costs to the point where people can't afford to buy homes."