ABSTRACT
One of the main goals of smart growth is to save people money and time while cleaning the air by reducing the amount of driving people have to do, so a brief review of smart growth's effects on transportation is worthwhile. Basic economic theory says that growth-management and smart-growth constraints on housing supply should lead to increases in housing prices. Smart-growth policies effectively constrain the ability of homebuilders to meet the demand for new homes. Smart growth and other growth-management policies can greatly increase housing prices in the regions and communities that adopt them. Higher housing prices benefit the residents of regions adopting smart-growth policies who already own their own homes. Yet, from society's viewpoint this is at best a zero-sum game, since every family that sells its home for a higher price is offset by another family that must pay more for that home.
