ABSTRACT
The spread of a new kind of government regulation through the country's economic life has provoked growing doubts about the goals of regulation and its cost to society. Most of the new regulatory agencies enjoy considerably more authority than their predecessors in an adversary setting that discourages anything like the old compromises. State and local governments across the country have joined the trend toward tighter regulation by putting into place a variety of new laws, permit requirements, and review procedures for land development and housing construction. What are the environmental goals that justify the new growth-management controls? Environmental activists are mostly well-educated, well-to-do professionals and executives who can afford to live in tightly regulated suburbs. By 1975 half the states had begun to require environmental-impact reviews for at least some private housing developments, while suburbs by the hundreds rushed to apply new growth-management techniques.
