Preamble:

The unprecedented increase in prosperity over the last 25 years has created a large and growing upper middle class in America.  New modes of work and leisure combined with population growth have fueled successive waves of suburban expansion in the 20th century. Technological progress is likely to increase housing choice and community diversity even further in the 21st century, enabling more people to live and work outside the conventional urban forms of our time. These choices will likely include low-density, medium-density, and high-density urban forms.  This growth brings rapid change to our communities, often with negative side effects, such as traffic congestion, crowded public schools, and the loss of familiar open space.  All of these factors are bound up in the controversy that goes by the term “sprawl.”  The heightened public concern over the character of our cities and suburbs is a healthy expression of citizen demand for solutions that are responsive to our changing needs and wants.  Yet tradeoffs between different policy options for addressing these concerns are poorly understood.  Productive solutions to public concerns will adhere to the following fundamental principles.

Principles for Livable Cities:

1. The most fundamental principle is that, absent a material threat to other individuals or the community, people should be allowed to live and work where and how they like.

2. Prescriptive, centralized plans that attempt to determine the detailed outcome of community form and function should be avoided. Such "comprehensive" plans interfere with the dynamic, adaptive, and evolutionary nature of neighborhoods and cities.

3. Densities and land uses should be market driven, not plan driven. Proposals to supersede market-driven land use decisions by centrally directed decisions are vulnerable to the same kind of perverse consequences as any other kind of centrally planned resource allocation decisions, and show little awareness of what such a system would have to accomplish even to equal the market in effectiveness.

4. Communities should allow a diversity in neighborhood design, as desired by the market. Planning and zoning codes and building regulations should allow for neotraditional neighborhood design, historic neighborhood renovation and conversion, and other mixed-use development and the more decentralized development forms of recent years.

5. Decisions about neighborhood development should be decentralized as far as possible. Local neighborhood associations and private covenants are superior to centralized or regional government planning agencies.

.6 Local planning procedures and tools should incorporate private property rights as a fundamental element of development control. Problems of incompatible or conflicting land uses will be better resolved through the revival of common law principles of nuisance than through zoning regulations which tend to be rigid and inefficient.

7. All growth management policies should be evaluated according to their cost of living and "burden-shifting" effects. Urban growth boundaries, minimum lot sizes, restrictions on housing development, restrictions on commercial development, and other limits on freely functioning land markets that increase the burdens on lower income groups must be rejected.

8. Market-oriented transportation strategies should be employed, such as peak period road pricing, HOT lanes, toll roads, and de-monopolized mass transit. Monopoly public transit schemes, especially fixed rail transit that lacks the flexibility to adapt to the changing destinations of a dynamic, decentralized metropolis, should be viewed skeptically.

9. The rights of present residents should not supersede those of future residents. Planners, citizens, and local officials should recognize that "efficient" land use must include consideration for household and consumer wants, preferences, and desires. Thus, growth controls and land-use planning must consider the desires of future residents and generations, not solely current residents.

10. Planning decisions should be based upon facts, not perceptions. A number of the concerns raised in the "sprawl" debate are based upon false perceptions. The use of good data in public policy is crucial to the continued progress of American cities and the social advance of all its citizens.

For more information and background on these principles, see A Guide to Smart Growth: Shattering Myths, Providing Solutions, edited by Jane S. Shaw and Ronald D. Utt, (PERC/Heritage Foundation, 2000).

The Lone Mountain Coalition*

Jonathan Adler	Donald Leal
Arlington, Virginia	PERC
	Bozeman, Montana
Ryan Amacher, Ph.D.
Department of Economics	Dwight Lee
University of Texas, Arlington	Department of Economics
	University of Georgia
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.	Athens, Georgia
PERC/Hoover Institution
Bozeman, Montana	Stanley Liebowitz
	School of Management
Angela Antonelli	University of Texas, Dallas
The Heritage Foundation
Washington, DC	Edward Lopez
	Department of Economics
John A. Baden, Ph.D.	University of North Texas
Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)	Denton, Texas
Bozeman, Montana
	John Lunn
Michael B. Barkey	Department of Economics and Business
Acton Institute for the Study	Hope College
of Religion and Liberty	Holland, Michigan
Grand Rapids, Michigan
	J. Stanley Marshall
Bruce Benson	James Madison Institute
Department of Economics	Tallahassee, Florida
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida	Nancie G. Marzulla
	Defenders of Property Rights
John Berthoud	Washington, DC
National Taxpayers Union
Alexandria, Virginia	Roger J. Marzulla
	Defenders of Property Rights
Robert Bish	Washington, DC
School of Public Administration
University of Victoria	Ken Masugi, Ph.D.
British Columbia, Canada	Claremont Institute
	Claremont, California
Clint Bolick
Institute for Justice	John McClaughry
Washington, DC	Ethan Allen Institute
	Concord, Vermont
Samuel Bostaph
Department of Economics	Robert McCormick
University of Dallas	Department of Economics
Irving, Texas	Clemson University
J. C. Bowman	Clemson, South Carolina
Children First Tennessee
Chattanooga, Tennessee	Kelly McCutcheon
	Georgia Public Policy Foundation
Jerry Bowyer	Atlanta, Georgia
Allegheny Institute for Public Policy
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	Ed McMullen
	South Carolina Policy Council
Gordon L. Brady, Ph.D.	Columbia, South Carolina
Center for the Study of Public Choice
George Mason University	Roger Meiners, Ph.D.
Fairfax, Virginia	Professor of Law and Economics
	University of Texas, Arlington
James Burling
Pacific Legal Foundation	William H. Mellor
Sacramento, California	Institute for Justice
	Washington, DC
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.
National Center for Policy Analysis	John Merrifield
Dallas, Texas	Department of Economics
	University of Texas, San Antonio
Henry N. Butler
School of Business	Edward Moore
University of Kansas	James Madison Institute
Lawrence, Kansas	Tallahassee, Florida
William N. Butos	John C. Moorhouse
Department of Economics	Department of Economics
Trinity College	Wake Forest University
Hartford, Connecticut	Winston-Salem, North Carolina
John Caldara	Lucas Morel, Ph.D.
Independence Institute	Associate Professor of Politics
Denver, Colorado	Washington and Lee University
	Lexington, Virginia
F. Patricia Callahan
American Association of Small	Andrew Morriss
Property Owners	School of Law
Washington, DC	Case Western Reserve University
	Cleveland, Ohio
Jim Cardle
Lone Star Foundation and Report	Henry Olsen
Austin, Texas	Manhattan Institute
	New York City, New York
Anthony T. Caso
Pacific Legal Foundation	C. Kenneth Orski
Sacramento, California	Innovation Briefs
John Charles	Washington, DC
Cascade Policy Institute
Portland, Oregon	Randal O'Toole
	The Thoreau Institute
Kenneth W. Chilton, Ph.D.	Bandon, Oregon
Center for the Study of American Business
Washington University	Daniel C. Palm, Ph.D.
St. Louis, Missouri	Department of Political Science
	Azusa Pacific University
J. R. Clark	Azusa, California
Center for Economic Education
University of Tennessee Chattanooga	Gary Palmer
	Alabama Policy Institute
Daniel Coldwell	Birmingham, Alabama
Department of Economics
University of Memphis	E. C. Pasour
Memphis, Tennessee	Department of Economics and Business
	North Carolina State University
Michael Coulter	Raleigh, North Carolina
Shenango Institute for Public Policy
Grove City, Pennsylvania	Mitchell B. Pearlstein, Ph.D.
	Center of the American Experiment
Wendell Cox	Minneapolis, Minnesota
Wendell Cox Consultancy
Belleville, Illinois	Steve Pejovich
	Department of Economics
Louis De Alessi, Ph.D.	Texas A&M University
Coral Gables, Florida	College Station, Texas
Robert de Posada	Roger Pilon, Ph.D., J.D.
Hispanic Business Roundtable	Cato Institute
Washington, DC	Washington, DC
Sean Duffy	Lawrence W. Reed
Commonwealth Foundation	Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania	Midland, Michigan
Becky Norton Dunlop	David W. Riggs, Ph.D.
The Heritage Foundation	Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, DC	Washington, DC
Jefferson G. Edgens, Ph.D.	Thomas A. Rubin
University of Kentucky	Thomas A. Rubin Consultancy
Lexington, Kentucky	Oakland, California
William A. Fischel	Peter Samuel
Department of Economics	Toll Roads Newsletter
Dartmouth College	Frederick, Maryland
Hanover, New Hampshire
	E. S. Savas, Ph.D.
B. Delworth Gardner	Baruch College
Department of Economics	City University of New York
Brigham Young University	New York, New York
Provo, Utah
	Peter W. Schramm, Ph.D.
Michael Gilstrap	John Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs
Tennessee Institute for Public Policy	Ashland University
Nashville, Tennessee	Ashland, Ohio
Peter Gordon, Ph.D.	Jane S. Shaw
School of Policy, Planning and Development	PERC
University of Southern California	Bozeman, Montana
Los Angeles, California
	Daniel R. Simmons
Grant Gulibon	Competitive Enterprise Institute
Commonwealth Foundation	Washington, DC
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
	Randy T. Simmons, Ph.D.
Paul Guppy	Institute of Political Economy
Washington Institute Foundation	Utah State University
Seattle, Washington	Logan, Utah
Robert L. Hale	Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Northwest Legal Foundation	Competitive Enterprise Institute
Minot, North Dakota	Washington, DC
Rick Harrison	Vernon L. Smith
Harrison Site Designs	Economics Science Laboratory
Minneapolis, Minnesota	University of Arizona
	Tucson, Arizona
Jake Haulk, Ph.D.
Allegheny Institute for Public Policy	Sam Staley, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	Reason Public Policy Institute
	Los Angeles, California
Steven Hayward, Ph.D.
Pacific Research Institute	Richard Stroup, Ph.D.
San Francisco, California	PERC
	Bozeman, Montana
Andy Herr
Department of Economics	David J. Theroux
St. Vincent College	The Independent Institute
Latrobe, Pennsylvania	Oakland, California
P. J. Hill	Gordon Tullock
Department of Business and Economics	Law and Economics Center
Wheaton College	George Mason University
Wheaton, Illinois	Arlington, Virginia
Randall Holcombe, Ph.D.	Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
Department of Economics	Heritage Foundation
Florida State University	Washington, DC
Tallahassee, Florida
	Malcolm Wallop
John Hood	Frontiers of Freedom
The John Locke Foundation	Arlington, Virginia
Raleigh, North Carolina
	John Weicher
Stephen L. Jackstadt	Hudson Institute
College of Business and Public Policy	Washington, DC
University of Alaska, Anchorage
	Bob Williams
Jeff Judson	Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Texas Public Policy Foundation	Olympia, Washington
San Antonio, Texas
	Robert Whaples
Jo Kwong, Ph.D.	Department of Economics
Atlas Economic Research Foundation	Wake Forest University
Fairfax, Virginia	Winston-Salem, North Carolina
George Landrith, III	Bruce Yandle
Frontiers of Freedom	Department of Economics
Arlington, Virginia	Clemson University
	Clemson, South Carolina
Robert A. Lawson
School of Business and Economics
Capital University
Columbus, Ohio

* The Lone Mountain Coalition is an ad hoc, informal consortium of individuals committed to the principles contained in the Lone Mountain Compact. Endorsement of the Lone Mountain Compact does not necessarily imply unanimous agreement with every principle. Organizational names are for identification purposes only, and do not necessarily imply any organizational endorsement of either the Lone Mountain Compact or the Lone Mountain Coalition.