For decades, “sprawl” has been the epithet of choice for housing advocates, urban planners, and environmentalists alike. In Davis, California, the word carries a heavy weight, often wielded by opponents of peripheral development who argue that our housing future lies in densification—“missing middle” zoning reform, infill development, and higher-density corridors near transit. But a recent New York Times Magazine piece by Conor Dougherty dares to reframe the debate: If we truly want to solve America’s housing crisis, he argues, “the country needs more of it.”
Dougherty’s argument is provocative, if not entirely convincing. Still, it deserves serious consideration, particularly in the context of our local housing debates. While Davis continues to pursue a narrow infill-only strategy in the face of mounting affordability challenges and declining enrollment, the rest of the country—especially booming Sun Belt metros like Dallas—is leaning hard into expansion.
Perhaps we should ask: are we too quick to dismiss sprawl as a relic of a failed suburban model? Or is there a middle path between the extremes of endless horizontal growth and paralyzing densification gridlock?
Dougherty’s piece centers on Texas, where developers like Hillwood and cities like Celina and Princeton are building tens of thousands of new homes each year to accommodate demand. The numbers are staggering: Dallas alone permitted 72,000 new homes in 2024, nearly matching the total output of California.
While critics cite strained infrastructure, two-hour commutes, and environmental degradation, Dougherty contends that this outward push is not just inevitable but essential. After decades of regulatory gridlock, he writes, “the only way to add the millions of new units America needs is to move out.”
Dougherty doesn’t romanticize sprawl. He acknowledges the problems: the traffic, the lack of planning, the environmental costs. But he also sees the math: America is short at least four million homes, maybe more.
And as much as we like to talk about building “up, not out,” the pace of infill housing in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles remains glacial. Permitting delays, neighborhood opposition, lawsuits, and high land costs continue to throttle even modest density reforms. By contrast, greenfield development on the urban fringe offers speed, scale, and affordability.
This is not a novel argument—but it arrives at a moment of growing desperation.
National rents are up. Homelessness has surged. Young people are increasingly priced out of not just ownership but basic stability. And while states like California have made significant moves to legalize duplexes, streamline ADUs, and override local zoning, the results remain modest.
Perhaps, Dougherty suggests, it’s time to admit that infill alone won’t save us.
What Does This Mean for Davis?
Here in Davis, the debate over sprawl vs. density is no less charged (with at least some opposing all development). Local activists have long argued for “smart growth”: dense, walkable neighborhoods, served by transit, designed to reduce car dependency and greenhouse gas emissions.
White these are noble and necessary goals, they’ve also become a political alibi for paralysis.
Over the past 25 years, Davis has added relatively few new housing units. Efforts to approve larger peripheral developments—like Covell Village, DISC, and Village Farms—have all faced intense political resistance or been defeated at the ballot box.
In their place, we’ve championed infill – at least by default since the state mandates a certain number of units – of which in the last RHNA cycle all have been fulfilled by infill.
But the limits of this strategy are becoming increasingly clear. Costs are high. Sites are limited. And in many neighborhoods, even modest proposals are met with legal challenges and delay. Moreover, the council and former city manager have warned us of a dwindling number of available spaces.
Meanwhile, we face a worsening crisis: school enrollment is plummeting, young families are priced out, and workers commute from Woodland or Sacramento because they can’t afford to live here. Our greenbelt is becoming a moat.
Dougherty’s piece challenges us to confront this contradiction. Can we really claim the moral high ground on climate and equity while refusing to build the housing that working people need? Are we protecting the environment—or just protecting our property values?
There’s another thread running through Dougherty’s article that hits close to home: the question of who benefits from housing policy.
Many anti-sprawl laws, he argues, originated with good intentions—preserving open space, fighting pollution, preventing overreach by developers.
But over time, these restrictions have calcified into a system that benefits the wealthy and entrenched while locking out the young, the poor, and the new.
It’s not hard to see the parallels in Davis. Our land use politics are dominated by well-organized homeowners. And while many sincerely support affordability, their proposals often exclude the very scale needed to make a difference. We oppose apartments near single-family homes, then oppose subdivisions on the edge of town. We tout missing middle housing, then strip it of density or delay it with lawsuits. In practice, we have embraced what Dougherty calls a “status quo of scarcity”—and it’s hurting those with the least leverage.
This is where Dougherty’s defense of sprawl becomes something more than a growth manifesto. It’s a call to reimagine housing policy not as a zero-sum conflict between “urbanists” and “suburbanites,” but as a shared obligation to build. Yes, we must infill. Yes, we must zone for duplexes, quads, and transit corridors. But we must also build where the land exists—on the periphery, at scale, and fast.
I’m not suggesting we pave over farmland unabated or abandon our climate goals. Sprawl as we’ve known it—car-centric, single-use, disconnected—is unsustainable.
But that doesn’t mean all outward growth is bad.
What Dougherty describes in Texas is not simply tract homes and cul-de-sacs. Increasingly, developers are building walkable, mixed-use communities with parks, schools, and job centers. They are, in effect, creating new towns—places that may one day evolve into urban cores themselves.
The challenge for California, and for Davis in particular, is to thread the needle.
We must build both up and out. We must reform zoning and environmental laws to allow for infill, but we must also stop treating peripheral growth as an existential threat. Instead of asking whether sprawl is good or bad, we should ask: What kind of growth builds community? What kind of housing builds opportunity?
We can design peripheral developments that include affordable units, that emphasize sustainability, that reduce car trips through smart planning. We can require developers to fund infrastructure and schools, to provide parks and public space. But we can’t keep saying “no” and expecting the crisis to solve itself.
Dougherty’s defense of sprawl may not persuade everyone. But it shines a spotlight on the limits of our current housing paradigm. If we want a future where housing is affordable, climate-conscious, and equitable, we need to expand the conversation. That means reconsidering old taboos. It means being honest about tradeoffs. And it means recognizing that the biggest threat to our communities isn’t sprawl—it’s stagnation.
In the end, the question is not whether we grow, but how. And for communities like Davis, the time to choose is now.
Since when has continued sprawl ever been in short supply? Have you looked around THIS region (e.g., Natomas, Folsom, Vacaville . . .).
There is no housing shortage. Young people aren’t even having kids (nationwide) anywhere near replacement levels.
https://news.ku.edu/news/article/study-finds-us-does-not-have-housing-shortage-but-shortage-of-affordable-housing
Also, I like how you sneak “DISC” into the conversation, as if that development itself wouldn’t have created additional demand for housing.
This is the type of thing that makes all of the local growth advocates lose credibility.
Also, the article itself conflates restrictions in already-developed areas (infill), vs. sprawl. They are actually two separate things.
Opposition to sprawl generally does not align itself with “NIMBYism”. It’s an environmental/sustainability issue. It’s the YIMBY shills who try to conflate the two.
We could, I’m sure, look up numbers regarding how much farmland/open space is lost to sprawl every year, even as the population itself does not correspond to that expansion.
We discussed “what sprawl means” several years ago in these pages, and yes, there are some who will call ANY peripheral develoopment sprawl… and that isnt really a helpful definition.
But during those prior discussions I came up with a definition for the term that IS helpful…
The definition of sprawl should be “Failing to build with sufficient density”
If you allow an infill project to be only 3 stories instead of 4… you are creating sprawl because unmet demand still needs to go somewhere. If you build village farms at the proposed 8 units per acre instead of 20 you simply shift the rest of the demand for housing further out…
Yes, every single time our city has grown, it has consumed more land, and that is inevatable. Every person reading this is sitting in what used to be farmland. So the question is not whether the city must grow, the question is: How do we MINIMIZE our outward growth.
———
Follow-on comment regarding this: “Can we really claim the moral high ground on climate and equity while refusing to build the housing that working people need?”
The answer is “no we cannot” but the real killer is that under measure J we have NO good options. The housing that we need to serve the “working people” that are currently commuting in every day is not even on the menu with our peripheral proposals.
So unless we fix measure J, we have two options: Bad housing that doesn solve our actual problem, or no housing at all.
As you say “threading the needle” is the only good solution: Much denser housing, connected by transit, master planned so that it can go all the way around the periphery through multiple developments and connect more affordable missing-middle housing to shopping and employment in a way that is NOT a personal automobile.
It wont be zero-impact, it WILL consume farmland, but it is far far better than ANY alternative plan on the table at the moment.
Interesting point
I’m not anti-growth, and anti-BUILD BABY BUILD
Once you start pooping on current residents for having concerns, you lose me and most of the town
Is that in response to me or Tim?
Great, the stupid Ignore button is back. I’m sure I’ll accidentally hit it one day and not get someone’s posts because I meant to hit Reply, and have to go through hell to get them back, and that’s only once I realize a negative, because you can’t know what you aren’t getting.
I was responding to YOU DG
This–“greenfield development on the urban fringe offers speed, scale, and affordability”–omits the key element: profit. Davis is exceptional in rejecting outlying, greenfield development. California’s central valleys plays host to an enormous land speculation industry.
Sacramento City annexed North Natomas–a floodplain so unsuited for development that a federal grant to increase regional sewer capacity made a $6 million penalty payable if the additional capacity served North Natomas. The speculators didn’t bat an eye. They went all the way to then-vice-president G.H.W. Bush and got a prohibitive up-front penalty turned into pay-as-you-develop installments. Oh yes, and they got a $43 million grant to upgrade the weak levees surrounding North Natomas to pre-Katrina standards.
So…pay $6 in installments and get $43…a pretty good deal! But wait, there’s more!
Once the speculators got the entitlements to build on the ag land they optioned at $2,000 an acre, they could sell it to builders (Winncrest Homes was one) at $200,000 an acre. If your calculator’s not handy, that’s a 10,000% gross profit–and there are ways to defer tax on that profit indefinitely.
In Germany, the developers have to sell the land they want to develop to the local government at the ag land price, then re-purchase it at the upzoned price. All that “unearned increment” –the profit– inures to the benefit of the public rather than lining the developers’ pockets. And Germany has some very nice public things. Heck, the arts budget for the city of Berlin exceeds the National Endowment for the Arts for the US.
The reason Sacramento’s public library has no free public meeting room, and instead has the (costly to use) “Tsakopoulos Galleria” is that we gave all the money to Angelo Tsakopoulos. The public realm is impoverished by this local plutocracy.
So it’s a little bit of a side track to focus on sprawl vs. density. California (and Houston) does dense development poorly, and all the regulations, and particularly the practice of lenders, makes this awfulness persist.
Sprawl is, in effect, one of the most regressive taxes around. Every driving age adult must own a car to make a life in such a development–and if you don’t own a car, you’re dependent on someone else to be your chauffeur. The cost of owning and maintaining a car is enormous, especially for lower incomes, never mind the ill health encouraged by driving vs. walking, or even the anti-regulation payoffs (in Houston, the flooding following hurricane Katrina).
“Local activists have long argued for “smart growth”: dense, walkable neighborhoods, served by transit, designed to reduce car dependency and greenhouse gas emissions.”
That is a forever fantasy in a town like Davis, sans a few exceptions.
“White these are noble and necessary goals, they’ve also become a political alibi for paralysis.”
Was that a Freudian slip about the race you consider responsible for the paralysis?
“Many anti-sprawl laws, he argues, originated with good intentions—preserving open space, fighting pollution, preventing overreach by developers. But over time, these restrictions have calcified into a system that benefits the wealthy and entrenched while locking out the young, the poor, and the new.”
This statement really p*sses me off. So somehow the goals of ‘preserving open space, fighting pollution, preventing overreach by developers’ are no longer valid? You realize all of these are to be done in perpetuity, not trumped by future goals. Ruining open space and polluting aren’t things that we now need to do, because housing. No, the goals were to put practices in place protect open space and the environment when the housing zealots came. When people like you, DG, and Davis CAN, and our current City Council, and the YIMBYs came. That’s what these laws were meant to stop, YOU ALL.
And as for ‘locking out the young, the poor, and the new,’ I don’t see a shortage of new (Cannery), young (numerous student housing) and poor is a market driven thing, unless you find a way to subsidize the ‘poor’, in which case you just create a forever market and long waiting lists to get to be the lucky winners to live in town. And good luck finding that subsidy money.
” . . . as a shared obligation to build.”
Now you sound like a commie. There is no shared obligation to build. This us vs. you.
“Yes, we must infill. Yes, we must zone for duplexes, quads, and transit corridors. But we must also build where the land exists—on the periphery, at scale, and fast.”
In other words: Build Baby Build !!!
“We oppose apartments near single-family homes, then oppose subdivisions on the edge of town.”
I don’t think you do.
“We tout missing middle housing, then strip it of density or delay it with lawsuits.”
As someone who was part of suing Trackside (the City), the issue was our agreement with the City, apparently not legally binding and the City knew that be we were naive to think the City was agreeing in good faith. So we sued over the agreement, but the City said ‘times had changed’ but never reengaged us, just when the development came they sided with the developers. Would have been no lawsuit, City, if you’d reengaged the neighbors to change the agreement *before* the developers can knocking and telling us lies.
“But we can’t keep saying “no” and expecting the crisis to solve itself.”
Or we can just accept that we can’t all live in Davis, just like I can’t live in Atherton.
“Dougherty’s defense of sprawl may not persuade everyone.”
Truer words were never spoken.
“And it means recognizing that the biggest threat to our communities isn’t sprawl—it’s stagnation.”
But the biggest threat to our open space and our environment is sprawl. And the biggest threat to our communities is growth. I’m for depopulation, not only of Davis, but of the planet. The main problem with Covid-19 was it wasn’t effective enough :-|
“In the end, the question is not whether we grow, but how. And for communities like Davis, the time to choose is now.”
Actually “we” already chose. It’s called Measure J . . . and I say that as someone who thinks Meaure J is terrible law.
Great post by Alan M, above.
As far as Village Farms and/or Shriner’s is concerned (both of which qualify as sprawl, despite how some want to redefine that term), I suspect the following would occur:
If it’s dense (e.g., via “tiny houses” OR apartments/condos), it’s going to primarily be occupied by UCD students.
If it includes McMansions (or even “normal” houses), those people will come from the Bay Area.
And either of those options will include a significant number commuting to Sacramento.
But perhaps the most-important thing that Alan M. notes is that Measure J “already” provides developers with an opportunity for approval. And it’s already been used to approve two proposals. Looking back on those, I actually think that voters had it “right”.
” Looking back on those, I actually think that voters had it “right”.”
You opposed both at the time.
You “got me” on that – though I always thought that Nishi should be part of UCD’s property (for student housing, as they saw fit). Of course, they’re having trouble burrowing-under the railroad tracks, since our country has given railroads “unique rights”, apparently.)
Regarding Bretton Woods, senior housing isn’t as disruptive, it’s adjacent to Sutter Hospital, and it’s not really that large. (Plus, it’s closing in on a million dollars per house, with an HOA to boot. I just happened to visit it on opening day, when they were giving-away “free food”.)
Perhaps the “odd thing” about me is that I actually like visiting new housing developments, and I’m sort of impressed as to the effort and skill which goes into making it happen.)
Senior housing is actually the “growing” need. (I am surprised, however, at how inexpensive and nice the senior mobile home park is on Pole Line. I never went in there until maybe 3 years ago with Alan Pryor to collect “anti-DISC” signs.) In any case, it’s way nicer, and way-cheaper than I would have expected. (I have since looked at some asking prices.)
So if you were going to ask me a “follow-up” question, I would say that Village Farms might not be that bad if it didn’t extend beyond The Cannery (northward), and paid for a bicycle/pedestrian grade-separated crossing.
And if it actually addressed expected RHNA targets, while also mitigating land (agricultural easement) north of it (as well as Shriner’s). Shriner’s in particular.
And if we got rid of this nonsense regarding DISC, which again – would actually create MORE demand for housing, and more commuting from outside the area. (This isn’t even in question.)
But Village Farms would still be a “loss”, whenever I look at it from Nugget or when traveling on Road 102 / Pole Line, or Covell. I “personally” would be emitting more greenhouse gasses a result of whatever might be built there, idling in traffic.
Ron O
Again, you’re not a stakeholder in Davis and your opinions about Davis are not valid expressions of what the citizens of Davis would prefer–you’re preferences don’t matter.
And you’re ignoring the statistics I provided about who is living inside and outside Davis and who is community in and out. Denser housing will not necessarily go to UCD students. And if they do, that will pull them out of lower cost existing housing, opening that up for the missing middle market. Building housing for the lower income workers commuting into 95616 will not increase significantly the number commuting to Sacramento. Building high end housing will do that.
As for Measure J/R/D, you’re missing two important points. First neither of the two project approved have yet been built, at least one of them due to restrictions imposed to gain approval. Second, you’re missing all of the projects that have not been proposed because the cost and difficulty of gaining approval. That it took 20 years for Covell Village to come back is illustrative of this barrier.
We’ve been through this many times. Attacking me with incorrect statements is not helping your argument.
You have provided NO statistics regarding “who” is commuting “to” or “from” Davis, let alone whether they’re going to the university, or the city itself.
You have no idea who they are, how much money they make, where members of their household work, or where new residents would be commuting to.
In contrast, one only has to look at “who” is renting housing in Davis, to see the demographic which occupies it (UCD students). That’s who is going to be occupying ANY new high-density housing.
Regarding Covell Village, I’m hoping that we can deliver a blow to it that will eliminate it forever next time – not just for 20 years. The current owner is pretty old, so I expect that the next battle would be with “someone else” other than him. (As I recall, he didn’t pay much for that land.)
Now, if they came back with something more reasonable (e.g., not extending beyond The Cannery, mitigated land north of that (as well as Shriner’s) paid for a grade-separated crossing for bicyclists and pedestrians, and ACTUALLY addressed expected RHNA targets), that would be a “starting point” at least.
What is the source, the timeframe, and how did they come up with this?
As an example, I don’t recall anyone gathering information regarding “me” or my neighbors when I was commuting to Sacramento. Nor do I recall that even being a question on census forms (every 10 years).
In any case, what I’m seeing is a small difference between the inflow/outflow to Davis (and a smaller number for both of those categories than I had expected), and no information regarding where the commuters to UCD are coming from. Also, what does the last column mean?
Richard has made a lot more claims than what can be found on that chart.
Now you’re interested in data?
I’m always interested in data – even when it has no meaning, context, timeframe, source, etc.
In other words, the “usual data” that you put forth, while claiming something is “evidence-based”.
The more data I see on here, the more I realize that the important question is how they calculated it, as well as its implications. (For example, claims regarding where homeless people “came from” – based upon pre-selected self-reporting.)
That’s why data science is it’s own industry
I’m trying to see if there is an updated version of this:
That’s not a “Housing Needs Assessment”. Who decided to label it that way?
But I am surprised at the relatively-high percentage of UCD employees who do live in Davis (as well as the the significant percentage who live in Sacramento, and the low percentage that live in Woodland).
2010
David, I will forward you the email I received directly from UCD in March 2023. At that time there were 4,468 UCD employees who lived in Davis and 8,783 who lived in Sacramento.
Of the 4,468, there were only 3,597 who worked on the Davis campus and 871 who worked on the Sacramento campus.
31.4% of the Davis campus employees live in Davis according to the report.
I read that story yesterday in the NYT. Provocative indeed. I am sure the author had fun kicking the change makers. But a useful challenge, nonetheless.
The crux of it all to me is the Dallas model espoused by the author avoids issues such as good planning, sensible transportation, affordability, community building, job centers, or climate change issues. It just builds for the people who can buy that model but no one else.
At least some European cities such as Vienna look at the overall needs of the population and supports better planning to achieve more effective results across a number of areas. None of them support 72,000 new single-family homes for one city.
Transportation in the outer Dallas suburbs will never pencil out. The car will be the major form of transportation and will line up in long queues to leave and enter. It is Levittown repeated seventy years later.
It seems preposterous to think that this Dallas ‘sprawl’ is the only way to build there or in Davis.
We should do better!
I also read the NYT article. The most obvious oversight by Dougherty is the fact that the path to community transformation he touts is blocked by zoning. Before WWII it was possible to communities and property owners to tear down houses and build businesses with little concern. Now suburban neighborhoods are locked into single family zoning. It’s difficult to add even duplexes much less small scale commercial on the way to large block-sized offices. The suburbs with the City of Los Angeles are more than 60 years old but still locked into single family housing in places like the San Fernando Valley.
Further transit lines need to be pre planned. Once suburbs are built it is very difficult to acquire the needed rightaways after the fact. All of this requires actually planning. Building a community means that we are committed for decades if not a century so that requires careful thought.