THE MARKET FOR TRANSPORTATION-LAND USE INTEGRATION: DO DEVELOPERS WANT SMARTER GROWTH THAN REGULATIONS ALLOW?

Policy reform efforts have recently assumed that manipulating land uses in the direction of smart growth alternatives can improve travel behavior. This notion of manipulating land uses implies that the alternative is somehow self-organized or market-based, which may underestimate the extent to which current planning interventions in the United States impose an automobile-oriented template on most new development. Rather than a market failure, the paucity of smart growth alternatives may be a planning failure. This problem definition would shift the burden of proof for policy reform, as uncertainty in travel behavior benefits would hardly justify the continuation of exclusionary regulations. If municipal regulations in fact constrain alternatives to low-density, automobile-oriented development, one would expect developers to perceive unsatisfied market interest in such development. This article studies, through a national survey, U.S. developers\u27 perceptions of the market for pedestrian- and transit-oriented development forms. Findings show that respondents perceive considerable market interest in alternative development forms, but believe that there is inadequate supply of such alternatives relative to market demand. Developer-respondents attribute this gap between supply and demand principally to local government regulation. The majority of developers indicated that relaxation of these regulations would lead them to develop in a denser and more mixed-use fashion, particularly in close-in suburban locales. These results can be interpreted in favor of land policy reform based on the expansion of choice in transportation and land use