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By David GreenwaldApril 14, 202526 comments
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.
