The most prominent critic of urbanism  and defender of suburban sprawl is  

probably Randal O’Toole, who  calls himself “the Antiplanner”.  

He argues for private automobiles over public  transit and for low-density single-family  

housing enforced by suburban-style zoning that  bans or restricts higher densities of housing.

When we started writing this video, his  most recent article was “Densification  

Was a Communist Plot”, which opens by explaining  that the Soviet Union favoured apartment blocks  

because they would be easier to bomb if anyone  tried to revolt. He then denounces the urban  

planners and libertarian think tanks like Cato and  Mercatus that support making California denser.  

California is already dense enough, he  says, and it has no need for higher density,  

which would just make it vulnerable to  attack. “The people supporting these laws  

either have no understanding of history or  are deliberately trying to make America more  

vulnerable to its enemies, or at least  easier to control from the top down.”

Randal O'Toole is an eccentric and inflammatory  character and it’s not always clear whether he’s  

serious or trolling. In another post he says  “the fight for free transit is about keeping  

poor people oppressed”. But he is legitimately the  most well-known figure who takes urbanist beliefs  

about housing and transportation and argues for  the exact opposite and so we think it’s important  

to cut through and try to engage with his more  relevant ideas. [O’Toole: “And urban sprawl is one  

of those made-up problems.”] The Soviet references  makes more sense if you assume he’s trying to  

counter people who say that low-density zoning  is tarnished by its origins in explicit class and  

ethnic exclusion by responding that dense housing  has nefarious origins too — “the Soviets wanted  

to bomb their own people”. The problem is that  social exclusion is not just a random historical  

fact about single-family zoning, it’s an ongoing  effect. Banning multiplexes and apartments in  

high-demand areas literally means that lots  of people, especially less wealthy people,  

are unable to live there. This consequence  isn’t entirely unintended, either; exclusion  

is explicitly stated as a motivation pretty  often. People actually comment on our videos  

explaining how they don’t want multi-family  housing near their “beautiful middle to upper  

middle class single-family neighborhood” or  explaining how zoning reform would change  

the demographics of their neighbourhood to  allow “low-rent” Democrat-voting minorities.

To address his less relevant points: Soviet  apartment blocks were an efficient way to  

house people after the devastation of the war  and his 177-page source doesn’t mention the  

Soviets planning to bomb their own cities. If  we’re seriously basing urban planning around  

North America getting bombed, which probably means  nuked, then we shouldn’t live in capital cities or  

near military bases (goodbye, San Diego), and  being rural is going to help much more than  

being in the suburbs of a city, especially if you  work downtown. A nuclear strike in the U.S. would  

come with only 20 to 30 minutes of warning, and if  you thought traffic was bad after a sports event…

His more serious points come up  very often in urbanism debates,  

namely that urban planners and think tanks are  forcing density onto cities and that people  

just don’t want to live in denser housing. He  writes against laws like California’s SB 9,  

which would allow duplexes and fourplexes on  lots formerly limited to single-family homes.  

A major problem in the density debate is that  critics of zoning reform like O’Toole often  

muddle the distinction between allowing density  and forcing it. He describes SB9 — which again,  

legalizes duplexes and fourplexes — as “forc[ing]  Americans to live at higher densities”. This is  

especially weird from people like O’Toole  who are critical of urban growth boundaries  

as government overreach, a topic we’ll get to  later, but somehow they don’t see the government  

overreach in micromanaging small differences in  what kind of housing you’re allowed to live in,  

like a single-family or multi-family building.  He gives a nod to the ideas of freedom and choice  

by saying that people should be able to live  in denser apartments if they want to, but as  

we all know, policies like single-family zoning  make these units difficult to actually build.

The idea that people just don’t want to live  in denser housing is something we’ve addressed  

before. Obviously people value space and  privacy, but exactly how much they want  

and how they balance those preferences with  other needs and preferences varies a lot. We  

could all maximize space and privacy by living in  remote rural areas far from any city, but most of  

us don’t do that. Even if you live in a detached  home in a suburb, you probably live on a smaller  

lot with a smaller house than you’d have if you  lived in the countryside. You made a trade-off,  

probably because you actually  wanted to be close  to an urban area for all the benefits and services  

it offers. Along those lines, multiplexes and  apartments make sense for many people based  

on their budgets, space needs, and location  preferences. The idea that people just don’t  

want to live in denser housing is a complete red  herring, because you wouldn’t have to ban denser  

housing if nobody was going to live in it anyway.  Developers would realize how hard it is to sell  

or rent those units and they’d stop building  them. The simple truth is that these density  

restrictions come mainly from people who don’t  want their neighbours to live in denser housing.

He goes into a broader defense of single-family  zoning in another article, “How Cato Sold Out  

California Property Owners”, written to call out  the libertarian Cato Institute for  supporting  

zoning reform (and also for firing him). He  explains how, in the 1800s, American cities had  

low rates of homeownership because people “didn’t  want to invest in a home only to see its value  

destroyed by the introduction of incompatible uses  next door or nearby”. They fixed this first by  

deed restrictions and later by zoning. Americans  responded by massively increasing homeownership.  

This led to a golden economic age of low  inequality in the 1960s — “Homeownership was  

accessible to almost anyone with a job, and people  who owned their own homes were able to use the  

equity in their homes to start small businesses,  put their children through college, or fund  

their retirement.” Urban planners, unhappy with  Americans’ preferences for low-density living,  

started in the 1970s trying to limit  sprawl through urban growth limits,  

which stop farmers and other landowners  from developing housing on agricultural  

or rural land surrounding cities. He sees these  policies as an extreme injustice, “the greatest  

taking of private property since the communist  Chinese collectivization of farms in 1953”.  

He cites an article referring to urban  growth boundaries as New Feudalism “because,  

while they allow people to own land, they  effectively transferred the development  

rights to that land to the government”.  Limits on sprawl, not limits on density,  

are the real threat to housing affordability,  he argues. [O’Toole: “Why do planners think they  

have the right to tell property owners what they  can do with their own property? Well, planners  

think that property rights evolve. In other  words, if you own a chunk of land and your  

neighbours think that the land makes a scenic view  shed for my picture window, let’s not develop it,  

you get your right to develop it stripped  away from you because they’re in the majority  

and their desire for “conservation” and scenic  vistas trumps your private property rights.  

And this is essentially the law of the land in  California, Oregon, Florida, and other states  

that have adopted these planning rules. They  have what they call ‘public involvement’.”

It’s still confusing seeing someone really come  out swinging against urban growth boundaries,  

saying you don’t even own property if the almost  communist government can take away your right  

to build housing, but then apparently see no  problem in the government telling homeowners  

that they can only have a single-family home,  no duplexes or fourplexes allowed. His argument  

for zoning because it encourages homeownership is  interesting, but not all zoning is created equal.  

Restricting factories is sensible — restricting  multiplexes borders on absurd. There’s also a  

glaring conflict in how he talks about the effects  of single-family zoning. He insists that it’s not  

bad for affordability — “abolishing single-family  zoning won’t make housing more affordable” he  

says. But his argument for single-family zoning is  that it makes housing a more attractive investment  

that won’t lose value. Presumably this means  it will increase in price too, because that’s  

what we expect from investments, and that’s the  only way housing could compete with stocks as a  

way to fund your retirement. This conflicts with  affordability. One generation’s “good investment”  

is the next generation’s “crushing housing  costs”. Maybe he gets around this by saying that  

each generation can find their affordable housing  in increasingly distant suburbs and exurbs, but  

people don’t just want a home anywhere. If that  was the case we would all move to rural areas.  

Most people want to live close to jobs, family,  friends, public transit, and other amenities.

He stresses that single-family homes are more  affordable than denser housing because they have  

lower construction costs per square foot.  Based on Canadian construction cost data,  

this is really an issue for tall buildings.  Ground-oriented density like townhouses can  

be just as cheap or even cheaper to build than  detached homes, while also saving on land costs.  

Low-rise density is probably peak  affordability under ideal conditions,  

and the fact that most Canadian and American  cities don’t allow it by default is an insult  

to affordability. With that said, tall buildings  do make sense in high-demand areas to provide  

more supply and spread out land costs and other  fixed expenses. Also, one barrier to affordable  

single-family homes is that the same exclusionary  instincts that lead to municipalities banning or  

restricting multi-family housing also lead to  banning or restricting smaller, more modest  

detached homes. Four-fifths of all cities in  the U.S. have minimum lot size requirements,  

many as high as one-acre, and this matters.  We can see very clearly in Vancouver that the  

affordability of detached homes depends on how  densely they’re allowed to be built. If we’re  

serious about affordability then we shouldn’t have  zoning rules against modest detached homes either.

He also points out a correlation where  denser cities tend to be more expensive.  

The problem is that density is partly a response  to high demand and affordability pressures.  

Maybe a single-family home in Tulsa, Oklahoma  is cheaper than an apartment in New York,  

but it doesn’t mean that New York can become more  affordable by banning or demolishing apartments  

in favour of single-family homes. If you look  within each city, it’s usually the case that  

denser housing is more affordable. A detached home  in Toronto averages $1.7 million, a semi-detached  

1.3 million, a townhouse 1.2 million, and a condo  $800,000. Townhouses and condos are clearly more  

attainable. The same pattern applies in the  U.S., although the data isn’t as fine-grained.  

Condominiums are cheaper than detached homes  in 18 of the 20 biggest metropolitan areas.  

The two exceptions are Detroit and Atlanta,  but everywhere else — including Boston,  

Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and  Chicago — detached homes are more expensive.

Another argument O’Toole and others make is  that zoning reform betrays potential homebuyers  

who want a single-family home but won’t have as  many options if some lots are used for multiplexes  

or apartments instead. But single-family  homes really just don’t house very many people  

so you’re weighing one family against four in  the case of a fourplex or many more in the case  

of an apartment building. This isn’t to say that  every lot in every city needs to house as many  

people as possible, but when demand exists for  land to be used more efficiently, it shouldn’t  

be up to planners (or anti-planners) to prop  up low-density housing through strict zoning.

Randal O’Toole is actually right about one thing  though. Greenbelts or urban growth boundaries can  

make housing less affordable, and it’s hard to  be entirely comfortable with them if you take a  

philosophy of housing abundance. We’re sympathetic  to the environmental motivations but we have to be  

careful when they don’t actually make demand  for land go away. Often leapfrog development  

just continues on the other side of the greenbelt  and people have longer commutes, or they’re pushed  

to other cities to develop land there instead.  California’s limits on housing — both growth  

boundaries and zoning limits on density — actually  increase carbon emissions when they push people to  

move to more affordable cities in a place like  Texas whose more extreme climate requires more  

energy to heat or cool buildings. However, in  what universe would the solution to urban growth  

boundaries be opening up the land to a monoculture  of single-family homes in car-dependent sprawl?  

You miss an opportunity to develop good  urbanism outside of the influence of NIMBYs,  

you burn through land so much faster, and you  negate some of the housing affordability gains  

with big transportation costs. Urban expansion  should mean allowing a range of housing types  

to meet people’s different needs, preferences,  and incomes, and it should not be built entirely  

around cars. Maybe car-dependent areas that only  meet some people’s needs feel like freedom to  

those people, but it’s not freedom for everyone,  it’s a basic failure of infrastructure and  

government services like failing to provide  libraries, schools, or a fire department.

Building entirely around cars also  limits your growth in the future.  

O’Toole keeps coming back to the idea that  California is “dense enough already”, and  

one article he links refers to duplexes and  fourplexes as a “radical density experiment”,  

but the densities we’re haggling over, especially  with SB9, are pretty modest. Cities all around the  

world handle these densities with ease. It’s  only when you put everyone in a car, truck,  

or SUV to get anywhere that even modest  densities feel threatening and crowding.

One final point is that O’Toole’s core argument  for single-family zoning is that it makes  

housing an attractive investment and encourages  homeownership. Owning a home offers many benefits,  

including long-term stability and a sense of  permanency and control that many people enjoy,  

and those are reasons why homeownership  should be accessible and affordable,  

but we don’t think it makes sense to try to  push people into homeownership with additional  

incentives like rising prices. A better world to  us is not one where housing is a great investment  

opportunity that encourages people to buy in  and punishes renters, it’s one where housing is  

stable and affordable and you can be comfortable  buying or renting. If you want to stay open to  

job opportunities in multiple cities, for example,  you should probably be renting and you shouldn’t  

feel pressured into buying before you’re ready,  because you’re worried about getting priced out.

Thanks for watching through to the end of  the video. Randal O’Toole has written a lot,  

and we’re barely scratching the surface here. He  also talks about transportation and, brace for it,  

environmentalism too. While his inflammatory  style distracts from his ideas, and his frequent  

references to communism don’t feel as relevant  now as they might have 50 or 60 years ago,  

he’s essentially a compilation of all the typical  arguments against urbanism that we come across  

and so he’s a useful way to  address many  of them in one place.  

As always, a special thanks  to our supporters on Patreon.