Boxing Ourselves In: Urban Development over the last 50 years

Austin Texas tv station KLRU has this to say about a local development issue:

"The battle over the Wal-Mart Super Center that was proposed near MoPac and Slaughter Lane had all the makings of a classic Austin political story. It pitted big corporate interests and big box retailers against "mom and pop" stores, neighborhood activists and environmentalists.
But the story is really about the choices we make as citizens and consumers. It's about the way we've allowed our cities to be developed over the last 50 years a phenomenon that some urban planners call 'boxing ourselves in.'"

Rather than looking strictly at the site and the issue of chain vs. independent, they chose to look at what I think of as the dominant U.S. planning and development paradigm paradigm of the last 50 years, sprawl (I mean, single use, low density, automobile-connected development).

Check out the story, video and print.