A little California smog Is it a sign of things to come? We’ve discussed the issue of peak oil and how suburban development is a huge oil waster. Oil consumption is, in turn, a major cause of air pollution and climate change. Now air quality officials in California’s Central Valley have taken historic action in that regard. Given the link between automobile dependent sprawl and air pollution, they’ve put into place requirements forcing developers to pay added fees if they fail to design and build in ways that reduce automobile usage.

I’m glad to see this step, though I quite agree with this blogger that this sort of market based approach may not have the results one would hope for. I doubt, in fact, that the results in this case will be anything remarkable. Something more like Janet Kaufman’s proposed “landscape protection law” would have more teeth.

Important here, however, is that a regulatory body has acknowledged an environmental cost of sprawl. That helps push this into public awareness, and is thus a key step in what should, in time, be a major evolution in how we in the U.S. think about “development.”