Spillovers and Local Growth Controls: An Alternative Perspective on Suburbanization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, many local jurisdictions in politically fragmented metropolitan regions have enacted growth control and management measures to tackle the challenges arising from rapid suburban growth. These locally implemented growth controls have produced spillovers—the spatial shifts of homebuilding and households to nearby localities. Using data for California, this paper investigates the link between growth controls and homebuilding. The results suggest that some of the excess homebuilding can be linked to the presence or absence of growth control measures and thus be attributed to spillover effects. Moreover, generators of spillovers are nearly exclusively located in urban areas along the coast whereas the receptors of spillovers are primarily found at the metropolitan fringes and in peripherally located jurisdictions of the interior.