Kudos to the Post for a surprisingly rational article on the difficulty of growth control. If only more media coverage were of this quality we might see fewer counterproductive control measures that ultimately increase sprawl, and more actually useful ones that address the
disease rather than its symptoms. Some highlights:

To hear some activists and local officials in Virginia tell it, the key to slowing rampant growth is to follow the lead of many Maryland counties: Ban development where roads and schools are crowded.
But here is what that method has accomplished in Anne Arundel County: More than one-third of its school districts are closed to new subdivisions, even in areas intended to absorb construction under the state’s much-touted “slow-growth” laws. As a result, development is being pushed to more rural parts of the state less suited to handle it.
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The hard truth, say skeptical officials and land-use experts, is that today’s crowded roads and schools are the result of years of decisions and cannot be fixed quickly by clamping down on growth.
“It’s sticking an oar in the water to turn a battleship, ” said Joseph Rutter, who recently retired as Anne Arundel’s planning director. “But it’s very easy to attack the new growth and say that’s what’s causing the problem.”
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The crux of the problem, said Stafford Supervisor Peter J. Fields (D-George Washington), is that if counties really tried to assess fees on new exurban homes for the full costs of their impact, they would run into the tens of thousands of dollars, beyond what most would consider reasonable.
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When schools or roads fill up in an area meant to accommodate growth, officials too often let it remain closed to development instead of funding the needed infrastructure, the study said. As a result, developers move to rural areas where roads and schools still have capacity.
“If you have pressure on capacity, do you stop growth or enhance capacity? You enhance capacity, because otherwise, the growth goes out to the rural areas, ” said the center’s director, Gerrit Knaap. Building roads and schools is the key to making smart growth work, Knaap said.