Sometimes a Coincidence Is No Coincidence!

How is it the day after our posts on suburban sprawl and Catholic values, an abstract pops up on SSRN of a paper by Prof. Lewyn at GW entitled "Suburban Sprawl, Jewish Law and Jewish Values"! Note his reference to Philip Roth's Newark of the 1940's! Here's his very interesting abstract:

In the second half of the twentieth century, America's cities

and suburbs were engulfed by suburban sprawl - the movement of

people (especially middle-class families) and jobs from older

urban cores to newer, less densely populated, more

automobile-dependent communities generally referred to as

suburbs. Cities throughout America lost population to their

outlying suburbs, and cities that gained population usually did

so only because they were able to annex those suburbs. America's

suburban revolution has not left Jewish communities unscathed.

For example, the city of Newark, New Jersey, contained 58,000

Jews and thirty-four synagogues in the 1940s, but today has only

a few hundred Jews and only two synagogues. Similarly, the city

of St. Louis, Missouri, now has only one synagogue, although its

suburbs have over twenty. Even in more vibrant cities,

significant Jewish flight has occurred. In 1990, two-thirds of

metropolitan Chicago's Jews lived in suburbs, up from 4% in

1950. This flight to suburbia has affected Jews' daily lives

dramatically. Suburban Jews, like other American suburbanites,

are highly dependent on automobiles. This article discusses the

tension between suburban sprawl and Jewish values. Specifically,

the article argues that the automobile dependency and class

division exacerbated by sprawl conflict with Jewish ethical and

environmental values and impede observance of Jewish law. In

addition, the article rebuts libertarian objections to

anti-sprawl policies by pointing out that Jewish law encourages

public regulation of land use, and that in any event,

anti-sprawl policies need not conflict with libertarian norms

-Mark