It has become an article of faith -- primarily among liberals -- that "urban sprawl" is bad. This belief has its roots in the left's distrust of capitalism and development.

Democrat Al Gore even tried to make sprawl a major issue in the 2000 presidential campaign. But perhaps Mr. Gore and other anti-sprawl Chicken Littles should purchase a copy of "Sprawl: A Compact History" by Chicago academic Robert Bruegmann.

Mr. Bruegmann, a professor of art history, architecture and urban planning at the University of Illinois, Chicago, argues that the spreading of cities is a natural outgrowth of a society in which people are free to make their own choices -- and has been a pattern dating back to first century Rome.

Mr. "Bruegmann's book is grounded in a history lesson -- one that finds the roots of present-day Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles in Augustan Rome or Restoration London," writes Scott Timberg of the Los Angeles Times. "People of means, he writes, always have tried to get some distance from urban centers, often inhabiting villas outside city walls."

But more practically, government intervention designed to shepherd people into urban cores could have serious ramifications for the very people many anti-sprawl activists claim to want to help, Mr. Bruegmann notes.

"By trying to stop sprawl, you'll be doing something very beneficial to the incumbents' club," he told the Times. "It stops change and makes it harder for people to get onto the middle-class ladder. It has a definite effect on social and economic mobility." Sprawl is "completely essential" to the functioning of a free society, he says. "It goes absolutely to the heart of people's aspirations -- what it is they want to be, of how they want to live. And tampering with that is very, very fraught."

"Sprawl: A Compact History," Mr. Gore. Pick it up.