Why isn’t urban containment a big deal anymore?

I recently saw a tweet complaining that left-wing YIMBYs favored urban containment- a strategy of limiting suburban sprawl by prohibiting new housing at the outer edge of a metropolitan area. (Portland’s urban growth boundaries, I think, are the most widely discussed example). If my personal experience in a New York YIMBY organization is any guide, this tweet is wrong- not because YIMBYs (left, right or otherwise) oppose urban containment, but because urban containment is simply not a headline issue anymore, and many people just don’t think about it very much. For example, I ran a Westlaw search for law review articles using the term “urban growth boundaries”, and found 418 articles. Of those articles, only 46 were published after 2020, 105 were published after 2010, 185 were published in the 2000s, and 82 were published earlier. Why has interest in urban containment declined?

First, the movement for urban containment was partially driven by residents of cities and inner suburbs who thought that their communities would be abandoned as people and jobs rushed to newer suburbs. But many urban cores have recovered or stabilized over the past few decades, so this is less of a concern than it was a few decades ago. Instead of worrying about decay and abandonment, city residents faced with high housing costs are worried about homelessness and rising rents.

Second, suburbanites might have favored urban containment as a way to limit development of their suburbs. But after the 2008 recession, suburban housing construction became less common as bankers pulled back from real estate loans. Where new suburban development was scarce, resistance to such development might have been less aggressive.

Third, just as housing costs are more of a concern in some metro areas than others, the same is true for urban containment. An urban growth boundary is arguably feasible in a small metro with a decaying core. But I’m not sure how much good it would do in a large metro like New York or San Francisco that already encompasses an enormous amount of territory.