After years of heavily publicized discussion and debate, the General Assembly last week passed legislation designed to lower school district real estate taxes. Gov. Rendell praised the bill and said he would sign it. But the relief promised -- a few hundred dollars a year -- is chump change compared to the substantial savings Pennsylvanians could enjoy by embracing a more cost-effective lifestyle.

		Thomas Hylton, author of "Save Our Land, Save Our Towns," is chairman of the Pottstown Planning Commission (thomashylton@comcast.net).

Rethinking how we arrange our homes, stores and offices across the landscape -- and changing our daily driving habits -- could not only scale down government spending at all levels, it could dramatically reduce nearly everyone's cost of living.

A century ago, when there were virtually no land use or environmental regulations -- when taxes were a fraction of what they are today -- most Pennsylvanians lived in traditional towns, close to where they worked and shopped. This made it easy to walk, which was healthy and inexpensive. Compact development maximized the use of government-built infrastructure.

With the rise of big government and massive spending programs for highways and other infrastructure, Pennsylvanians migrated from walkable communities to the countryside, where they could enjoy large lots and scenic rides over uncongested roads to their destinations.

However, as more people moved into the countryside, it lost the very qualities -- beauty, solitude, tranquility -- that made it desirable. As the countryside became cluttered with strip malls and housing subdivisions, people responded by moving ever farther out. That's how 315 square miles of land in southwestern Pennsylvania -- an area nearly six times the size of Pittsburgh -- were urbanized from 1982 to 1997, even as the region lost 166,000 residents.

This new development pattern -- widely known as sprawl -- has become increasingly expensive to maintain and operate, especially since we must also maintain the original infrastructure in our cities and towns. That's why, for example, both the Port Authority and PennDOT face a funding crisis. Even in good economic times, there isn't enough money to pay for an underutilized mass transit system and new highways like the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

Gov. Rendell, like his Republican predecessor, Tom Ridge, has pledged to curb sprawl, revitalize our cities and protect our countryside. Both have attempted to do so chiefly by spending more government money.

To save farmland, Pennsylvania created the most expensive conservation easement program in the nation, spending more than $700 million since 1987 to buy development rights from farmers (thus far protecting less than 5 percent of the state's agricultural lands).

To revitalize cities and towns, bonds have been floated to pay for big-ticket items such as Pittsburgh's expanded convention center, the proposed PNC tower, the Fifth and Forbes project, and smaller ones like razing buildings for a new library in Canonsburg.

While these programs are worthwhile, and make for splashy headlines, they've had limited success. Only when we stop promoting and, more importantly, subsidizing the low-density, drive-everywhere-for-everything lifestyle will the natural advantages of towns -- human scale, diversity of activities and close proximity of destinations -- attract people back from the urban fringe. And reducing subsidies also means reducing the cost of government.

Consider public education, the focus of the new legislation. School districts spend a whopping $1 billion annually on school construction, 30 percent of it subsidized by the state. For decades, the state Department of Education has helped pay districts to abandon walkable neighborhood schools and replace them with huge, car-dependent corporate-style campuses. The astronomical cost of busing -- statewide, more than $1 billion in the 2004-2005 school year -- is also subsidized by the state, with the commonwealth paying half.

Terminating state aid for sprawling schools, and the busing they engender, would be a significant step toward reducing taxes, protecting the countryside, increasing the appeal of traditional towns and eventually placing more disposable income in people's pockets.

For example, having grown up walking to school, I was careful to buy a house near the newspaper where I worked for 22 years. My wife made a special effort to teach at our neighborhood elementary school. Walking to work and other destinations has saved us countless hours behind the wheel, an enormous amount of stress, and $7,800 annually (as calculated by the American Automobile Association) for the second car we haven't needed to own and operate.

Shorn of its government largesse, sprawl doesn't make a lot of economic sense. We don't need to spend billions in government dollars to stop it. On the contrary: Cut off the subsidies for sprawl, and the free-market system will lift up and revive our towns all by itself.