Cox had been the keynote speaker at the 2001 Economic Forecast sponsored by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. "I'm irreverent and I'll probably tell you things you've never heard before," says Cox, prefacing his remarks to more than 150 business leaders attending the conference.

He believes smart growth in Denver, and in other cities, typically promotes density as a replacement for urban sprawl. The problem, he says, is that smart growth solutions actually increase traffic congestion and air pollution, the very problems it is suppose to solve. "It's like when our first president, George Washington, was dying," Cox says. "What did the doctors of his day do? They bled him to death."

As proof, Cox points to Los Angeles, a city almost three times as dense as Denver. Traffic and pollution there are far worse than in Denver, he says. Some of the world's densest cities are in Asia, where traffic and pollution far overshadow levels in US cities.