In 1950, economist K. William Kapp published a pioneering book entitled The Social Costs of Private Enterprise. He did not mention homebuilding at all, and he devoted only a page to urban land use, yet his work offered a powerful analysis of the environmental problems caused by the postwar pattern of development.

The capitalist system contained a fundamental flaw, Kapp argued, since businesses routinely forced members of society to pay a significant part of the costs of production. To illustrate the point, Kapp considered a handful of environmental issues, including air and water pollution, soil erosion, destruction of wildlife, and waste of energy. Because no one charged for the use of air as a waste depository, manufacturers sent dirty, destructive, and deadly pollutants into the skies. Manufacturers also destroyed aquatic life, contaminated drinking supplies, and marred the aesthetic qualities of water by pouring wastes into rivers, lakes, and oceans. To reduce the costs of logging, timber companies often left steep slopes to erode, and so increased the siltation of streams and the severity of floods. In the race to exploit limited oil, gas, and coal resources, extractive firms used inefficient means of production and abandoned wells and mines prematurely. Market hunters also took for today without thought of tomorrow. For a number of species, from the passenger pigeon to the whale, the result of competitive exploitation was extinction or near-extinction.