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Stand in the biggest urban core between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta--and try to find someone in the street to talk to about living, working, and playing in this fast-growing metropolis. One problem: There are no people. In fact, there are no streets--or at least not many of the old-fashioned kind, you know, with sidewalks and all?

What there is is highways. Highways choked with bidirectional commuters. Highways hazing the horizon with the uncatalyzed effluent of cars and trucks. Highways feeding drivers into office parks, car dealerships, fast-food joints, malls, and motels. Welcome to Tysons Corner, Va., where Route 7, having sneaked under Interstate 66, then leapt over the Capital Beltway, ducks to avoid Route 123 with which it once, not so very long ago, intersected quite peacefully.

One of five "Edge Cities" clustered in Fairfax County, a wealthy Washington suburb, Tysons Corner was a rural crossroads 35 years ago. Now it could be Exhibit A in a catalog of unplanned urban sprawl--the sort of thing Vice President Al Gore hopes to stop through his "Livable Communities Initiative." Gore's plan, a major selling point in his run for the presidency, would offer grants and tax benefits to communities that preserve green space, curb water pollution, relieve traffic congestion, and revive abandoned industrial sites.

But that's easier said than done. Gore's plan faces a number of obstacles. The new money he seeks for his package is likely to be lost in the fall budget shuffle. Besides--when push comes to shove--can Gore persuade Americans to sacrifice personal amenities for what he sees as the communal good? And even if he can, is there really anything the federal government can do to help things along?

In a word: No, says John T. (Til) Hazel Jr., a zoning lawyer and developer widely credited (or blamed) for much of Fairfax County's fast growth. "Smart growth" plans like Gore's "are as phony as three-dollar bills," says Hazel, who argues the county actually was planned by farsighted local officials, developers, and others who, back in the 1950s, made ample provision for schools, homes, and stores--as well as for green space. And, indeed, as one looks through the 13th-floor glass walls of Hazel's office past a pond- and flower-studded park to the tree cover beyond, even Tysons Corner, a few miles away, looks positively bucolic.

So then what's behind today's maddening traffic tie-ups? Hazel blames government. State and federal officials, he says, failed to deliver the highways and bridges needed for sensible growth. Then there are environmental rules. Federal regulations, says Hazel, allow "a very small minority to control the good of the majority."

Smart growth spreads. Perhaps. What is clear, though, is that from Portland, Ore., to Baltimore, Md.--with stops at Denver, Salt Lake City, Austin, Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta--smart-growth strategies are spreading like strip malls along a suburban highway. More than half of state governors, from both parties, mentioned smart growth in state of the state messages this year. Even Minnesota's libertarian governor, Jesse Ventura--whose ranch is within jumping distance of Minneapolis's leapfrog development--recently endorsed the city's efforts to curb sprawl.

Postmodern Americans, their closets stuffed to overflowing, seem to be redeveloping a taste for "public goods"--things like neighborhood schools, safe streets, open spaces, and clean air. Even early champions of the new urban outgrowths are having second thoughts. Joel Garreau, whose 1991 book, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, celebrated malls as "the village squares of these new urbs," says he's picking up different vibes now. "When I'm talking to people in Plano, Texas, or in Irvine, Calif., or any of these edge cities awash in money and jobs, and I ask people what's missing, I'm struck by how often the word `community' comes up." He points to the many nostalgic mentions of "ducks and ponds" in newspaper accounts of citizen efforts to save the landmark 24-acre Evans Farm, just 2 miles from Tysons Corner. It will soon be displaced by still more tract mansions and townhouses. "What it boils down to," says Garreau, now a senior fellow at George Mason University's Institute of Public Policy, "is a sense of loss about what people think they once had. That's why the issue has so much political juice."

Not that everyone finds this juice to his or her taste. To many mall habitues, Tysons Corner is just what the customer ordered. "Everything you need, for the most part, is here," says resident Scott Wathen, 26. Agrees Lauren Adams, 20: "I've lived here my whole life, and I don't want to leave. I rarely ever go into D.C.--I don't really have to."

Lifestyle issues aside, there's a real debate about how to control growth. John Charles, environmental policy director of Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute, a self-billed free-market think tank, dismisses Gore's initiative as "completely inappropriate, a boondoggle." He says consumers are far more receptive to private solutions, such as commercially built roads that charge drivers higher tolls at rush hours [box]. "If low-density fringe development is so bad," Charles asks, "why do so many people live there?"

Brainwashed? Even some planned-growth advocates concede Charles has a point. "In criticizing sprawl, you have to be careful not to argue that people who are happy living in the suburbs really ought to be miserable, that somehow they've been brainwashed," says Governing magazine Executive Editor Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The Lost City. But some urbanists dispute the notion that people ever really chose runaway sprawl--and that the federal government has no business messing with it. "It's not just about consumer preference," argues Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, "and the federal government has been heavily involved all the way." Among the culprits, says Katz: sprawl-inducing local zoning codes and federal actions such as home mortgage subsidies and rules governing industrial-site cleanup.

Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening agrees that federal and state governments "worked together to set off the sprawl, so in curbing it, they have to work together again." Glendening, who heartily endorses Gore's ideas, has drawn nationwide attention with an ambitious plan to preserve rural expanses and revive downtowns and close-in suburbs by confining state development aid to designated "priority areas."

And where does Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush stand on sprawl? He has yet to say. But Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a key adviser to the Texas governor, says Bush shares his belief that such issues "are better dealt with at the state and local level." Goldsmith has used tax incentives and streamlined zoning and permit issuance to lure businesses back to his city.

Gore aides stress that the feds don't intend to big-foot the issue, only to help localities make sensible choices and offer modest new financial supports. And they've set up an elaborate Web site designed to do just that: http://www.livablecommunities.gov/. Gore can also point to some early successes, such as the construction, with the aid of enterprise zones and other federal grants, of a "sustainable technology park" in Virginia's impoverished Cape Charles.

But there are still more questions than answers. Some experts question whether Gore's proposal for $700 million in tax-credit-subsidized bonds will leverage a hoped-for $10 billion in private investment in projects like that in Cape Charles. But at least one plan component, the "land legacy" program, has strong Republican support because it preserves coastal regions in Alaska and other areas with powerful representatives in Congress. "A cynic might call this `green pork,' " jokes Gore aide Jonathan Weiss.

New urbanists. The vice president also hopes to capitalize on growing corporate recognition that vibrant urban cores help attract talented workers. Atlanta's Chamber of Commerce has spearheaded efforts to cope with the city's gridlock. In Silicon Valley, regional governments are working with businesses to steer urban growth. "Business leaders are turning into new urbanists," says author Ehrenhalt.