Smart Growth?

On the H-URBAN discussion list, Alexander Schulenburg mentions "a Proclamation entitled 'Prohibiting New Building or Subdividing of Houses', which was issued on 7 July 1580 (22 Elizabeth I) commanded people to 'desist and forbear from any new buildings of any house or tenement within three miles from any gates of the said city of London [...] where no former house hath been known to have been in the memory of such as are now living.'"