# How to deal with (sub)urban sprawl? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831 "2009-05-09T05:57:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/21 "2009-05-12T15:14:14Z")
Most cities are seeing a revival, the suburbs are currently seeing a mass exodus. Only cities based around a now defunct industry are seeing a crash. For every Detroit, Buffalo or Pittsburgh, you have a New York, San Francisco, and Nashville. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/22 "2009-05-12T15:35:32Z")
I actually think suburban living is going to become more popular, and makes more sense as a way to organize society. All the forces are trending towards favoring a more distributed population. For example, the information economy and the rise of efficient delivery mechanisms like Fed Ex and Netflix means there’s less disadvantage in living away from sources of goods. It used to be that if you lived in a small town, your choices in what to buy, what to see, and what to do were very limited. Now, anyone can buy anything in the world and have it delivered to their door. The internet and communications technology makes it less necessary to drive to work. More people are telecommuting than ever before, and more people are running small businesses from their homes than ever before. If your job is doing web design, or making crafts and selling them on etsy, or running a blog, you can live anywhere in the world. The transition to a service/information economy means less need to have thousands of employees within commuting distance of large factories. More and more you’re seeing bedroom communities with smaller offices and businesses hiring within that community. Transportation is getting more efficient. Cars are getting better, energy efficiency is increasing, and therefore the cost of living in the suburbs goes down, while the cost of living in the city goes up as rents increase due to population pressure. The economy has been transforming over decades to support the demonstrated desire people have for living in the suburbs. The rise of big box retailers, for example. These stores hire within the suburb, and provide most of the goods suburban dwellers need. This makes suburban living more efficient as well. They’re becoming self-contiained communities The advantages of suburban living are very strong. There’s more living space, which means more room for greenery and private yards. It’s a great environment for children. It’s quieter. Crime is lower. There’s more choice in that you can pick the kind of community you want to live in. Finally, we live in an age where destructive technologies like biological weapons and radioactive weapons are becoming increasingly available to smaller groups or individuals. We also live in a globalized world where pandemics can spread fast. In a world like that, spreading your population out is a major advantage. The 911 terrorists were only able to kill as many people as they did because they hit one of the densest concentrations of humans on the planet. Had they flown their planes into a suburban area, the death toll would have been a small fraction of that. Compared to all the benefits, the drawbacks of suburban living just don’t compare. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/23 "2009-05-12T15:46:40Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I actually think suburban living is going to become more popular, and makes more sense as a way to organize society. All the forces are trending towards favoring a more distributed population. > > For example, the information economy and the rise of efficient delivery mechanisms like Fed Ex and Netflix means there’s less disadvantage in living away from sources of goods. It used to be that if you lived in a small town, your choices in what to buy, what to see, and what to do were very limited. Now, anyone can buy anything in the world and have it delivered to their door. That’s fine for virtual goods, like a movie in digital format. But for anything that actually has mass, delivering it burns gasoline, which adds to the cost. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/24 "2009-05-12T15:50:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I actually think suburban living is going to become more popular, and makes more sense as a way to organize society. All the forces are trending towards favoring a more distributed population. cite? All the trends I see show suburbs being depopulated and people moving into the cities. A distributed population requires more fuel to support and is generally more wasteful. The idling in traffic example given above seems meaningful but it’s not. Sure the per car pollution of idlers is greater than that of cars going down the highway, but the cars per capita in a city with useful mass transit is much lower. In New York City there are tons of idling vehicles, but they are offset significantly by mass transit ridership. > [@](#): > > For example, the information economy and the rise of efficient delivery mechanisms like Fed Ex and Netflix means there’s less disadvantage in living away from sources of goods. It used to be that if you lived in a small town, your choices in what to buy, what to see, and what to do were very limited. Now, anyone can buy anything in the world and have it delivered to their door. Fed Ex and Netflix are not efficient delivery systems. On Demand media is an efficient delivery system, they both still rely on trucks driving to deliver the media. Your views SEEM intuitive, but that’s not the way it’s occurring. Besides, that only works for durable goods. I can get ten different kinds of ethnic food delivered to my house within half an hour. > [@](#): > > The internet and communications technology makes it less necessary to drive to work. More people are telecommuting than ever before, and more people are running small businesses from their homes than ever before. If your job is doing web design, or making crafts and selling them on etsy, or running a blog, you can live anywhere in the world. And yet, people are moving into the city more. As of 2000 even before the mass flight to the cities occurred more than half of the American population lived in urban areas. I’ll see if I can find more up to date data, but I think that it’s an even greater percentage now. [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm) > [@](#): > > The transition to a service/information economy means less need to have thousands of employees within commuting distance of large factories. More and more you’re seeing bedroom communities with smaller offices and businesses hiring within that community. There is a lot of research being done with this regarding the efficiency of being able to speak to a person in person. > [@](#): > > Transportation is getting more efficient. Cars are getting better, energy efficiency is increasing, and therefore the cost of living in the suburbs goes down, while the cost of living in the city goes up as rents increase due to population pressure. A lot of research is going in to analyzing the creative synergies inherent in metropolises, ie, the creative potential unlocked by many people living in close proximity. See Richard Florida’s work. > [@](#): > > The economy has been transforming over decades to support the demonstrated desire people have for living in the suburbs. The rise of big box retailers, for example. These stores hire within the suburb, and provide most of the goods suburban dwellers need. This makes suburban living more efficient as well. They’re becoming self-contiained communities And yet it’s not working the way you are claiming. [http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2007/may/104.html](http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/2007/may/104.html) > [@](#): > > There’s no big countdown billboard or sign in Times Square to denote it, but Wednesday, May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural. > > Working with United Nations estimates that predict the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, the researchers projected the May 23, 2007, transition day based on the average daily rural and urban population increases from 2005 to 2010. On that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 will exceed that of 3,303,866,404 rural people. > [@](#): > > The advantages of suburban living are very strong. There’s more living space, which means more room for greenery and private yards. It’s a great environment for children. It’s quieter. Crime is lower. There’s more choice in that you can pick the kind of community you want to live in. Pick the kind of community you want to live in? Are you kidding me? Most suburbs are the same stretch of mini-malls along the local highway, or Main-street and cul de sac to cul de sac stretching out from these main arteries. There is very little difference between various suburban communities. The things that really alter them are whether or not you will like your neighbors something that you cannot know before you live there for a while. > [@](#): > > Finally, we live in an age where destructive technologies like biological weapons and radioactive weapons are becoming increasingly available to smaller groups or individuals. We also live in a globalized world where pandemics can spread fast. In a world like that, spreading your population out is a major advantage. The 911 terrorists were only able to kill as many people as they did because they hit one of the densest concentrations of humans on the planet. Had they flown their planes into a suburban area, the death toll would have been a small fraction of that. Well one thing I haven’t brought up is that any increase in suburban dwelling is net a drain on rural populations, so suburban populations would actually mean that society is becoming LESS spread out, even if more people are moving to the suburbs as the suburbs are less spread out than rural areas. > [@](#): > > Compared to all the benefits, the drawbacks of suburban living just don’t compare. Nice romantic emotional plea, but none of it is true. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/25 "2009-05-12T15:51:02Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The first step to getting sprawl under control is simple (not easy, but simple): Political consolidation of the suburbs with the cities. Suburbanites should not be allowed to lived next door to a city and enjoy all the advantages of that while being beyond the reach of city taxing authorities. If annexed, they also have a vote in the city government. And a consolidated metro government can plan future growth – and mass-transit systems – more effectively. I have no idea what advantages of living next to the city, but being beyond the city taxing authority you’re talking about? Are public services more city-based in Florida? Because in Western New York, I can’t think of any public service that isn’t county-based. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/26 "2009-05-12T15:59:24Z")
[Trading Places](http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=264510ca-2170-49cd-bad5-a0be122ac1a9) This article talks about how affluent (mostly whites) are moving in to the inner cities and pushing the poor people to the peripheries (suburbs) of the cities. [The Next Slum](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime) This article talks about one of the impacts of subprime, the slumification of the suburbs. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/27 "2009-05-12T16:24:56Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > I have no idea what advantages of living next to the city, but being beyond the city taxing authority you’re talking about? > > Are public services more city-based in Florida? Because in Western New York, I can’t think of any public service that isn’t county-based. Living in a suburb of Des Moines offers comparative advantages over living in Bumfuck, Iowa. Every metropolitan region is a single economic organism. Even if you don’t work **in** the city, you work at a job that would not exist at that location if the city were not next door. You also have access to all the city’s cultural amenities. It’s only fair you should pay city taxes – and have a city vote. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/28 "2009-05-12T17:28:45Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Suburbanites should not be allowed to lived next door to a city and enjoy all the advantages of that while being beyond the reach of city taxing authorities. If annexed, they also have a vote in the city government. And a consolidated metro government can plan future growth – and mass-transit systems – more effectively. You can live in a suburb of Dallas without going there for employment, education, or even entertainment. Suburbanites don’t have “all” the advantages of living the city. If they wanted all the advantages they’d be living in the city. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/29 "2009-05-12T17:36:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Living in a suburb of Des Moines offers comparative advantages over living in Bumfuck, Iowa. Every metropolitan region is a single economic organism. Even if you don’t work **in** the city, you work at a job that would not exist at that location if the city were not next door. You also have access to all the city’s cultural amenities. It’s only fair you should pay city taxes – and have a city vote. I like this plan. Can we annex New Jersey, downstate New York, and all of Connecticut into New York City? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/30 "2009-05-12T17:50:27Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > I like this plan. Can we annex New Jersey, downstate New York, and all of Connecticut into New York City? It’d be awesome if they extended the subways to all of those places. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/31 "2009-05-12T17:53:22Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > [Trading Places](http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=264510ca-2170-49cd-bad5-a0be122ac1a9) > > This article talks about how affluent (mostly whites) are moving in to the inner cities and pushing the poor people to the peripheries (suburbs) of the cities. I thought I would also add that Hoboken ten years ago was mostly kind of ghetto. Typically college students would move there for a few years before either moving into Manhattan or buying houses further out in NJ. In the past decade, however, they have been developing all kinds of massive luxury condos on any vacent spot and there is even a W hotel now. A lot of people who would have normally moved out to the suburbs from Manhattan or Hoboken are now staying to raise familes. The school system still sucks ass though. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/32 "2009-05-12T17:54:56Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > It’d be awesome if they extended the subways to all of those places. 😉 Isn’t that what the PATH, MetroNorth and NJ Transit essentially do? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/33 "2009-05-12T17:56:56Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Isn’t that what the PATH, MetroNorth and NJ Transit essentially do? Metronorth and NJ Transit cost more than $ 2 per ride. 😉 PATH essentially does that yes. But also, none of them are as regular or comprehensive as the intra-city MTA. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/34 "2009-05-12T17:57:19Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Isn’t that what the PATH, MetroNorth and NJ Transit essentially do? I can’t yet visit my parents for $2 (soon to be $2.25). A ticket to Peekskill costs rather more than that. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/35 "2009-05-12T17:59:49Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > cite? All the trends I see show suburbs being depopulated and people moving into the cities. > … > And yet, people are moving into the city more. > > As of 2000 even before the mass flight to the cities occurred more than half of the American population lived in urban areas. I’ll see if I can find more up to date data, but I think that it’s an even greater percentage now. > > [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm) That census report includes only two categories, urban and rural. Presumably the suburbs are included under urban, so it doesn’t tell us whether people are preferring urban to suburban. The New Republic article that you linked to in your next post actually says that more people have moved to the suburbs this decade than to cities. On a national scale, [this map](http://www.mibazaar.com/fastestgrowingstates.html) makes clear that people are fleeing the densely populated Northeast for the Wild West, where suburbs are growing rapidly. > [@](#): > > Pick the kind of community you want to live in? Are you kidding me? Most suburbs are the same stretch of mini-malls along the local highway, or Main-street and cul de sac to cul de sac stretching out from these main arteries. There is very little difference between various suburban communities. As I said in that other thread, this is a feature, not a bug. Suburbs are zoned a certain way for a reason. If the zoning laws only allow big-box retailers and fast food restaurants then they don’t allow porn shops, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, motorcycle repair shops, and other unwanted businesses. That’s one of the biggest attractions of the suburbs, especially for families with children. People flee cities to escape the bad urban element. The truth of this fact is evident when one looks at gentrified, urban neighborhoods. City planners realized that to get the middle class back, they needed to offer neighborhoods that are clean and morally decent. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/36 "2009-05-12T17:59:50Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I thought I would also add that Hoboken ten years ago was mostly kind of ghetto. Typically college students would move there for a few years before either moving into Manhattan or buying houses further out in NJ. In the past decade, however, they have been developing all kinds of massive luxury condos on any vacent spot and there is even a W hotel now. A lot of people who would have normally moved out to the suburbs from Manhattan or Hoboken are now staying to raise familes. > > The school system still sucks ass though. I haven’t been to Hoboken in about half a decade, but in my experience back when I lived in New Jersey and was in Hoboken regularly, it was already 5 years or more into being fully gentrified. I moved to the east coast in 96, and for as long as I have been here Hoboken has been gentrified. The last holdouts of the old Hoboken were being visibly pushed out around 2000 when I lived in Jersey City, which was going through it’s post-Hoboken wave of gentrification where up to Grove street was already gentrified, now it’s gentrified out to Journal Square. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/37 "2009-05-12T18:17:24Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That census report includes only two categories, urban and rural. Presumably the suburbs are included under urban, so it doesn’t tell us whether people are preferring urban to suburban. The New Republic article that you linked to in your next post actually says that more people have moved to the suburbs this decade than to cities. On a national scale, [this map](http://www.mibazaar.com/fastestgrowingstates.html) makes clear that people are fleeing the densely populated Northeast for the Wild West, where suburbs are growing rapidly. It divides it pretty clearly. I would include the last two categories of the ‘urban’ as the suburban. It’s quite obvious that the above 200k category is living right within a city center, and this even includes many homes with yards such as exist in Brooklyn or Chicago. But that figure alone accounts for 58% of total US population. Then you move down one tier to slightly less dense urban regions which I would assume refer to places like Reno or Albuquerque, and you’ve got another 10%. It’s unclear how they define ‘area’ if it’s 153 ‘areas’ that are urban then the centers of both Reno and Albuquerque could certainly qualify as they are both among the top 153 cities in the nation. Definitely people have yards there. This must include some of the more urbanized suburban areas like much of suburban New Jersey where they still have urban city centers with residential areas with houses, places like Paterson for instance. I’ve often quipped that New York’s suburbs have skyscrapers, and it’s true, go to White Plains, Newark, Jersey City and see for yourself. People in the Northeast are hardly ‘fleeing’. There is still a growth rate and a lot of those people are moving into the city. New York City’s housing boom has hardly slowed compared to the rest of the nation. Salt Lake City as per your map with Utah being # 1, is a fairly urban environment. As are Phoenix and Tucson of your #2. Your #3 of course has people moving to Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and possibly El Paso. Tied at #3 is North Carolina with Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham and Asheville. Then you’ve got Colorado with Denver, Colorado Springs and Boulder. Wyoming’s explosive growth of 9000 people puts it at #6 tied with Idaho’s 27000. New York on the other hand grew by 60,000, New Jersey grew by 30,000 and Connecticut grew by 12,000. So it would seem that the large states at the bottom of the list, as the list is done by percentage, are still growing in real numbers faster than many at the top of the list. So the top state, Utah only beats New York out by roughly 6-7000 people. Urban California at #17 grew by about 400,000 while urban Texas grew by about 450,000. > [@](#): > > As I said in that other thread, this is a feature, not a bug. Suburbs are zoned a certain way for a reason. If the zoning laws only allow big-box retailers and fast food restaurants then they don’t allow porn shops, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, motorcycle repair shops, and other unwanted businesses. That’s one of the biggest attractions of the suburbs, especially for families with children. People flee cities to escape the bad urban element. LOL, the Jersey suburbs are littered with all of those businesses you describe. > [@](#): > > The truth of this fact is evident when one looks at gentrified, urban neighborhoods. City planners realized that to get the middle class back, they needed to offer neighborhoods that are clean and morally decent. I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about here. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/38 "2009-05-12T18:22:10Z")
Just an FYI, when New York ended the red light district in Times Square it was the middle-class that was pushed OUT of Manhattan. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/39 "2009-05-12T18:29:29Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > I like this plan. Can we annex New Jersey, downstate New York, and all of Connecticut into New York City? No, because a city’s boundaries can’t cross state lines. If it were up to me, I would make a new State of the Union out of each of America’s five largest-by-population [metropolitan areas.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_metropolitan_areas) At **least** the top five. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831/40 "2009-05-12T19:31:53Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > I work in Finance for a supermarket company. A big part of my job is evaluating new sites for our stores. It is almost always much more expensive to put our stores onto existing sites in built up areas, than to build in new sites in the suburbs. Like 20-30% more expensive. The city governments have a totally different approach to development than the suburban ones do. They may pay lip service to having a supermarket open in the city to serve an underserved population, but once you go to build there, everyone has their hand out. We spend millions of dollars on stuff that has nothing to do with building or operating the store. If you don’t use a general contractor who is “in” with the local authorities, you can forget about getting the permits and inspections. Plus everyone has “suggestions” about who you should hire for everything, both during the construction phase and after the store opened. > > As an example we abandoned a site in a major east coast city, when we found that as the price for building the store, the city wanted us to renovate a decrepit adjoining park, pay to upgrade parts of the water and sewer system, and pay for roadwork to widen the road so that the traffic going into and out of our store wouldn’t impact traffic on the street. And this was to go into a site where another supermarket had been a few years earlier. Wonder why they left in the first place? > > In the suburbs the county governments are actively courting us to build more stores. All the infrastructure is provided, and you might even get a tax holiday for a few years. That’s interesting and explains a lot, thanks. Do you think the extra expense is more due to civic corruption or civic inefficiency? Any suggestions on how you’d fix it? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-deal-with-sub-urban-sprawl/495831.md?page=3)