I live in Atlanta, which must be the current capital of suburban sprawl. In the past ten years, I have seen farm after farm in the outlying areas sold, subdivided, and developed. Meanwhile, traffic congestion grows worse and worse, air pollution seems to be increasing exponentially, and our water resources are either drying up or becoming seriously polluted.
I maintain that suburbs are a blight on this planet. If everyone insists on living on an acre lot, and driving an SUV 15 miles to work, we are headed down a dangerous path. Our valuable farmland is being lost (and with it, potentially, our ability to feed ourselves down the road). Our rivers and streams are being choked with sewage, gasoline and oil runoff from a thousand asphalted parking lots, and fertilizer and pesticide runoff from a million manicured lawns.
Where will it end? Can we stop it? Can we reverese the trend? And (for you libertarians out there) should we?
One problem that I have witnessed personally is that zoning restrictions and building permits are handled on a local level. This creates several problems. Local politicians are often anxious to acquire the increased tax base that development brings, and are heedless of the problems that these sprawling developments create on the macro level. This is to say nothing of the corruption of local politicians by wealthy developers.
I say we should scrap this system, and that zoning and development issues should be handled on a state or regional level. That approach would cause those making the decisions to focus less on localized issues and to look more carefully at the “big picture” (which, in my view, would be a good thing).
Anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions on these issues?
I’ve only got about 5 minutes before I leave the office, so I apologize for the “get back to you on this” necessity.
But I will say that sprawl is often in the eyes of the beholder. What is “sprawl” to one person is necessary development to another. Sometimes it seems to me that doing what you want to do with your land is often called “destroying the environment.” However, doing what the anti-sprawl people want you to do with your land is called “saving” it.
Here’s a real-world example of how anti-sprawl legislation/zoning may have negative consequences: affordable housing. Say there is a 200-acre lot in or near a major metropolitan area. Now one of the major complaints in an area like this is the lack of low-income housing; or “WHY ARE APARTMENTS AROUND HERE SO GODDAM EXPENSIVE!”
A developer could come in and build apartment units. Supply-and-Demand would indicate this would ease the housing crunch a bit and possibly make it easier for people to scrape by enough for rent. To save this land for greenery’s sake is certainly noble, but there are consequences that must be addressed.
I know I have not really discussed the issue in the depth I would like; however, I put forth the above as topics to consider.
OK, divemaster, it looks like you are coming at this from a libertarian/property-rights angle. However, even taking that approach, it’s not as simple as “I can do whatever I want with my own property.”
What you do with that property has consequences for the rest of us. If you take a farm and convert it into a huge subdivision, then you’re going to want sewer hookups. (You don’t have your own sewer system, do you?) You’re going to want water hookups. Those things have a negative impact on the rest of the community. (Less water to go around, more sewage going into an already overburdened system.)
Furthermore, as I noted in my original post, development causes other problems with the water supply. Oil, gasoline, pesticide and fertilizer flow into the system.
Recent studies show that the loss of trees and increase in paved areas even cause an impact on local weather.
That is to say nothing of the increased burden on roads, and traffic tie-ups caused by new developments. Traffic jams have a negative economic impact. Time spent in traffic is usually non-productive.
Add air pollution to the list of ills caused by the development on your property.
What you do on your property has a clear impact on me, even viewing the matter through a libertarian lens.
To hide behind your property rights is to ignore the problem. Do you deny that sprawl contributes to the problems I list? I can look out my window right now and see the brown haze which descends on my city every summer. Are you denying that the problem exists? Do you contend that absolutely nothing should be done about it? If not, what solutions do you propose?
One main problem I have with suburban sprawl is that it adds to the number of people the structures of the metropolis must support (roads, transit, water, dumps, jobs, educational facilities, government…); at the same time, however, the ethos of the suburbs is an escape and a lack of commitment to the city. So the city has to deal (on all levels) with a bunch of people who don’t want to deal with the city. This can’t help but bleed the city.
Then there are my philosophical problems with the ethos of the suburbs themselves (as opposed to suburbanization), but they’re off-topic so I won’t post them unless asked.
Ok, I have a little more time now, so I can better address these and other issues. For the record, I do not deny that many problems are inherent with increased development. It seems we will disagree on the exact nature/extent of these problems, and possible solutions. But I do recognize that we can’t just take bulldozers and turn a 100-mile radius around every metropolitan area into asphalt.
Pollution; run-off problems, including increased chemical contamination and nutrient loading in local water bodies (leading to oxygen depletion and fish kills); water table (especially out west; I lived in Southern Arizona for a year–talk to the people in Phoenix about development and water supply). These I agree are very important problems.
I think changes in weather patterns around cities are real, but not high on the list of things to worry about.
As far as traffic goes; well, I live in the Washington, DC area so I know about traffic. To me, the key is developing better traffic plans. More people --> more cars --> more traffic. We may hate it, but it is inevitable. Metropolitan areas grow. People move in. What would you propose they do? Of course, there will be a need for more houses. And people want nice places to live and raise a family. Most probably would rather have a house with a yard rather than squeeze into the top floor of an urban row-house apartment. I think they should have that choice.
What about environmental concerns? First off, I’m glad you understood my position to be concerned with property rights. I was afraid after I posted that someone would accuse me of wanting to rip up the public parks and such. No such thing. I am pretty libertarian when it comes to private property rights; however, I am equally as adamant about public preservation of lands. IMO, the best way to set aside green areas is for the city/county/state/US to manage these lands well, with an environmental conscience. (For the record, I was a biologist for the Forest Service for a year before landing my current, permanent position)
For those of you who love to see lakes, parks, hiking trails, state or national forests, etc… within or near metropolitan areas, I’m with you on that. A governing body should be free to create as many of these areas as it can afford and manage.(*****) However, if Farmer Brown wants to retire and sell his acrerage to be subdivided into half-acre lots so cookie-cutter houses can dot the once pristine field; well, that is also okay in my book.
Given the above scenario, I do not think cities are helpless, through zoning and planning, to accomodate such development, Are there abuses? Certainly. Are there areas where hindsight says “Geeze, why in the Hell did we build there?” Certainly. But I submit this is the exception rather than the rule. And there are indeed quite a few environmental laws/regulations that one has to abide by, even as a private developing company, before you can crank up the bulldozers. It can take months to years for all the environmental and resource clearances to be granted before development can ensue.
Paying for the new roads, sewer systems, fire/police, and such–that’s where property taxes come in. And increased tax revenues from all the business that will be created to support new development. Don’t forget that people moving in does mean more jobs.
When I think of the suburbs, I think about areas of high employment and a good tax base. I think of new facilites and new opportunities. I also think of new parks, recreation areas, and new schools, among other things. I realize others think more about smog and traffic. I’m not saying either side is blind to the other; maybe more of a case of the glass half full or half empty.
***** I still contend that setting aside too much land as untouchable or undevelopable can create severe housing shortage situations for those who can least afford to pay high rents.
I can’t say I don’t sympathize, to a degree, with opponents of “sprawl.” Problem is, the people who oppose “sprawl” are either
Urban left-wing ideologues who resent middle-class and upper-class white folks for wanting a house with a back yard in a safe neighborhood, when they SHOULD have stayed in the inner city (under the rule of liberal mayors like John Lindsay and Andrew Young).
AND
Middle-class and upper-class whites who THOUGHT they were getting a house in the country, only to find that they were surrounded by the same people they thought they were getting away from.
Both these groups hate “sprawl” for very different reasons. ANd because their desires are incompatible, movements like “Smart GRowth” are hopelessly doomed.
Fact is, when a suburbanite tells pollsters he supports light rail or mass transit, what he REALLY means is “ALl those OTHER people in my neighborhood should use mass transit, so I can drive my car to work without all the traffic.” And when he says he supports more housing in the inner city, what he means is, “I want all my damn neighbors to move back to the city, so I can have the quiet country life I thought I was buying.”
Suburbanites don’t WANT to live in dense communities in the city. ANd they’re not going to, just because Greenpeacers tell them to. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.
biotop:
Oh, now that’s real helpful. Couldn’t you at least try? This is a debate forum, not a kindergarten class where we throw out non-sensical one-liners.
Feel free to wooooosh me if I’ve missed the sarcastic irony. If you truly think humans are a “cancer,” I must say I’ve never heard such a depressing and cynical view. Even ruthless despots don’t think all humans are worthless.
sailor:
So what is your solution for population control? More education? A moratorium on immigration? Birth quotas? Concentration Camps? You’ve given us nothing to go on here.
Maybe you could start another thread about your ideas on how to stop populations from increasing. (Of course, many populations in the Western developed world do now have a replacement rate less than 1. In fact, Japan and several western countries are projected to have very significant population declines in the coming decades.)
But back to sprawl. For those of you worried about all those nasty people moving into your neighborhood, what do you suppose they should do? Where do you want them to live? Is the answer “anywhere else but here” as astorian suggests?
I hate to be a wet blanket, but I don’t believe suburban sprawl can be addressed corporately. Each city is different and must be addressed individually.
Atlanta, for instance, is unique in that there are no geographic “sprawl breakers” within 100+ miles of the city. It has no large rivers, lakes, oceans, or mountain ranges to act as containment for sprawl. The Atlanta metropolitan area already encompases 50+ miles in every direction and is growing quickly. Commutes of 30 miles are average, 100 mile commutes are not rare (Atlanta leads the nation in average commute time and distance). To compound the problem, the commutes are not one way. Suburb-to-suburb commutes now equal or exceed suburb-to-Atlanta commutes. Traffic is snarled in every direction every workday.
Imagine trying to build an effective rapid transit system that encompasses all of that area and involves 12 county and countless city governments. I don’t believe it is economically feasible or humanly possible.
I have no answers. I will say that the solution for Atlanta’s woes, if one should be found, will NOT work for other cities. We have created the Georgia Rapid Transit Authirity (GRTA) to address transportation issues on a statewide basis, but I have serious doubts that a truly effective answer will be found in my lifetime.
obviously we need a better trasportation than cars… so whose up for making a flying car? Like all cities, Atlanta is a nice place to visit(if you like the way people drive there) unless traffic keeps you stopped for 4 hours. Ahh road rage, all cars should be computer controlled so we can blame someone else when we crash.
Granted, most people like having a lawn. But why does everyone have to have their own individual lawn. What’s wrong with a nice communal lawn? Boston Commons is a nice example.
How about this paradigm:
Residential units closely packed (not necessarily in one building, but at least very close side-to-side) around a communal green space. A small shopping district could be included. The neighborhood has a rail station, connecting it to other such neighborhoods, and to a central city (with office space and shopping). The whole thing could be laid out in a spider-web configuration.
A fantasy, I suppose, but such a layout would solve a lot of problems. Why can’t it happen? Most metropolitan areas encompass numerous counties and smaller cities, each of which has its own local government and controls zoning and development at the local level. If zoning and development were controlled at the regional level instead, such plans could be mandated through zoning regulations.
This gets back to my original post. The control of development decisions by a couple dozen local governments within a metropolitan area hinders planning on a grand scale, and leads to piecemeal development, and sprawl.
An example: The subway system in Atlanta is called MARTA. When MARTA was being developed, only three counties signed on: DeKalb, Fulton and Clayton. The rest of the outlying counties voted down the extension of MARTA into their communities. Why? They feared it would bring “the wrong element” into their counties. (You decide what that means. :rolleyes: )
I work in downtown Atlanta. I would love to be able to hop on a MARTA train to get to some of the outlying towns. But because of the sort of narrow-minded local decision-making described above, I am forced to hop into my car and contribute to Atlanta’s traffic problems.
I am almost to the point that I would favor doing away with local government altogether, and let things be handled at the State level. That would also solve the problem alluded to by matt, of suburbanites taking advantage of the central city’s resources without contributing to its tax base. All tax revenues would be utilized state-wide, as needed. A pipe dream, I know, but it would solve a world of problems.
Not to be simplistic but would anyone care to point out the problems that would be created by placing a moratorium on development and establishing a commitee to oversee exceptions?
I agree with the posters who point out that this is a problem that needs to be addressed on a larger level than that of local governments.
I would be interested in mattmcl’s philosophical problems with the ethos of the suburbs. Perhaps in a new thread? I would also be interested in matt’s input on the growth of Sprawl in Canada, if he cared to give some. I think that this would be more pertinent.
I should point out that I live in the 'burbs and my wife drives a SUV. This is a good indication of who makes the decisions in our household.
Okay, then, charge a sewar rate that reflects the cost of supporting a sewar system.
Again, charge how much it costs.
Whoever’s letting these things seep into the water should pay for it. If cars are leeking gasoline onto the roads (?), that should be reflected in the gas tax/ car registration fees. If farms are letting fertilizers and pesticides leek into the water supply, they should pay.
Then offer a reduction on property taxes to those that have trees.
That’s what property taxes are for: to recoup the cost of supporting roads and other local expenses.
Again, whoever’s releasing air pollution should pay for it.
How? Property rights mean eactly that: the right to with one’s property what one wants. It does not mean doing whatever one wants with other people’s property.
I don’t understand why people go running around saying that we need a new way to deal with these issues when there are already instruments in place to take care of them, instruments that are not being used to their full potential.
Personally, I hate suburbs. I think that cities are a much more efficient means of housing people. I also hate the concept of lawns. My goal in life is to never live in a house where I have to own a lawnmower. It’s my theory that the popularity of the suburban lifestyle with a neatly groomed lawn was a Soviet plot to lower American productivity. And someday I’ll find a shred of evidence to support it.
As I see it, the problem was largely created by government intervention. By building highways into cities and connecting them to the suburban roads, the federal government certainly accelerated the flight of people from the cities. It also encourages a lifestyle designed around the automobile.
In the cities, you can commute by foot, subway, bus, bike, or car. This encourages people to form neighborhoods based on where they can walk to. In the suburbs, people need to use a car to fill any need they have. Hence the sprawl. If you already have to drive to get to the nearest hardware store, why not just go to Home Depot where they have everything?
As for what to do about it now, I’m not sure. As long as people continue to want to leave cities, any plans to ease traffic into and out of the cities are not going to succeed. They will generate as much traffic as they take away from existing roads, generally.
The only solution I can think of would be to adapt to suburbs as a separate entity from cities. Make the suburbs more self sufficient, move businesses into suburbs to ease commutes, improve light rail systems, connect suburbs more to each other, ease suburban zoning regulations to allow them to become more crowded. This won’t get rid of suburban sprawl, which is OK by me, since I’m a libertarian and thus think that it’s wrong to force people to live in a way they don’t desire. However, I think that we do have the capacity to minimize the harmful impacts of this trend.
I should probably start this post by saying that I am a civil engineer working for a construction company in the Washington DC area, and most of the projects we work on (we do excavation and utilities) would qualify as urban sprawl. I’ve been on the design end and the construction end of the process, and I’ve spent a great deal of time working with regulatory agencies to find ways to develop this land that don’t damage the environment any more than is necessary.
I think Divemaster has a lot of things right here: cities (and counties, when you’re looking at urban sprawl) have a large say in the process of development. The permitting process for any kind of new construction is a convoluted maze that can indeed take years to work through, and often continues for a year or longer once the development is finished. As frustrating as it is to work through, however, it usually serves its purpose: you are simply not allowed to build without considering more than your own needs; the effects of the new development on existing public water and sewer systems, roads, parking areas, and adjacent properties have to be considered and addressed to the county’s satisfaction, or you’re not building anything. I believe that planning and zoning work better and prevent more problems than most people realize.
However, I don’t believe that you can adress all the problems of this kind of development by simply saying “let the new development pay for the cost of ______.” When designing any type of infrastructure, you have to project the future use for the life of the installation. This is done by examining existing zoning records, looking at population growth trends, city plans, etc. There are lots of useful tools that help, but it’s basically a guess. And all these things change. So when the Washington Beltway was built, somebody sat down and looked at all these items and decided how big it had to be to fit its proposed use. The same is true for public water supplies and sewage treatment plants - you’re guessing how much capacity you’ll need in twenty or fifty years. Property taxes can help maintain existing infrastructure, but maintenance doesn’t cut it if you’re loaded to 150% of capacity. Add to this the fact that most of these installations are used well beyond the design life and you can see where the additional development becomes a big problem.
Spoke’s paradigm isn’t as much of a fantasy as it sounds like. “Cluster developments” of the kind he describes have come into focus recently for low density residential areas. Typically, these developments use narrow streets, cul-de-sacs, smaller lots, and common areas to provide a feeling of being on a larger lot without the additional detrimental effects of the more typical residential communities. The impervious surfaces (rooftops, driveways, roads, etc. are reduced, lawns are smaller (one of the worst water pollution problems in residential areas is nutrient enrichment from fertilizers), construction costs are lower (design costs usually increase, but not enough to outweigh the construction savings) and the completed development can still sell for a good chunk of cash. The reason you don’t see more of these (sounds like a great idea, right?) is that noone wants to buy a house in one of them.
As far as 2sense’s moratorium on development, I think the city of Portland, Oregon pretty much did exactly that. Is there anyone here from the Portland area who knows better what they’re doing up there?
If you look at older cities, what you’ll typically find are areas of mixed use with small business scattered throughout residential areas (remember the corner grocery store).
In the 50’s and 60’s, the concept of segregating residential from commercial began to take shape leading to the design of huge residential developments (suburbs). Many factors influenced this philosophy including the increasing use of the car. When you look at the post-WWII building boom, the increasing importance of a car in a family, and the rise in wages, you’ll find the start of the modern concept of zoning where commercial and residential were purposely set apart with barriers in between.
Also in this philosophy was an attempt to design roads to move cars from residential to collecter streets and then onto major thoroughfares. Roadways and neighborhoods were designed to optimize traffic flow, not living conditions. If you’ll notice, you practically have to get in your car to do anything if you want to go shopping or even go to a park.
There has been a recent move to design neighborhoods that are more livable. “New Urbanism” tries to design mixed use neighborhoods with retail and residential close to each other. See http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ajh/nu.htm for more information on what this new design philosophy is all about. If you saw “The Truman Show”, the city where the filming took place is Seaside, Florida, which was built using New Urbanism guidelines.
Like all cities, Atlanta is a nice place to visit(if you like the way people drive there) unless traffic keeps you stopped for 4 hours. Ahh road rage, all cars should be computer controlled so we can blame someone else when we crash.