The Atlantic Cities: 

“Quantifying the Cost of Sprawl

Emily Badger. May 21, 2013

Sprawl is expensive. It costs more money to pave a road and connect a sewer line to five families each living a block apart on wooded lots than to build public infrastructure for those same five families living in a condo. It costs more money (and takes more time and gas) to serve those families with garbage trucks, fire engines, and ambulances. And in return – as we’ve previously written – those five sprawling single-family homes likely yield less in tax revenue per acre than the apartment building that could house our fictitious residents downtown.

This municipal math is a core tenet of smart growth. But the argument is even more convincing with actual numbers. A new report out today from Smart Growth America, which surveyed 17 studies of compact and sprawling development scenarios across the country, sizes up the scale of the impact this way: Compact development costs, on average, 38 percent less in up-front infrastructure than “conventional suburban development” for things like roads, sewers and water lines. It costs 10 percent less in ongoing service delivery by reducing the distances law enforcement or garbage trucks must travel to serve residents (well-connected street grids cut down on this travel time, too). And compact development produces on average about 10 times more tax revenue per acre.”

Photo: Shutterstock

Citytank:

Driven into Poverty: Walkable urbanism and the suburbanization of poverty

David Moser pens a compelling essay that examines the ways in which sprawling auto-dependent land use patterns exacerbate poverty. As more low-income individuals and families are pushed to the suburbs, “this problem is gaining urgency.”

David Moser. March 8, 2013

American suburbs are a particularly bad place to be poor. Though poverty poses dire and unjust challenges no matter where it exists, sprawling and auto-dependent land use patterns can exacerbate these difficulties. And this problem is gaining urgency, as more and more of America’s low-income individuals now live in suburbs (or are being pushed there), a phenomenon the Brookings Institute has called “the suburbanization of poverty”.

There are many reasons suburbs make the experience of poverty worse, but first among them is that automobiles are really expensive. Purchasing, maintaining, repairing, insuring, and fueling a car can easily consume 50% or more of a limited income. For someone struggling to work themselves out of poverty, these expenses can wreck havoc on even the most diligent efforts to maintain a monthly budget. With gas now approaching or exceeding $4.00/gallon, a full day’s work at minimum wage sometimes won’t pay for a single tank of gas. The burdens of sprawl weigh heaviest on the poor.”

“Online Tool Helps New Hampshire Municipalities Examine the Cost of Sprawl

 GENEVA FAULKNER August 30, 2012

Urban planners can often find it difficult to assess the impact of sprawl in their municipalities. Calculating future infrastructure needs and the various fiscal impacts of different land use decisions can be challenging and time consuming. Enter New Hampshire’s new Cost of Sprawl tool (www.costofsprawl.org). The New Hampshire Cost of Sprawl (NHCOS) is an internet-based model to examine the impact of land uses and sprawl on municipalities in New Hampshire and allows planners to get a sense of the fiscal impact of certain land use patterns on municipalities. Created under the auspices of the New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning (NHOEP) and developed by RKG Associates, Placeways, and Urban Interactive Studio, this tool is geared toward town planners in New Hampshire.

Model creation involved two major and interrelated challenges. The first was compilation of a statewide database that contained an array of demographic, infrastructure, and financial attributes that had to be drawn from a variety of sources and normalized for use in the model. The second was determining which variables could be used to measure “sprawl-related” impacts, as opposed to, just the land use and fiscal impacts associated with any new development in a community.

The tool begins with users selecting one of the 239 municipalities that comprise New Hampshire. Once a municipality is selected, the user can choose a certain site within the particular municipality to explore in detail, which ranges from a parcel as small as 40 acres to an an entire community build out. Flexible site selection and comparative analysis makes this tool even more powerful, for it allows planners to see the impacts of both small-scale and large scale development.”

Via: Engaging Cities

“America’s romance with sprawl may be over

By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA Today

Almost three years after the official end of a recession that kept people from moving and devastated new suburban subdivisions, people continue to avoid counties on the farthest edge of metropolitan areas, according to Census estimates out today.

The financial and foreclosure crisis forced more people to rent. Soaring gas prices made long commutes less appealing. And high unemployment drew more people to big job centers. As the nation crawls out of the downturn, cities and older suburbs are leading the way.

Population growth in fringe counties nearly screeched to a halt in the year that ended July 1, 2011. By comparison, counties at the core of metro areas are growing faster than the nation as a whole.

“There’s a pall being cast on the outer edges,” says John McIlwain, senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit development group that promotes sustainability. “The foreclosures, the vacancies, the uncompleted roads. It’s uncomfortable out there. The glitz is off.”

Via: USA Today

Image: USA Today

“Fixing the Rust Belt by Shrinking It

Kaid Benfield. Jan 4, 2012

The problem with former industrial cities that have lost population isn’t just the changing economy. It’s also a failure to address suburban sprawl. 

A close look at population data reveals that, while the populations within central cities’ jurisdictional boundaries have declined substantially, their suburbs have actually grown. The result is that, if one defines “city” as the contiguous urbanized area within a metro region, regardless of political boundaries – the definition that matters to the economy and the environment – the shrinkage may vanish or be shown as far less than we think.

In short, “shrinking cities” have really been hollowing out more than shrinking. Any policy tools that fail to recognize this have little chance of improving the situation, in my opinion.

A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland lends weight to the argument that a dense urban core is important to the overall strength of a metro region. The researchers examined population changes in census tracts within 180 metro areas, noting the location of tracts that gained or lost population – and by how much – in the 1980s, 1990s and from 2000-2010.

They found that, where regions grew, tracts near the center held relatively steady compared to those in the suburbs. But, in those regions that shrank overall, a disproportionately greater share of the losses took place in the centers.

Indeed, in metro areas that grew in population (like the Sun Belt regions and stronger older regions such as Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia), the greatest growth from 2000 to 2010 took place not just near the center but in downtown census tracts.

The comeback of America’s downtowns and adjoining older neighborhoods is real. But in those metros that lost population (e.g., Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo), losses remained greatest near the cores. A sign of encouragement for the shrinking regions, however, may be that their downtowns lost significantly less population after 2000 than did census tracts between three and fifteen miles from the central business district. “

Via: The Atlantic

Image: Brandon Bartoszek/Creative Commons