End of Sprawl? Part I

Since it's not the sexiest of issues, land use is never covered by the media like taxation, global warming, or the financial meltdown. Perhaps it should given inextricable link to all of those issues and quite possibly their leading cause. In fact land use policy has a great effect on our lives than virtually any other government policy. Why is it important? Urban sprawl.

When President Obama said last month that "The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over," most people shrugged their shoulders and went back to soaking their 401k statement with tears. In fact this was a profound statement of not only the direction his policies would head, but an acknowledgement of where we are as a country. Obama understands intuitively what builders and homeowners across the country are finding out the hard way, those development patterns are unsustainable and probably a thing of the past.

Urban sprawl can be defined as ""dispersed development outside of compact urban and village centers along highways and in rural countryside." You know it when see it. It's soulless strip malls and large lot/large home development outside of cities. Its cause is simple… lax land use policy that allows urban development on cheap land in rural areas. Unlike normal urban development patterns, urban sprawl is dominated by the car with everything from large parking lots to wide multi-lane roads being designed to accommodate while pedestrian mobility is limited and often conflicts with the design of the development.

Although it occurs in Canada and Europe to a degree, the US fell head over heels for sprawl years ago and the affair only grew more passionate with time. Since most of the country developed after the advent of the car, development geared to this absurdly cheap form of transportation was the norm. In Europe, which mostly built up prior to the automobile, cities are densely packed since foot travel was the most common form of getting around. Everyone had to live within walking distance of everything they needed, their job, the market, a doctor, etc. As a result, travel by car wasn't necessary within town making it more expensive than trains for inter-city travel.

It's a strange phenomenon in that the demand is created by people wanting to get their piece of paradise, killing it in the process. Rather than sharing communal greens in urban parks and, people crave their own private park in a large yard. The result is the destruction of rural areas across the country. Wanting a big home but unable to afford it people turn to large homes built in cheap rural areas commuting further and further to work clogging roads along the way. The population of these areas then demands services but don't have the population in their neighborhood to support them so strip malls are built and designed to accommodate vast amounts of cars.

One of the phenomena contributing to this problem is the "Not in My Back Yard" mentally, otherwise known as NIMBY. As noted before local government tends to fly under the radar despite its impact on our lives. Chances are your local Mayor has made a much greater impact on your life than the President or Congress yet most people can't even name someone from their City or County Council. For the last 12 years I've been one such faceless City Councilmember so I understand all too well how to introduce myself to people; approve a new development or change in zone standards near their home. Suddenly people that haven't paid the least bit of attention to months and months public process, meetings, design charrettes, and outreach are in your face telling you what an idiot you are for destroying the "character" of the community. Oddly, they may live in old small lot homes in a historic part of town and demand large lot homes to "preserve" character. In isolation, this isn't all that big of a deal. But repeated millions of times across the country and the path of least resistance for locally elected officials becomes land use controls that resemble sprawl more than good planning. In incorporated areas outside of cities the problem is reversed, in this case properties are larger and owners typically want to preserve the development potential as it makes their property worth more. Combined with the moneyed interests of developers, rural areas tend to support lax controls and therefore encourage development inappropriate for the area.

Over the next few weeks we'll take a look at sprawl's connection to the subprime meltdown, its effect on tax policy and local government resources, how it impacts climate change, and generally decreases our quality of life. Obama may think that its day has come and gone, but without smart policy that may not be the case. Ultimately it will take a different way of looking at how we live our lives. If we continue to look at a big house/big yard in the suburbs as the way to the good life, we'll actually further erode our quality of life.