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The Decline of Urban Civilization: the Sprawl Years
THE NEXT time you are sitting bumper to bumper in rush-hour traffic, pass by a blighted innercity neighborhood, or stumble upon a new housing development replacing what was once farmland, remember this word: sprawl. These phenomenon are all different facets of urban sprawl, the low-density, unplanned patterns of development that have largely defined American life since the '50s. Sprawl lies at the heart of urban decline, racial polarization, worsening air and water quality, and the erosion of community.
Do not despair! The Sprawl monster can be contained. Many of these detrimental trends can be reversed. Writer thinker, and civic philosopher David Bollier has jus completed a new monograph, "How Smart Growth Can Stop Sprawl." Bollier does a remarkable job of examining this burgeoning problem and then outlining practical steps that citizens can take to remedy them.
It comes as no surprise that one of the major factors exacerbating sprawl is the automobile. Still, we subsidize the use of automobiles with highway budgets and tax subsidies for parking facilities. We also pay for automobiles with military expenditures that ensure the flow of oil from foreign lands and underwrite the clean-up costs of gasoline and oil spills that harm the ecosystem.
Competition between local jurisdictions in metropolitan regions also fuels urban sprawl. "Favored quarter" suburbs are using zoning rules to keep out low-income residents and minorities -- while reaping a disproportionate share of government money for new schools, highways, sewer lines, and public services. So while the city remains critical to a region's economic fortune, competition among towns ends up draining the city of its vitality and turning it into the region's poorhouse. And people begin to move away.
The end result? This exodus forces outlying suburbs to build new infrastructures and raise tax rates to crushing levels. According to Maryland governor Parris Glendening, every new classroom costs $90,000; every new mile of sewer line costs roughly $200,000; and every mile of single-lane road costs at least $41 million.
But that's not all. Farmland is being destroyed as sprawl moves ever outward. Commuting times grow longer and longer.
The environmental consequences here are appalling. Governor Glendening notes that 5,000 people left Baltimore in the first six months of 1997 -- and that during this same period over 3,000 new septic-tank permits were issued in the Baltimore suburbs. This kind of growth creates more water pollution from storm runoff; more flooding as pavement interferes with natural water flows; and the faster disappearance of plants and wildlife.
Fortunately, citizens from Portland to the Twin Cities are introducing some effective remedies.
- Regional tax-base sharing offers some hope for metropolitan areas
to more equitably share tax dollars and allocate infrastructure costs,
and thus to reduce thepressures propelling sprawl.
- Site-value property taxation may also spark greater development in
cities by taxing land, not buildings. Unlike traditional taxation --
which rewards developers who put up cheap, tacky housing and strip malls --
site-value taxation gives developers the incentive to build gracious,
durable buildings. Allowances for affordable housing, however, need to
be part of site-value schemes.
- Several Bay Area communities have adopted "Urban Growth Boundaries"
(UGBs) to channel new development into areas with existing
infrastructure, so that open spaces and farmlands can be preserved. UGBs
help force a community to set long-term priorities and develop more
rational approaches to development.
- Eliminating subsidies for new suburban highways, sewer lines, and schools might also help arrest haphazard development. Some antisprawl activists are even advocating that federal programs that promote sprawl be revamped to actively encourage more compact development.
Most of the antisprawl agenda is rooted in common sense and is sound from an economic, environmental, and civic prospective. The problem is this: such long-term public concerns are often shunted aside by the short-term private concerns of the market.
Some of this agenda still needs work. It is important, for example, that the reclaiming of "brownfields" -- polluted or abandoned urban sites -- be done with the full participation of the neighborhood. This means meeting prevailing cleanup standards and avoiding a two-tiered standard for pollution abatement. Discussion about regional government must be broadened to include concerns about the scale and democratic accountability of these new city-suburb amalgams -- and how they would affect minority representation.
Fortunately, there is a new upsurge of interest in combating sprawl. Activists realize that solutions are at hand. What's been missing is the political will of people to reach across geographic and racial lines. What's needed are new civic coalitions that unite the innercity and suburban populations with farmers and ,environmentalists. Together they have the ability to fashion an agenda that respects nature and community and, at the same time saves tax dollars and improves the quality of life.
http://www.earthrights.net/docs/nader.html