Introduction
The most economically touted nation the world over America, has since time immemorial harbored this big dream of detached home with a garden and a two-car garage is culminating into a crime that prompts for legislation to curb the malaise that has led to overt “sprawl” This addiction has a touted antidote: densification and public transit. Its defect is a widespread distaste for the medicine. Revealed preferences strongly favor the single-family home (and surveys among apartment dwellers show that this is their dream too) and driving. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.Richardson, Harry W. and Peter Gordon (1999)
Surveys carried out in the suburban residence indicate that the same dream is shared with indwellers. The contemporary modern urbanist is undergoing a stint first metamorphosis. This is evident by the largesse in their lifestyle. They live on multi-acre plots. Transit agency bosses choose among a Mercedes, a Lexus or a limousine than between bus and rail. In 1998, three-quarters of the 250-plus local ballot initiatives in favor of growth management and development controls passed. Any understanding of the potential for changing the American metropolitan landscape needs to be based on an analysis of recent trends in the spatial distribution of population and employment
Characteristics of the suburb
High school shootings obesity and dysfunctional families characterize suburban life. Indictment of suburban lifestyles has been more virulent than the reaction to the Columbine High School shootings at Littleton, Colorado. To blame this on sprawl would be laughable, if respected academics had not taken it seriously. The central city serious crime rates are ten times the suburban rates. American youth are exposed to all kinds of cultural influences, some of them negative, regardless of where they live (central cities, suburbs and rural areas). To imply that living in the suburbs creates a propensity for violence is silly. Almost as bad is the argument that driving by commercial strip development creates anxiety and depression. (The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1999).
Decline in Population Densities.
Research shows that population densities have continued to reduce between 1950 and 1990 in the urbanized areas of most large U.S CMSAs (Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas) and MSAs, excluding cities like Los Angeles and Miami where international immigration has led to higher densities. Consequently there has been a notable increase in densities as regards to many to many urbanized components of many metropolitan areas in sub urbanization since 1980.
However the recent exurbanisation has accelerated since the late 1960s. The literature refers to a “rural renaissance” in the 1970s, a “new urban revival” in the 1980s, and a “rural rebound” in the 1990s. But these terms are misleading. The “rural renaissance” was not rural but primarily growth close to metropolitan areas or in small cities. In the “new urban revival” (Frey, 1993), the suburbs continued to grow faster than the central cities.
The 90s have been a replica of the 70s. In essence nothing new has real changed The decentralization of employment in the private sector has been so rapid, out of central counties into peripheral counties and down the urban hierarchy from large to smaller metropolitan areas and into the non-metropolitan areas; the gaps have widened in the 1990s. The employment growth rate differentials are even more striking in the case of manufacturing employment, with the core counties of large metropolitan areas experiencing significant negative growth for most of the period.
The CBD employment share in most of the large metropolitan areas remains small and continues to shrink in many of them. Average travel times vary modestly among large U.S. metropolitan areas and have remained stable over time. In most cities the share of public transit has declined significantly. If that is the case, the transportation-land use nexus suggests that more compactness is unlikely. The distinction between impoverished central cities and wealthy suburbs can be exaggerated. There are poor households in the suburbs, and rich households in the central cities. Certainly, there is some skew ness in these distributions but the argument that sub-urbanization and sprawl have been the major factor in spatial income segregation can be overdone
Reviving the compactness of the city.
Increasing the compactness of American cities requires a revival of the central cities, most of which have been losing population for decades. The only signs of central city recovery are
found in selective cities at the neighborhood level (e.g. the Gaslight neighborhood in San Diego or Pioneer Square in Seattle, driven by historic preservation and small-scale commercial redevelopment) or in small tourist-oriented towns (e.g. Durango, Colorado, or Fredericksburg,
Texas). Moreover, many of the inner suburbs have begun to exhibit some of the same blight characteristics that eroded the original vitality of the central cities. The most superficially obvious strategy for central city recovery and densification is infill development. But this approach faces many obstacles.
There are few empty infill sites available, and developing them might deprive the central cities of precious open space; most, if given the choice, would choose a park over a new residential development. New Urbanist architects have had much more success in bringing their projects to fruition on greenfield rather than on infill sites. Another possible option is redevelopment, but even here the constraints are imposing.
There have been several redevelopment public housing projects scattered over the country, but almost invariably the number of new units is smaller than the original stock, and hence densities decline. There is a growing number of abandoned industrial sites (“brown fields”) as manufacturing firms either close down or move out, but they are often poorly located, rezoning may be cumbersome, and environmental clean-up costs may be prohibitive.
Effects of urban Development
If we take a close look, in areas with low population growth (e.g. the Midwest), land absorption for urban development has been at a higher rate than in some other parts of the country because the preference for lower densities has not been constrained by high land prices. Second, immigration has fueled land prices in several key regions, and higher land prices imply higher densities for new developments.
Third, densities have risen considerably in those central cities that have experienced high immigration rates (James, Romine and Zwanzig, 1998) so that blaming immigration for causing sprawl is absurd. Fourth, immigrants (especially from Latin America, and to a lesser extent Asia) have a much larger household size, so immigration has inevitably resulted in higher population densities; however, because higher population densities do not necessarily imply higher dwelling unit densities, this raises the question of how to measure sprawl (or compactness). Fifth, often within a decade, many immigrant families move on and out from the central cities, so the issue is: where they move and into what type of development (especially in terms of densities).
Farmland Preservation.
Urban development has triggered a serious sprawl debate that has mooted vigorously on the supply of prime agricultural land at the rate of 50 acres per hour. The facts on the ground indicate that urban development accounts for less than five percent of total urban land uses in the United States. Since the 1930 the use of Agricultural land climaxed, Green products from the firms have been a boomerang business. The alarming rate of sprawl has prompted for the adoption of various preservation farmland ordinances by the jurisdictions. This has been successful in curbing land use conversion. This has however, culminated to the purchase of rural land by local governments or NGOs to preserve it from urbanization.
Compact urban development is promoted not only for transportation objectives but also a means of fostering close-knit communities and civic involvement (this “spatial determinism” (David Harvey) underpins much of the rationale for New Urbanism. But do we know what makes for a good community or a bad community, especially via naïve spatial fixes? However, there is some evidence to test whether suburbanites are “stranded” in their low-density neighborhoods. Do
suburban residents take fewer social trips (e.g. family and personal; civic, educational and religious; social and recreational) than central city residents? Do they take longer trips? NPTS data show that within metropolitan areas households both inside and outside central cities have very similar trip distributions (by trip type) and trip mileages Gordon and Richardson (2000)
Instituting Private Management
Lessons are being learned, such as the pitfalls for private owner-operators managing very small pieces of a state-run network. On the other hand, commuters are appreciating the opportunity to exchange cash for time at will. Nevertheless, there is the widespread impression that road pricing is “inequitable” Richardson and Bae (1998). The lengths to which transportation planners and others will go to avoid the pricing option is illustrated by the willingness to build or try almost anything instead to avoid “gridlock”. In fact, there is no gridlock although there are inevitable pockets of congestion in the absence of pricing.
New Urbanists now propose “traffic calming”, the addition of impediments to traffic flow, such as roadway narrowing, “neckdowns and chokers”, closures, traffic circles, forced turns, speed humps, cutting down four lanes to two, etc. These are capacity reductions designed to “change the behavior of motorists” Dittmar and Poticha (1999) to make auto use less appealing so that people will walk, bike, or use transit instead. It is true that moving to any pricing scheme will create both winners and losers. But that is not the problem. The problem is that most people enjoy the personal mobility provided by the auto-highway system and the suburban lifestyles that it makes possible, but continue to grumble about congestion and resist the antidote of peak-load pricing. Continuous free access continues to be regarded as an entitlement.
Many second-best “solutions” are offered, such as strict, usually counterproductive, land use controls and very expensive transit investments. The standard favorite is a high-capacity rail transit system, with the eternal hope that large numbers of other people will use it. A San Francisco Bay Area Council opinion survey showed that 40 percent of respondents ranked transportation as the most important problem facing the Bay Area (education was ranked second at 14 percent); the same poll found that expanding public transit was the first choice (82 percent agreed) as the most effective remedy (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9, 1998).
Many politicians, planners, environmentalists and smart growth advocates continue to stress the importance of expanding public transit, especially expensive rail transit, despite the fact that conventional transit is a declining industry. After more than $360 billion of public subsidies since the mid-1960s, transit use per capita is at a historic low. Falling ridership in the face of rising subsidies have become the industry norm. There are now almost as many transit users in Shanghai as in the whole of the United States. Only 1.8 percent of all person-trips (2.1 percent of all person-miles) are via transit. This is substantially less than walking (5.4 percent of person-trips) and only slightly more than school bus use (1.7 percent of person-trips; U.S. Department of Transportation, 1997).
Increasingly dispersed origins and destinations, rising auto affordability, and the widespread appeal of personal transportation have been widely cited as the explanations for transit’s decline. One important dimension of the overwhelming convenience and flexibility of auto travel is the increasing propensity to make incidental stops along the way to and from work. Rubin, Thomas A and James E. Moore II and Shine Lee (1999)
Cost Effective Transport policies
Unconventional transit (including private transit) and a host of commonsense transportation management approaches, including deregulation and efficient pricing, have received only moderate attention in U.S. cities. Being low-cost and occasionally without subsidies,
they lack the built-in pork barrel constituencies attached to rail projects.
Transit systems configured in ways to take advantage of drivers’ preferences, such as express buses running on separate rights-of-way (busways or transitways), could achieve high operating speeds but are not political favorites. Because they can be their own feeders, they can avoid the necessity of many transfers and would cater to more demand than rail but at a cost per passenger trip that is 80-90 percent cheaper than light-rail Kain (1999). Light-rail is often not grade separated, and in this case is slower than buses on grade-separated busways.
Transport Monopolies
The fact that there are clandestine jitney-type services operating in the immigrant and low-income communities of New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit, and elsewhere suggest that the established transit and taxi monopolies serve the poor badly. Because the most reasonable legalization would probably impose significant costs on these operators, it may require user-side subsidies to make legal operation an attractive option for the many providers that are presently operating “underground”. New entrants might even be attracted into the market. Schrank, David and Timothy Lomax (1999)
Conventional public transit would be forced to become more competitive. As already discussed, systems of busways are much more cost-effective in U.S. cities than rail transit. Where possible, busways should be open to new forms of private transit, making the busways and the eco-passes more cost-effective while making private transit provision more attractive. Mueller, Peter O. (1986)
HOT-lane proposals may be one the most promising way to reintroduce market mechanisms to the auto-highway system (Fielding and Klein, 1993). Existing high-occupancy lanes could be made accessible to solo-drivers if they paid tolls that varied by time-of-day demand conditions; new electronic toll collection, scanning and feedback technologies make this approach quite feasible. Poole (2000) adds that this should interest officials who are starting to realize that increasing fuel efficiencies (and alternate fuel technologies) will force governments to move away from their reliance on the gasoline taxes.
Systems of HOT-lanes in large metropolitan areas would be open to the usual ride-sharers, who alone are often too few to justify the expenditures on HOV-lanes, plus solo-drivers paying peak-hour tolls, plus many types of transit (Poole and Orski, 1999). Finally, tolls would be a new source of highway funding. For the case of private roads, this is of course a given. Most HOV lanes are severely underutilized because the small changes of in-vehicle travel time seldom make up for the inconvenience of carpooling
If expanding public transit will not get large numbers of people out of their cars, what are the environmental consequences of auto-dominated sprawl? There are many different positions. Some emphasize the well-known problems associated with common properties. Others have
problems with resource use (Myers, 1997; UNDP, 1998), stressing resource “finiteness,” “sustainability” and “ecological footprints” (Chilton, 1999). Often ignored are the substantial stewardship inherent in asset ownership, accelerating rates of technological change, and the long-term downward trends in falling commodity prices (Moore, 1992; Simpson, 1999; The Economist, April 17, 1999; Krautkraemer,1998). “What we observe is the net result of diminishing returns, as the industry moves from larger to smaller deposits and from better
to poorer quality, versus increasing knowledge of science and technology generally, and of local government structures. So far, knowledge has won” Adelman, (1995). Let us restrict ourselves to five brief observations on autos and air pollution.
Transit Oriented Developments
Responding to the poor record of recently installed rail transit facilities, advocates now promote Transit Oriented Developments (TODs), sometimes called Transit Villages, a key element of smart growth, as a way to create development densities around train stations to assure adequate patronage. Homes, stores and social services would be clustered around transit stations.
Residential densities would need to be in the range of 12-15 dwelling units per acre (or 28-35 per hectare; Bernick & Cervero (1997). Some studies have found slightly more transit use by people living near stations Cervero (1993). From this, it is inferred that forcing higher densities will generate greater transit use. Of course, even if there are people willing to trade off density for transit access, it does not follow that others compelled to live at higher densities would choose the same trade-off Brindle (1995). TODs may also be most attractive to current transit users. Crane (1998) concluded “there is no convincing evidence that these designs influence travel behavior at the margin’”
The powerful preference for personal mobility cannot be ignored. A recent study commissioned by American Demographics found that the automobile is regarded as the most important personal space.
Average commuting vehicle occupancy in metro areas in 1990 was only 1.09. Even these
statistics do not purge the data of the spontaneous intra-household carpooling so the data overstate true ridesharing. Dunn (1996) adds, “ the auto provides a sort of individualist equality that is particularly well suited to American values.” All of this only fuels the fire.
For many, the private auto is simply “too democratic” while public transit is properly collective. The fact that auto use is complementary with private and individual single-family housing incites the critics’ ire. Compact development and growth management advocates do not admit that while there are only negligible differences in auto trips per capita in TOD-type areas Cervero (1993), there are many more people, with the net effect that traffic conditions worsen.
It is not surprising that correlations across the largest U.S. urbanized areas indicate a positive, if moderate, association between population density and commuting trip times. The 1995 NPTS data for the thirty largest metropolitan areas can be disaggregated by trip purpose and travel mode. At this level, sample sizes are sufficient for four major trip types (to work, to shop, family and personal, social and recreational) for trips by autos and by all privately operated vehicles (POVs; autos, vans, trucks, SUVs, etc.). Inspection of the table shows modest variations in all trip times across urbanized areas.
Anti-sprawl policy measures.
A major question is what policy measures might increase compactness in the United States, and how effective would they be. A recent analysis Brueckner (2000) sheds some interesting light on this issue. He argues that any negative aspects of urban sprawl are the result of market failure and can be remedied by pricing measures. He identifies three examples. First, the conversion of agricultural to urban land can be slowed by imposing a development tax equal to the implicit value of the land as open space over and above its agricultural land value. Second, a possible consequence of sprawl is excessive commuting (in our view, this is unclear in a world of increasing suburb-to-suburb commuting); his proposed remedy is road congestion pricing.
Third, infrastructure subsidies often facilitate suburban development; the solution is full-cost development impact fees, implying that developers pay the total costs of the infrastructure associated with their projects. We agree with all these proposals; the problem is that their impacts on compactness are likely to be modest, much less than what the anti-sprawl advocates desire. There are other more extreme policies, such abolishing the tax deductibility of mortgage
interest and property taxes, but this would be widely unpopular and unlikely to be implemented. Anti-sprawl groups prefer the Urban
Growth Boundary (UGB) approach, which Brueckner criticizes as a blunt instrument that may be excessive, but in any event will result, as suggested above, in escalating housing costs (restricting supply, without influencing demand) with negative impacts, especially on low income groups, entrants to the homeownership market, and new immigrants.
Conclusions.
Increasing the compactness of American cities may not even be desirable, but it is certainly infeasible. A few infill development projects, investment in some historic districts there, a sprinkle of New Urbanist communities on greenfield sites out there. The latter have attracted considerable attention, but have had minimal impact. There are too few of them, they have not resulted in significant land savings (in gross density terms), and travel behavior has barely budged. Their most noticeable characteristic is a trade-off of individual yard space for more public open space (this explains, for example, why outsiders drive to Kentlands, Maryland for morning walks). In their favor, they have achieved a more varied housing mix (if not a heterogeneous population mix) than the traditional suburb. Some areas of the United States, such as California, are going to increase their populations substantially in the next decades (unless the immigration tap is turned off), and if they were all accommodated at high densities, it might make a difference.
The American home ownership dream is too entrenched. And if you are going to buy, you prefer (if you can afford) your own little castle, not joint ownership of a condominium or town home development, although you may see advantages in the security of your little castle within a private gated community. Americans when surveyed (and, more often than not, when voting) come out strongly in favor of higher densities, but not for them and not in their neighborhood. There is nothing that brings residents out in droves to a City Council or Planning Commission meeting than a proposed high-density project nearby.
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