# Why Sprawl Is a Conservative Issue



## Robert Stark (Dec 8, 2005)

Why Sprawl Is a Conservative Issue 

Michael Lewyn, John Marshall Law School





Once upon a time, city was not a dirty word in America. Between 1900 and 1950, every American city of any size gained population. But over the past several decades, metropolitan America has been transformed by "suburban sprawl"-the movement of people (especially middle-class families) and jobs from older urban cores to newer, less densely populated, more automobile-dependent communities generally referred to as suburbs. At the end of World War II, roughly 70% of metropolitan Americans lived in central cities. But within four decades, that figure had dropped to less than 40%. Some cities have been devastated by sprawl: For example, St. Louis has lost 60% of its people since 1950, whereas Buffalo and Cleveland have lost more than 45% of their people. The cities that have gained population have done so either by being hubs for immigration from other countries (such as New York and Los Angeles) or by annexing newly developed areas that would be considered suburbs in other cities (such as Indianapolis and Charlotte). As cities have become smaller, they have become poorer. In 1960, central cities contained one third of America's poor people; by 1990, the central city share had climbed to one half, and 31 of America's 37 largest cities had poverty rates above the national average. 



In recent years, Vice President Gore and numerous other commentators (especially within the environmental movement) have criticized suburban sprawl. For example, Gore complains that because of sprawl, "resources are siphoned away from older communities to build ever more distant new amenities in new communities." Meanwhile, in newer communities, mandatory auto ownership "means working families must sink thousands of dollars into extra commuting costs, when they may want the choice of devoting those funds to a year of state college." Many such suburbs 

have no sidewalks, and no place to walk to, which is bad for public safety as well as for our nation's physical health. It has become impossible in such settings for neighbors to greet one another on the street, or for kids to walk to their own nearby schools. A gallon of gas can be used up just driving to get a gallon of milk. All of these add up to more stress for already overstressed family lives. 



In the political arena, the battle over sprawl appears to be turning into a battle between environmentalists and conservatives. Environmentalists focus on the environmental costs of sprawl and endorse more extensive government regulation of land use. Conservatives and libertarians often deny that sprawl is a problem at all and pretend that sprawl merely fulfills consumer desires. For example, Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute writes in National Review (one of the more prestigious conservative magazines), "The threat of sprawl is vastly overblown" and that sprawl opponents believe that "commuting suburbanites are making unenlightened lifestyle choices because they lack the expert supervision that only their betters in government can provide." Similarly, Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason (a conservative magazine with a libertarian bent) asserts, "The anti-sprawl campaign is about telling Americans how they should live and work, about sacrificing individuals' values to the values of their politically powerful betters" (p. 4). The conventional conservative wisdom, as of early 2000, seems to be that 



sprawl is merely the result of the free market at work, 
therefore conservatives need not oppose sprawl, and 
even if sprawl is somehow problematic, it cannot be limited without implementation of the liberal or environmentalist agenda of larger and more intrusive government. 


This article rejects all three assumptions. Specifically, I argue that 



sprawl is in fact a result of runaway statism rather than the free market; 
conservatives should fight sprawl as a threat to conservative values such as limited government, freedom, the work ethic and social stability; and 
conservative, free-market solutions can limit if not eliminate sprawl. 


Background: How Statism Created Sprawl 



As noted above, many conservatives believe that sprawl is merely the free market at work. But in fact, sprawl is as statist as the other government policies that conservatives commonly attack. For example, conservatives often criticize Aid to Families with Dependent Children and similar programs on the ground that by aiding unwed, nonworking mothers, such programs encourage idleness and illegitimacy. In urban policy as in welfare policy, government at all levels has steered private conduct through a complicated mix of rewards and penalties: in the former area, by favoring suburban sprawl at the expense of cities, in the latter area, by favoring illegitimacy and idleness at the expense of marriage. 



Government's pro-suburban bias has been especially blatant in three areas: housing policy, transportation policy, and education policy. In addition, government has made suburbia more sprawling and auto-dependent than a free market would dictate. 



Housing: Turning America Into Sprawl Land 



Federal housing policy has moved middle-class families out of cities both by subsidizing migration to suburbs and by making cities unlivable. 



Paying Americans to Move to Suburbs 



As early as the 1930s, the federal government was taking its first small steps toward turning our once-great cities into depopulated wastelands. The federal war against urban America began in earnest with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program. 



Before the New Deal, the home mortgage system was based on down payments as high as 50% and terms as short as 5 years, a system that worked well in good times but led to massive defaults during the Great Depression. To protect homeowners and home sellers, the FHA has insured long-term, low-down payment mortgages against default since 1934. 



As a rule, FHA guaranteed home loans only in low-risk areas. FHA guidelines defined low-risk areas as areas that were thinly populated, dominated by newer homes, and had no African American or immigrant enclaves nearby, areas that disproportionately tended to be suburban. For example, one FHA underwriting manual taught that the FHA should concentrate its efforts on newer, lower density areas because "crowded neighborhoods lessen desirability" and that "older properties in a neighborhood have a tendency to accelerate the transition to lower class occupancy." Other government agencies "redlined" cities by issuing maps placing metropolitan neighborhoods in various categories, from "green" (the most desirable) to "red" ("high-risk" neighborhoods where the federal government would not insure mortgages). 



FHA policies also favored new construction over renovation of existing homes. FHA loans for repair were smaller than loans for the purchase of new homes, so a family could more easily purchase a new home than modernize an old home. Because the newest suburbs tend to have the newest homes, this criterion also favored suburbs. 



As a result of the FHA's biases, the FHA generally insured suburban mortgages while refusing to insure urban mortgages. For example, residents of suburban St. Louis County received five times as much FHA insurance as residents of the city of St. Louis. Thus, a White home buyer who wished to stay in his old neighborhood had to seek conventional mortgages with higher down payments and shorter terms, whereas the same purchaser, by the simple act of buying a new house in the suburbs, could get a cheaper FHA-insured mortgage. In other words, the FHA essentially bribed middle-class homebuyers to move to the suburbs. FHA lending policies were based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: The FHA claimed that it could not insure urban mortgages because cities were doomed and then made sure that this was the case by luring middle-class homeowners away from the cities. 



Turning Cities Into Dumping Grounds 



While the federal government was bribing middle- class homeowners to leave cities, it was bribing the poor to stay in cities. In 1937, the federal government began to fund local housing authorities to provide housing for the poor. The housing laws provided that any city desiring public housing had to create a municipal housing authority. At that time, cities encompassed rich and poor alike, so that they had a strong incentive to create housing agencies. By contrast, economically homogenous rural areas and suburbs were able to (and did) avoid public housing by refusing to create housing authorities. As a result, public housing became concentrated in cities. 



Often, public housing projects are magnets for crime and disorder. For example, Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes contain only one half of 1% of that city's population but account for 11% of the city's murders. Similarly, a 1993 study found that crime in the Los Angeles housing projects was three times greater than crime rates in surrounding high-crime neighborhoods. Because public housing projects are such undesirable neighbors, the concentration of public housing in cities makes city neighborhoods less desirable to anyone who can afford to move. And by declining to place public housing in suburbs, the federal government has given suburbs a huge competitive advantage over cities. 



Astoundingly, the federal government encouraged cities to destroy functional neighborhoods to build these dens of crime and vice. The Housing Act of 1949 gave mayors broad powers to condemn huge chunks of land in the name of "urban renewal." And many did exactly that. For example, in Buffalo Mayor Frank Sedita destroyed a stable Italian neighborhood near downtown Buffalo to build the Shoreline housing project, which according to local entrepreneur Mark Goldman, "resembles a trailer park plunked arbitrarily in the heart of the city." 



While keeping the poor locked up in cities, the federal government helped lock the poor out of suburbs. In the 1920s, the federal Department of Commerce drafted the State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA). SZEA, which was quickly enacted by the states, granted municipalities power to regulate the location and use of buildings. Suburbs quickly used their zoning powers to keep out the poor. For example, suburban zoning laws frequently ban apartment construction to keep out "undesirables," or they require minimum lot sizes to keep out less expensive homes. Just as government keeps the poor in cities, it keeps the poor out of suburbs. Either way, cities become the dumping ground for the poor. 



Transportation: Putting Suburbs First 



Statist transportation policy, like statist housing policy, has consistently favored suburban migration. For most of the 20th century, a major priority of all levels of government was to build roads. By doing so, the government destroyed urban neighborhoods both directly (through physical destruction of cities) and indirectly (by using roads to drain cities of their middle- class tax base). 



How Government Put Roads First 



Early in the 20th century, state and federal governments began to build new roads. Governments could have levied user fees to reimburse local treasuries for the costs of streets, traffic maintenance, and police services but instead chose to subsidize drivers by relying on general taxation. Thus, the government essentially taxed streetcar users to support drivers. By contrast, streetcar services were typically private and unsubsidized. As a result, aging streetcar equipment and reduced services were accompanied by falling ridership. 



In 1921, the federal government began to support highway building, by enacting a Federal Road Act that designated 200,000 miles of road as eligible for federal matching funds and by creating a Bureau of Public Roads to plan an interstate highway system. By that date, government at all levels (federal, state, and local) was pouring $1.4 billion into highways. (By contrast, most transit systems were privately owned, received no government assistance, and paid taxes to support the highway system.) 



Because local governments controlled streetcar fares, the transit industry was unable to raise fares to fund improved equipment and service. Meanwhile, government largess to the highways grew. By 1940, government spent $2.7 billion on highways. By contrast, at that time, the total operating costs of all transit systems (except commuter rail) were $661 million, mostly private rather than government spending. 



In the postwar years, government intervention on behalf of highways accelerated. In 1950, government put $4.6 billion into highways and virtually nothing into transit. And in 1954, President Eisenhower appointed a committee on highways chaired by Lucius Clay, a member of the General Motors board of directors. Not surprisingly, the committee endorsed a massive highway spending scheme. That scheme was enacted into law as the 1956 Interstate Highway Act. The interstate system was financed by a "trust fund" supported by revenue from federal gasoline taxes. Under the provision of the 1956 Act, these funds were available only for highways: The federal government paid 90% of the cost for the new roads, whereas state and local governments paid only 10%. Eventually, the 1956 Act created a 41,000-mile Interstate Highway System. By contrast, the federal government did not begin to subsidize public transit until 1962, and today, federal road spending exceeds transit spending by a margin of more than 5 to 1. 



Henry Ford, one of America's first auto magnates, summed up the relationship between the highway and the city when he stated, "We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city." Government's obsession with road building has created sprawl in two ways: by the physical destruction of city neighborhoods and by making suburban life more convenient. 



How Roads Destroyed Cities 



During the first decade of Interstate construction, 335,000 homes were razed, and urban highways physically destroyed African American communities in the South Bronx, Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles, Durham, and nearly every other medium-sized or large American city. Even neighborhoods not destroyed by highways have been damaged by them. For example, in the 1950s, the federal government ruined the Treme section of New Orleans, one of the city's oldest African American neighborhoods, to build the I-10 expressway. The community's main street was Claiborne Avenue, which boasted 200 businesses in its heyday and had a 6100-foot-long median. The Louisiana Highway Department built I-10 on that street because it was considered the most direct path from the central business district to eastern New Orleans. With the construction of the interstate, the street's median became a strip of dirt, covered with a concrete roof 100-feet wide and 25-feet overhead. I-10 became a physical barrier that cut the neighborhood in half, and Claiborne Avenue's oak trees were replaced with concrete pillars. Not surprisingly, Treme became a crime-filled slum. Thus, the government had destroyed Treme to provide an escape route to the suburbs. 



Indeed, even the threat of a new highway sometimes destroyed urban neighborhoods: Throughout the 1960s, Buffalo planners debated a city highway known as the West Side Arterial, that (if built) would have destroyed much of the Lower West Side of Buffalo. Banks, insurance companies, and government agencies were unwilling to invest in a neighborhood destined for condemnation. For example, when in 1971 the Niagara Frontier Housing Development Corporation applied to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for a grant to rehabilitate Lower West Side dwellings, its application was denied because according to HUD, "The project is in the probable roadway corridor of the proposed West Side Arterial." Not surprisingly, homeowners took the hint and left the neighborhood. In 1960, a total of 1,900 families attended Immaculate Conception Church in the neighborhood. By 1973, only 500 were left. 



How Roads Built Up the Suburbs



Highways enabled people to live farther away from downtown jobs by giving commuters easy access to central business districts from once-distant suburbs. Thus, highways create residential development in suburbs near highway exits. And where highway-driven residential development goes, commercial development inevitably follows, as retail businesses move to a suburb to serve its new residents, and the new residents in turn move their businesses to suburbia to reduce their commutes. 



For example, Washington's Capital Beltway, a 66-mile long highway surrounding the city, was designed to allow East Coast motorists to bypass the city. But instead, the Beltway became a magnet for office and retail centers that sprouted near Beltway exits, such as Tyson's Corner, a satellite downtown in Fairfax County, Virginia. And as suburbs grew more populated, they grew more congested, which caused politicians to build even more suburban roads (ostensibly to relieve congestion). A study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project showed that each of the 50 largest metro areas in America added new road capacity in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, the number of roadway miles in the Atlanta, Georgia area have grown by 78% since 1982; yet, Atlanta is sixth in the nation in rush-hour congestion, and the Georgia Department of Transportation plans to spend $11 billion over the next 25 years to build and widen 310 new roads. 



Some deny that highways cause sprawl. For example, real estate developer Ronald Utt (2000), in a paper published by the Heritage Foundation, argues that the interstate highways did not cause sprawl because "Suburbanization was well underway in 1960, when the federal interstate highway program had been in existence for just four years." This assertion does not prove that highways are unrelated to sprawl, because even if suburbanization was "well underway by 1960," it would not prove that highways are unrelated to sprawl, because the federal government's pro-highway policies had been in effect long before the interstate highway system was created. Moreover, Utt's assertion is factually incorrect, because American cities' most stunning setbacks occurred after 1960. Of the 17 American cities that had more than 500,000 people in 1950, every single one gained population between 1930 and 1950. By contrast, in the 1950s, 13 of the cities lost population, and 2 lost more than 10% of their population. In the 1960s, 14 lost population, and 5 lost more than 10%. And in the disastrous 1970s, 15 lost population, and 13 lost more than 10%. In other words, the sprawl that went along with the interstate system snowballed as interstates were built during the 1960s and 1970s. 



Utt (2000) argues that because some cities in Europe and Japan have also experienced population losses, suburban sprawl is thus a natural result of affluence. But Utt himself admits that sprawl arises from transportation policy, arguing, "In Europe and Japan, as well as in many American cities, comprehensive and heavily subsidized public transit systems helped facilitate the exodus of central-city residents to outlying communities." Utt cannot have it both ways; he cannot intelligently argue that public transit facilitated suburban migration without admitting that highways had the same effect. 



Indeed, even lobbies generally regarded as pro-sprawl concede that highways affect the location of development. For example, in 1999, the National Association of Home Builders conducted a survey that purported to show the popularity of suburban living. The survey asked respondents what amenities would encourage them to move to a new area, and their top choice (endorsed by 55% of respondents) was "highway access." If highway access makes a suburb more desirable, obviously building highways in a place makes that place more desirable to commuters and businesses. 



Education: Making Cities Less Livable 



Most readers of this article probably know someone who lived in a city neighborhood in their twenties but moved to suburbia after marriage or childbirth so that his or her children could avoid urban public schools. School-based flight from cities is especially common among middle-class Whites: In 1990, 17 large cities with majority White populations had school systems in which more than 50% of pupils were Black or Hispanic. 



School-based flight has been caused by federal incompetence. For the past 40 years, the federal courts have used a variety of techniques to force racial integration on city schools but made little effort to integrate suburban schools. Because African Americans tend to be poorer than Whites, a racially integrated urban school typically includes children from a city's poorest neighborhoods. As a result, parents who want to send their children to schools dominated by other middle-class children cannot do so without moving to the suburbs or shelling out thousands of dollars for private school tuition. 



The federal government's involvement with school integration began with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which prohibited state-sponsored segregation of public schools. Over the next 14 years, local governments sought to evade Brown by closing public schools, through a variety of more moderate measures. The courts responded in kind by extending Brown. In Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968), the Supreme Court rejected a "freedom of choice" plan that permitted each pupil to choose a public school, on the ground that the plan had failed to erase desegregation. In Swann v. Charlotte- Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Court went a step further and allowed lower courts to create integrated city schools through forced busing, racial quotas and a variety of other techniques. Since Swann, federal courts have routinely ordered cities to bus students throughout the city in order to create racial balance in public schools. As a result, middle-class parents fled city schools to avoid the inconveniences of busing and to avoid sending their children to school with children from the cities' poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods. 



By the mid-1970s, many big-city school systems had become overwhelmingly African American. Thus, urban school systems could not create integrated schools because very few White students were left in some urban school systems. To solve this problem, some integrationists urged the courts to adopt "metropolitan busing plans" that discourage "White flight" by busing suburban Whites into city schools dominated by African Americans (or vice versa). But in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the Supreme Court rejected metropolitan busing on the ground that suburbs had never discriminated against African Americans (despite that many of these suburbs had excluded African Americans through zoning designed to keep out poor and working-class people, who tended to be disproportionately African American). Thus, the federal courts presented parents with the following choices: (a) send their children to urban public schools, so that their children would go to school with children from the poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods in the city; (b) stay in cities and spend thousands of dollars on private schools; and (c) move to suburbia and send their children to "good" (i.e., homogenously White, middle- class) schools for free. Not surprisingly, most parents who can afford to move to suburbia prefer the third choice. 



The full impact of the government's school policy can be shown by comparing the status quo to a world without government-run schools. If schools were left to the marketplace, popular schools, like popular bookstores and restaurants, would exist wherever parents were willing to pay for them. Presumably, such schools would be concentrated in more affluent areas, but they certainly would not be limited to certain cities or counties within a metropolitan area, any more than popular bookstores or restaurants are limited to suburbia. But by socializing education and requiring children to go to public schools in their own city, government has created a rigid segregation of children by jurisdiction: The richest, Whitest cities and counties have schools for upper middle-class and upper class (usually White) children, the poorest cities and counties have schools for their children, and lower middle- class cities and counties have schools for their children. 



It could be argued that middle-class flight from cities is caused by factors unrelated to education, such as transportation policy, housing policy, and crime. But this argument is belied by that middle-class flight from cities has primarily been a family phenomenon. For example, in Washington, D.C., a 1967 court decision sought to integrate city schools by busing African American students into majority White schools and eliminating a "tracking plan" that placed brighter students (who were mostly White) into separate classes. Over the following dozen years, White enrollment in Washington public schools declined by more than 70%, whereas the city's population of single Whites declined by only 6%. Similarly, in Boston, where courts sought to integrate public schools through forced busing, the city's juvenile White population declined by more than 50% in the 1970s, whereas the city's single adult White population decreased by only 3%. In other words, White flight from cities has been led by the people who are the most concerned about schools: families with children. This strongly suggests that schools and sprawl are closely related. 



How Big Brother Makes Suburbia Sprawling 



In addition to encouraging migration from city to suburb, government has also made cities and suburbs far more sprawling and auto-dependent than the market would dictate. In the absence of government regulation, American suburbs could have looked like Old Town Alexandria near Washington or Shaker Heights near Cleveland: communities that accommodated the automobile without being totally auto-dependent, communities where roads and sidewalks, and pedestrians and drivers, mingled together peaceably. But thanks to stifling government zoning codes, most newer suburbs are totally auto-dependent: Commerce is so far from housing that even if sidewalks exist (as frequently they do not), few people can walk to shops, and densities are so low that public transit is arguably impractical. 



The American version of suburbia was created by a few politicians and bureaucrats in our nation's capital. In the early 1920s, the Department of Commerce drafted the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA), which was blindly adopted by the states. SZEA set up a general grant of power to cities to allow them to restrict building and lot size, the size of yards and other open spaces, the density of population, and the location and use of structures for trade, residence, and other purposes. The SZEA declared that such legislation would be designed "to prevent the overcrowding of land [and] to avoid undue concentration of population," in other words, to create what is now known as suburban sprawl. Specifically, SZEA defined zones as parcels wherein all lots conform to the same requirements of minimum lot size, yard size, and building distance from streets. By requiring minimum lot and yard sizes for all lots within a given zone, SZEA effectively lowers densities, keeps stores out of residential zones and vice versa, keeps rental properties out of zones reserved for single family homes, and forces all homes in an area to be roughly the same size. The practical consequences of the SZEA and its state and local clones are that absent a zoning variance, walkable traditional neighborhoods are outlawed in most American suburbs, because every activity demands a separate zone of its own; people cannot live within walking distance of shopping, and offices cannot be within walking distance of either. 



Governments also create sprawl by forcing businesses, apartment buildings, and developers to provide (usually free) parking. For example, nearly all building codes require developers to provide two off-street parking spaces per house, and most apartment buildings provide at least one parking space per bedroom and sometimes more. Some suburbs are even more restrictive; Schamburg, Illinois, demands that developers provide 1.5 spaces per one bedroom unit, thereby ensuring that apartments have 50% more parking spaces than people. Commercial developers are also required to provide free parking for stores and office buildings. Cities typically calculate the amount of "necessary" free parking based on Institute of Transportation Engineers surveys, which count the number of vehicles parked at the time of peak parking demand in areas with ample free parking and nonexistent public transit, in other words, the maximum imaginable amount of vehicles. Local governments' free-parking mandates create huge costs for developers, costs that are passed on to businesses. In Los Angeles, the average construction cost of a building, excluding the cost of parking, is about $150 per square foot. The installation of four aboveground parking spaces per 1,000 square feet of office space (a fairly typical requirement) costs $40 per square foot. Thus, free parking requirements increase the cost of office space by 27%, and underground parking is even more expensive. Such requirements also increase the cost of housing. For example, a requirement that each apartment include one parking space increases the cost of housing by 12.5%. 



Government's parking mandate creates sprawl in a variety of ways. First, when businesses are forced to provide parking, driving becomes cheaper and more convenient, and homeowners have a greater incentive to live in auto-dependent areas. In addition, increases in driving cause the roads to become more congested, thus giving planners an excellent excuse to build and widen roads, which (as explained below) causes sprawl by making it more convenient for motorists to move farther away from cities' older areas. Second, government parking mandates make cities and suburbs less pedestrian friendly and more auto dependent, by forcing consumers to walk through huge parking lots to shop and work and to share this space with speeding vehicles. 



Government also makes streets inconvenient for pedestrians through traffic planning. For example, traffic engineers use a standard procedure for grading drivers' experiences at intersections. If drivers wait an average of 5 seconds or less to get through an intersection, they have an "A" level of service (the ideal). If drivers wait 15 to 25 seconds, they have a "C" level of service, and if they have to wait a minute or longer, they have an "F" level of service. By contrast, engineers have no such scheme for grading pedestrian service, and as a result, pedestrians often have to wait 60 seconds or longer to cross. Traffic engineers also make streets unfriendly to pedestrians by making them wider than necessary. For example, much of Main Street in Buffalo, New York, is six lanes wide, a width that discourages pedestrians from walking across the street unless absolutely necessary. By making Main Street too wide to be walkable, government's traffic engineers have also hastened the decay of Main Street by depriving Main Street merchants of walk-in traffic. By contrast, another commercial street three blocks away, Elmwood Avenue, is only four lanes wide and is thriving. 



A Counterargument: Blaming the Victims 



It has been argued that municipal incompetence rather than suburban sprawl is the cause of cities' problems and that if cities would only provide their citizens with decent services and lower taxes, they would be able to compete with suburbs successfully. This argument has a grain of truth: Middle-class Americans abandon cities not just because of the convenience provided by new and widened highways but also because of crime, high taxes, and bad schools. Nevertheless, cities are not solely, or even primarily, to blame for their own problems. 



Confusing Cause and Effect 



High taxes, high crime, and poor schools are less a cause of suburban sprawl than a result of suburban sprawl. This is so for a variety of reasons. 



First, if a city's middle class migrates en masse to suburbia, its tax base will be smaller, and other things being equal, it will have to raise taxes or reduce services. So other things being equal, migration to suburbia actually causes higher taxes and poor services. 



Second, suburban migration itself creates urban governments that drive away middle-class taxpayers. Because of middle-class flight from cities, many cities are dominated by African American and low-income voters, who tend to favor liberal, high-tax, redistributionist policies that drive out the remaining middle-class voters. The classic example of this vicious circle was Washington, D.C., under Marion Barry. The "White flight" of the 1950s and 1960s created an overwhelmingly African American electorate that was responsive to Barry's appeals to racial pride, and the middle-class African American flight of more recent decades created a majority-Black, predominantly lower class and working-class electorate that supported Barry's attempt to inflate the city payroll to create jobs. As a result, Barry was able to emasculate the city's police force, get convicted of using crack cocaine, and nevertheless be reelected as mayor of Washington in 1994. By the mid-1990s, 7.2% of Washington's population was on the city payroll, far more than in any other large American city. Washington's nearest competitor, New York City, clocked in at 5.4%. Not surprisingly, Washington's taxes significantly exceeded those of its suburbs: City residents paid 9.5% of their income in city income taxes, as opposed to 5.75% in nearby Virginia. By contrast, if Washington had not been ravaged by school desegregation, the highway system, and other pro-suburban federal policies, it would have had a more racially diverse, middle-class electorate that would never have tolerated Barry's shenanigans. 



Third, the common complaint that "bad schools" drive people out of cities illustrates how federal policies cause "bad" municipal services. As explained above, the courts' failed attempt to desegregate suburban schools has caused urban schools to become dominated by children from poor households. As a general matter, poor children are more difficult to educate, even in integrated schools. For example, P.S. 24, in Riverdale (one of the Bronx's few remaining affluent neighborhoods) has two educational programs: a regular program for relatively gifted students and a "special" program for slower students. The "special" programs are dominated by children who are poor enough to qualify for government free-lunch programs, whereas the regular program is dominated by students from middle-class households. Similarly, in affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio, White students average 1,100 on their SAT, whereas Black students average 800; because many of the latter live in middle-class households, the racial gap would no doubt be even larger if only low-income Black students' test results were considered. Academic studies support the proposition that gaps between students arise out of family background rather than poor schooling. For example, a 1960s survey by sociologist James Coleman showed that everything schools did accounted for only 5% to 35% of the variation in students' academic performances; he concluded, "The inequalities imposed on children by their home neighborhood and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school." Similarly, the Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks concluded in his 1972 book, Inequality, that desegregation could close the Black-White academic gap by no more than 10% to 20%. In another study published in 1995, Scott Miller, a scholar now affiliated with the College Board, wrote, "There is little evidence that any existing strategy can close more than a fraction of the overall achievement gap" (as cited in Traub, 2000, p. 52) separating children from high-income and low-income households. In sum, it may be the case that if suburban children and urban children switched schools, school boards, teachers, and administrators, the suburban-urban achievement gap would be as large as it is now. 



It logically follows that even if they are relatively well run, schools filled with poverty-stricken children quickly get a reputation as "bad schools," and parents tend to avoid them whenever possible. And because federal desegregation policies (as well as the transportation and housing policies that shifted middle-class families to suburbs) caused urban schools to be dominated by students from low-income households, the alleged "quality gap" between city schools and suburban schools arises partially from federal interference rather than municipal incompetence. 



Fourth, cities' high crime rates arise partially from federal policy. As explained above, federal housing policy caused low-income households to be concentrated in cities, while a variety of federal, state, and local policies encouraged middle-class flight to suburbia. As a general rule, people from low-income areas are more likely to commit crimes. Low-income areas in cities are typically more dangerous than high income areas, and low-income suburbs are typically more dangerous than high-income ones. For example, a 1999 analysis in Atlanta magazine divided Atlanta into four quadrants (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest). The poorest quadrant (Southeast) had 56 murders per 100,000 people in 1998, 60% more than the citywide average. Similarly, Atlanta's south-side suburbs (which tended to be poorer and are closer to the city's poorer neighborhoods) had more crime than its affluent northside suburbs. If poor people commit more crimes, and statism packed poor people into cities, it logically follows that statism makes cities more dangerous than suburbs. 



Bizarre Coincidences 



The claim that bad city government rather than state and federal misconduct drives middle-class families out of cities is logically as well as factually flawed. As noted above, most older American cities gained population in the 1930s and 1940s and have lost population ever since. Thus, to believe that suburban sprawl is the result of municipal incompetence, one would have to believe that dozens of city governments, by an incredibly strange coincidence, became unable to police their streets or improve their schools at exactly the same time, obviously a bizarre proposition. 



The "municipal incompetence" theory also fails to explain why, in many slow-growth metropolitan areas, older suburbs closer to the city have begun to lose population. For example, every suburb contiguous to Cleveland and Buffalo has lost population in recent decades-every single one. So to believe that municipal incompetence causes population loss, one would have to believe that all of these suburbs became ungovernable at exactly the same time, obviously a proposition too bizarre to be believable. Indeed, this theory is even more insane than the theory that big cities' incompetence made them ungovernable. It could perhaps be argued that big cities are less governable because of their sheer size (although the growth of cities that have annexed their suburbs proved otherwise), but this argument cannot be made about inner ring suburbs that are just as small as their rivals further away from central cities. 



There are exceptions to the rule of urban decay, but the exceptions prove that urban decline is due to sprawl rather than to bad government. Generally, cities that have annexed large expanses of suburban territory, such as Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, have grown whether they were located in the Frost Belt or the Sun Belt. In his book Cities Without Suburbs, former Albuquerque mayor David Rusk (1995) divides American cities into inelastic cities (that is, those that cannot annex suburban territory) and elastic cities (those that have annexed a great deal of territory). Between 1950 and 1990, the average zero-elasticity city lost 23% of its population, even though these cities' metropolitan areas grew by an average of 30%, whereas the most elastic cities (termed hyper-elastic by Rusk) increased their population by 250%, more than the growth in those cities' suburban populations. If middle-class suburbanites were fleeing big-city governments as such, cities that annexed territory would have continued to shrink, because families would have borne any burden to avoid living within city boundaries. Because this is not the case, suburban migration obviously relates to factors other than municipal incompetence. Of course, it could be argued that the hyper-elastic cities naturally have always had better city governments, but this would require one to believe that nearly every single city government that annexed territory also happened to be incredibly competent, another coincidence too bizarre to pass the straight-face test. 



Good Government and Bad Cities 



The theory that bad city government causes suburban sprawl rests on the assumption that the most inefficient governments drive out people and businesses while competent city governments do not. Undeniably, high taxes and governmental incompetence are factors that drive out middle-class taxpayers, but far from the only factor. For example, Cleveland imposes lower income taxes than its suburbs and imposes only $593 per capita in taxes, far less than Indianapolis ($688), Seattle ($772), and Denver ($959).Yet, Cleveland has lost nearly half its 1950 population, whereas the other three cities have gained population over time. Why? Perhaps because the other cities have been able to annex some of their suburbs, whereas Cleveland is confined within its 1940s boundaries. 



Utt (2000) cites New York, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis as examples of cities that have fought suburban sprawl during the 1990s by the simple expedient of electing mayors who have governed more effectively than their predecessors. But these three examples show the futility of counting on good government to reverse suburban sprawl. Indianapolis continues to grow because decades ago, it merged with a surrounding county and thereby took over a great deal of suburban territory. (Ironically, Utt condemns the metropolitan government that saved Indianapolis from the fate of Cleveland). 



In fact, the 1990s have been less kind to Indianapolis than prior decades: The city grew by 4% from 1980 to 1990 but only 1% from 1990 to 1998. Despite its dramatic drop in crime, New York grew more slowly in the 1990s than in "bad old days" of the 1980s: by 3% in the 1980s and by only 1% in the 1990s. And in Milwaukee, the 1990s were a calamity: After losing only 1% of its population in the 1980s, the city lost 6% of its population in the 1990s. It may be that with less charismatic and competent mayors, these cities would have been in much deeper trouble. But nevertheless, these cities' poor performance in the 1990s shows that factors other than the competence of a city's mayor or bureaucracy underlie urban decline. In fact, the cities that have rebounded most impressively in the 1990s have not done a very good job of fighting urban problems like crime. Of the 50 largest American cities, only 4 gained population in the 1990s after losing population in the 1980s: Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, and Kansas City. In 1998, 3 of those 4 "comeback cities" (Chicago, Atlanta, and Kansas City) had higher murder rates than supposedly better governed Milwaukee, and all four had higher murder rates than New York City. Whereas New York's murder rate declined by an amazing two thirds between 1991 and 1998 (from 29 per 100,000 to slightly fewer than 9 per 100,000), Denver's murder rate declined by about 45% (from 18 to 10 per 100,000), Chicago's by about a quarter (from 33 to 25 per 100,000), Atlanta's by about 30% (from 50 to 35 per 100,000), and Kansas City's by a wretched 5% (from 31 to 29). (Nationally, the murder rate declined by about a third, from 9.8 per 100,000 to 6.3 per 100,000.) Yet, all of these cities grew about as fast as New York City in the 1990s. 



Another Counterargument, Or, Pent-Up Demand 



It could also be argued that even if government has discouraged city living in a variety of ways, the status quo was nevertheless inevitable because Americans naturally desire the bigger houses and bigger lots that they can get from low-density suburban living. This argument requires one to believe that even if cities had crime rates, school systems, tax rates, and government services identical to those of suburbia, they would still be as depopulated as they are now, a proposition that should be self-evidently absurd to everyone who has known anyone who moved to suburbia for the schools. 



More important, this argument overlooks a simple fact: Livable city neighborhoods have sky-high property values. Neighborhoods like Buckhead in Atlanta, Cleveland Park in Washington, D.C., and Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia are more expensive than many suburban neighborhoods. For example, in 1998, the average home price in Buckhead was $364,952, more than the average home price in all but one of Greater Atlanta's suburbs. If "good" city neighborhoods are expensive, the demand for such neighborhoods obviously exceeds the supply. In other words, there is a huge pent-up demand for city living that would be satisfied were it not for market failure. The market failure is the shortage of affluent city neighborhoods created by suburban sprawl and the anti-urban government policy that causes sprawl. 



Why Sprawl Should Offend Conservatives 



Of course, just because sprawl has been engineered by government does not make it a major social crisis. The behavior of Republican congresses and presidents over the past several years suggests that all but the most extreme conservatives have come to terms with a government far bigger than that envisioned by their pre-New Deal forbears. Nevertheless, conservatives should fight suburban sprawl as they have fought other obnoxious bureaucratic innovations, because sprawl offends the values of both economic and cultural conservatives. 



Economic Conservatism and Sprawl 



Economic conservatives favor more freedom and less government; sprawl, as explained below, means less freedom and more government. 



Sprawl Versus Freedom 



As a rule, conservatives tend to believe that citizens should have as wide a range of choice as possible, whereas liberals tend to favor top-down government decision making. Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has argued that the market is superior to government not just because it is more efficient but also because it produces "unanimity without conformity," that is, because millions of consumers can satisfy their diverse needs without imposing their desires on others. Similarly, in a healthy metropolitan area (such as the American cities of the first half of the 20th century, or New York or European cities today), citizens can choose among a wide variety of options: They can live in city or suburb and can live with no cars or plenty. Such diversity, such unanimity without conformity, is what conservatives should support. 



But in most of metropolitan America, conformity is the rule in two respects. Sprawl has made auto ownership mandatory in most of America and has made suburban living mandatory in large chunks of America. 



Drive or die. In a free society, government should not force a particular mixture of products down consumers' throats: Consumers should be free to spend half their income on mortgage payments and take the bus to work, or live in a rundown trailer park and throw their money at a BMW. But in fact, government-induced buying has forced nearly all Americans older than age 16 to spend thousands of dollars on one product: a functional automobile. 



In a few cities, such as New York and Washington, D.C., one person can comfortably survive without a car. But in most cities and suburbs, government policies have made auto ownership virtually mandatory. As explained above, government used the highway system, the education system, and the FHA to lure middle-class people and their jobs to the suburbs and then used zoning to make those suburbs as auto-oriented as possible. Government has further rigged suburban life in favor of the auto by building roads for drivers but providing inadequate public transportation to non-drivers. Thus, suburbanites often need a car even if they live in regions with relatively well-developed transit systems, and in most smaller and Sun Belt cities, even city residents can barely function without them. 



For example, the Boston region has a central city with a well-developed transit system and a commuter train system that serves many of its suburbs. But even in Greater Boston, just 32% of entry-level employers are within 1/4 mile of transit, 43% are within 1/2 mile, and58%are within 1mile. Just14%of entry-level jobs can be reached by transit within an hour from Boston's poorer neighborhoods. 



The situation is even worse in Sun Belt cities. For example, Atlanta's second largest suburban county (Gwinnett County, which had 522,000 people in 1998) had no public transportation whatsoever, and even some neighborhoods within the city limits are transit free. My parents live within the city of Atlanta about 10 miles from city hall, but (except for a "maid bus" that comes to downtown once a day and from downtown once a day), the nearest bus stop is about a mile away, and the absence of sidewalks (or even lawns that one can walk on) prevents anyone from walking safely to the bus stop. 



And in smaller cities, a non-driver's life is more desperate still. For example, in Macon, Georgia, buses only operate until 6:45 p.m. in the evening on weekdays, Saturday service is limited, and there is no service on Sundays or holidays. Because many entry-level employers require their newest employees to work evening and weekend shifts, this system essentially shuts most of Macon's poor, car-less residents out of the job market. 



Many employers are not transit-accessible at all. Macon's largest employers are located in the area's periphery far from any bus line: Brown &Williamson (cigarettes), Riverwood (paper mill), Cagle's (chicken processing), Cigna (insurance data processing). Hotel operators and fast food establishments are located among major streets. As a result, Macon's employers of unskilled labor often ask employees whether they have a car, and if the answer is no, they will not hire you. 



Macon's transportation system limits a wide variety of other activities as well. The largest supermarket chain in the area, Kroger, is not efficiently served by the buses. Although two of the system's routes pass Kroger stores, the routes do not swing down access roads and into the store parking lots to permit less agile riders (such as children and senior citizens) to reach the stores. The two largest Kroger stores in the area are not on bus lines nor is a large discount supermarket, FoodMax, or a new Publix supermarket. Conversely, a largely abandoned shopping center where anchor tenant K-Mart closed in 1991 is served by the system, but the new K-Mart is not. Churches are not served by the system at all, because churches tend to be most active on Sundays and weekday evenings, when the bus system is shut down. Even on the bus system's limited routes, the frequency of service is so minimal as to discourage use. For example, students who use public transit to attend Macon College must devote the entire day to the ordeal. After rising before 6 a.m. to catch the first bus from their homes to the downtown transfer station, students must catch a morning bus from downtown to the college at 7:30 a.m. Later in the day, they have only one opportunity to return home. Needless to say, drivers suffer from none of these limitations: Government has built a toll-free, 24-hour system to serve them, and by building highways farther and farther away from downtown Macon, it has encouraged employers to relocate to areas not served by bus routes. 



In sum, in most of America (especially in suburbs and small cities), government has rigged transportation systems to make driving a necessity for anything resembling a normal life. Government builds roads that shift economic development to suburbs but mysteriously lacks the money to run bus routes to those suburbs (excepting the occasional expensive light rail system that serves a few blocks of suburbia well). Conservatives would certainly oppose a law ordering consumers to spend thousands of dollars a year on television sets, housing, or ice cream. It logically follows that they should oppose policies that have the effect, however inadvertent, of forcing consumers to spend thousand of dollars on automobiles. 



Suburbia or else. Just as government policies have forced Americans to buy more cars than they might otherwise buy, government policies have forced Americans out of cities and into suburbs. The tyranny of the automobile arises in part from a second tyranny: the tyranny of suburbia. In many cities (especially older industrial cities in the Northeast and the Midwest), urban decay has advanced so far that cities are essentially not an option for any consumers but the most adventurous, and the shift of jobs to suburbia has made cities impractical even for many adventurous consumers. 



This is reflected in the mainstream media: All too often, suburban is used as a synonym for White and urban for African American. In the most degraded cities, like Detroit and Newark, urban decomposition is so advanced that even single people are unwilling to live in the city. For example, an elite prep school in Connecticut, Choate Rosemary Hall (CRH), has dozens of alumni in New Jersey suburbs and hundreds in New York City but not one who lives in Newark. And in southeastern Michigan, CRH has about 20 alumni in Detroit's suburbs but not one who lives in the city of Detroit. By contrast, healthier big cities are jam packed with CRH alumni, especially younger alumni. For example, about 1,000 CRH alumni live in Manhattan, and 180 more live in New York City's other boroughs. 



And when I moved to St. Louis in 1990, I asked a friend of a friend what neighborhoods I should look at. I thought he would recommend one or two chic city neighborhoods and one or two close-in suburbs. Instead, he virtually chanted at me, "I do not recommend the city," and understandably so. Among St. Louis area households earning more than $100,000, only 6% live in the city of St. Louis (which has lost more than 60% of its 1950 population). 



Even where single people can live in the city, families often cannot. For example, in Cleveland, even the most open-minded Clevelanders were unwilling to stay in the city after marriage, both because of the condition of the city's public school system (which was unusually disreputable even by the low standards of urban public school systems) and because in Cleveland, unlike in other areas, nearly all of the area's private schools are located in the suburbs (except for a few Catholic and Lutheran schools). As a result, in Cleveland, only 4% of households earning more than $100,000 live in the city. Even people and institutions that would be urban in other communities are suburban in Cleveland. For example, the city's major bohemian- oriented shopping street, Coventry Road, is in the suburb of Cleveland Heights, as is the area's major alternative weekly (the Free Times). 



In many metropolitan areas, suburban life is not an option but a virtual necessity, because of the absence of decent city neighborhoods or reputable city schools. So by fighting sprawl and preserving cities, conservatives will actually be expanding, rather than limiting, consumer choice. 



Sprawl Means Higher Taxes 



Over the past two decades, taxes have become a defining issue in American politics, like Vietnam in 1960s or the role of government in the 1930s. Conservatives and Republicans have generally opposed higher taxes; liberals and Democrats have not. As explained below, sprawl is more likely to raise local taxes than to lower them. 



Taxes in the cities. Although suburban sprawl is not generally thought of as a tax issue, sprawl in fact means higher taxes and bigger government in city and suburb alike. The reason is that as cities lose middle- class residents and retain the poor, they become poorer. In the metro areas encompassing the 23 American cities that David Rusk (1995) designates as "zero elasticity" cities (that is, cities that have been unable to annex their suburbs and thus lost population), city per capita income is only 66% of suburban per capita income. And in many of these cities, the city-suburb income gap has widened over time. For example, in Buffalo city, income declined from 77% of suburban income in 1979 to 69% in 1989. Some other cities experiencing similar declines include Flint, Michigan (from 84% to 69%), Birmingham, Alabama (from 79% to 69%), St. Louis (from 71% to 67%), Chicago (from 69% to 66%), Saginaw, Michigan (from 81% to 66%), Baltimore (from 68% to 64%), New Haven (from 70% to 62%), Philadelphia (from 72% to 64%), Cleveland (from 63% to 54%), Hartford (from 62% to 53%), Detroit (from 67% to 53%), Trenton (from 65% to 50%), and Newark (from 48% to a stunning 42%). 



Common sense dictates that as a city becomes poorer, its tax base will decline, and tax hikes will become more tempting. For example, between 1972 and 1987, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland and its older suburbs) lost $4 billion worth of payroll, whereas Cleveland's newer outer suburbs gained $1.5 billion. And as poverty and deteriorating services drive middle-class people away from cities, property values decline, which diminishes the tax base still further and creates an additional turn in the vicious circle of urban decay. And as a city (and more recently, its inner suburbs) becomes more dominated by poorer voters, its electorate will be more likely to be dominated by liberals and Democrats who will prefer higher taxes to reductions in the size of government. For example, between 1976 and 1996, 



In the city of Buffalo, the Republican percentage of the two party presidential vote nosedived from 37% to 17%, a 20 percentage point drop that dwarfed the national 4 point drop in the Republican vote (from 49% to 45%). 
In Buffalo's population-losing inner ring suburbs, Republicans suffered comparable drops. For example, the Republican nominee lost 14 points in Lackawanna (from 35% to 21%), Cheektowaga (from 45% to 31%), and West Seneca (50% to 36%), as well as 19 in Tonawanda (from 56% to 37%). By contrast, in Clarence, a still-growing outer suburb, the Republican nominee lost only 8 points (from 64% to 56%). 
In the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Republicans suffered an 11 point drop (48% to 37%) in the mature suburb of Montgomery County, and only a 4 point drop (50% to 46%) in booming Howard County. 
In Philadelphia, the Republicans lost 15 points (from 32% to 17%). The Republicans lost 12 points in Delaware County, a stagnant inner suburb (from 56% to 44%) but only 5 points in booming Chester County (61% to 55%). 
In sum, suburban sprawl means that cities and older suburbs will become poorer, which means they have a smaller tax base, which means that (a) their politicians will be more tempted to raise taxes, and (b) their voters will be poorer, more politically liberal, and thus less fiscally conservative. 



Taxes in the suburbs. It could be argued that even if city residents face higher taxes from the redistribution of people and jobs caused by sprawl, suburbanites do not. After all, suburbanites live in growing areas with few poor people to make demands on government or elect pro-spending politicians. But even in suburbia, sprawl's impact on the public fisc is as best ambiguous. A fast-growing suburb benefits from a larger residential and commercial tax base but suffers when its new residents demand additional schools and roads to serve them. For example, in rapidly growing Loudoun County near Washington, D.C., the annual tax rate increased by 11% from 1997 to 1998 to pay for new services. Likewise, Prince William County, another high-growth Washington suburb, has the highest real estate tax rate of any county in Virginia. Such tax increases arise from the infrastructure expenses caused by population growth. In Prince William County, for example, schools are so overcrowded with new residents' children that students are crammed into more than 100 classroom trailers. Some suburbs also try to temporarily limit or avoid tax increases by taking on huge debt loads. In Loudoun County, debt payments rose from 3.3% of the county budget in 1990 to more than 10% in 1999. In rapidly expanding Howard County, between Baltimore and Washington, debt nearly tripled from $130 billion to $384 billion from 1987 and 1997. In Montgomery County, Maryland, some areas are fast growing whereas others are shrinking. So to accommodate these population shifts, the county built 70 new schools during the 1980s, while closing 68. Thus, Montgomery County had the worst of both worlds: The money it spent building the now-closed schools was unmasked as a waste, yet the county also had to throw money at new schools. 



Some suburban cities and counties try to finance the costs of increased residential development by encouraging increased commercial development. For example, Howard County's planning goals state that commercial development should account for 25% of the county's tax base because those developments provide revenue without adding students to the school system. This strategy, although helpful if it works, is quite risky: Because many commuters wish to live close to work, any increase in commercial development many create a demand for nearby residential development, which in turn, increases the costs of government services. And if a suburb tries to solve this problem by limiting such residential development, workers will have to commute from other suburbs, which in turn, means more traffic congestion, which creates political pressure for more roads, and which means higher spending and higher taxes. 



The car tax. In 1995, the average American household spent $5,666 on car-related expenditures: $2,639 on new and used vehicle purchases, $1,006 on gasoline, $261 on finance charges, $653 on maintenance and repair, $713 on car insurance, and $390 on leasing costs, rental costs, and license fees. Households with teenage children must spend even more, because they "need" cars not just for both parents but for every child older than age 16. As explained above, Americans live in areas where autos are a daily necessity not because of free choices made in a free market but because of government policies that have made daily life without a car impossible for many drivers. It logically follows that American auto dependency is an unfunded mandate analogous to the thousands of pages of federal regulations contained in the federal register and that most auto-related spending is a form of indirect taxation just as much as if government enacted a law requiring consumers to spend $5,666 per household on automobiles (a sum equaling two thirds of the mean federal income tax payment). And if auto-related spending is a tax paid by consumers, it further follows that any efforts to reduce auto dependency reduce the burden of government on the American people. Or to put the matter another way, if the average American could avoid having to own a car, he or she would get the equivalent of a 65% income tax cut to save, invest, or spend on other consumer goods. 



In sum, sprawl means higher taxes for city and suburbanite alike, plus a continuation of the car tax that squeezes so many American households. 



Sprawl and Cultural Conservatism 



Suburban sprawl also impairs two values commonly associated with cultural conservatism: social stability and the work ethic. 



Sprawl Versus Stability 



As Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation has pointed out, 



Community is of significant value to most cultural conservatives, for very good reason. Without it, there are few mechanisms to uphold morals and maintain standards of behavior. Traditionally, when most people were part of a community, they behaved for fear of community sanctions. But where there is no community, community sanctions cannot exist. 

And for community to exist, there must be stability: Today's stable, safe neighborhoods must be tomorrow's stable, safe neighborhoods, so their residents and their children and grandchildren can build a community rather than being driven out by the next wave of urban decay. 



But sprawl creates constant instability: Today's suburbs can quickly become tomorrow's slums. Some of today's poor city neighborhoods were once rich, outlying areas comparable to today's suburbs. For example, in Cleveland, Euclid Avenue was once a street filled with the mansions of industrial-era millionaires (including John D. Rockerfeller's first "trophy house") and is now, in the words of author James Howard Kunstler (1993), a "weed-filled wasteland." (In fact, when I visit in Cleveland I go out of my way to take the Euclid Avenue bus so I can see the ruins of Euclid Avenue.) And in Detroit, 19th-century tycoons built mansions on Woodward Avenue, a street that is now, in Kunstler's words, "something worse than a slum" where the remaining "hopelessly damaged mansions stand in these blocks like inscrutable megaliths in a wilderness of rubble" (p. 190). 



In turn, the decline of the oldest, closest-in city neighborhoods has set in motion a chain of events that endangers newer city neighborhoods and even suburbs. As the oldest neighborhoods decay, they become occupied by the poor, and nearby middle-class neighborhoods become uncomfortably close to city slums, which in turn, causes them to become less appealing and eventually decay, which in turn, starts the cycle in another nearby neighborhood. And by using its powers to drain cities of middle-class taxpayers, government has accelerated this cycle. 



So in recent decades, urban decay has spread out beyond the central city line. The poorest suburban municipalities near cities as varied as Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Miami have murder rates far higher than those of the big cities themselves. For example, in 1998, Highland Park, Michigan, had 91 murders per 100,000 people (more than twice as many as nearby Detroit) and 1,117 robberies per 100,000 people (more than 30% more than Detroit). Similarly, Compton, California, had 51 murders per 100,000 people, more than four times as many as nearby Los Angeles. Although these municipalities are extreme cases, city crime has frequently spread to other inner ring suburbs. In 1991, for instance, nine of Chicago's suburbs had higher crime rates than the city of Chicago. 



And even where suburbs are not quite as dangerous as nearby cities, they are often in decline. For example, most of Cleveland's inner ring suburbs have experienced dramatic declines in household income relative to other suburbs. In Cleveland's poorest inner ring suburb, East Cleveland, household income declined from 77% of the metro area mean in 1970 to 57% in 1990. Other suburbs experiencing similar declines include Bedford (101% to 87%), Bedford Heights (106% to 84%), Brooklyn (109% to 81%), Brook Park (127% to 101%), Euclid (101% to 82%), Fairview Park (136% to 113%), Garfield Heights (100% to 82%), Lakewood (99% to 93%), Maple Heights (103% to 85%), Mayfield Heights (103% to 85%), Middleburg Heights (138% to 114%), North Olmsted (124% to 115%), Parma (111% to 96%), Parma Heights (114% to 89%), Seven Hills (148% to 121%), South Euclid (117% to 106%), and Warrensville Heights (104% to 84%). All but two of these suburbs lost population during the 1990s, as did all of Cuyahoga County (which includes 77 square miles within the city of Cleveland and 381 square miles of suburbia), not because metro Cleveland as a whole lost population but because "outer counties" such as Geauga, Lake, and Medina Counties sucked away middle-class Clevelanders. In fact, Cleveland's decay is not limited to the inner ring of suburbs (that is, those suburbs that are contiguous to the city). Of the declining suburbs listed above, several (Bedford, Bedford Heights, Parma Heights, Middleburg Heights, Seven Hills, South Euclid, and North Olmsted) are second ring suburbs: They border inner ring suburbs but not Cleveland itself. Mayfield Heights is a third ring suburb: It does not border either Cleveland, nor does it border any of the inner ring suburbs. 



Cleveland is not alone; suburbs in other metro areas, especially slow-growth areas in the Midwest and Northeast, are experiencing similar problems. The major inner ring suburbs of Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo, St. Louis, and Chicago lost population during the 1990s. The Jewish community may present a classic example of how suburban sprawl destroys traditional values. 



The Jewish community has traditionally been even more footloose than other ethnic groups, moving up and out every generation. For example, in Buffalo, most of the Jewish community originally lived in the East Side of the city, near downtown, and near the East Side's African American population. Almost a dozen synagogues stood in the area by 1920 (about as many as can now be found in the entire Buffalo metropolitan area), and even now, one can occasionally see barely legible Jewish names on storefronts that are now boarded up or owned by African Americans. Over the next few decades, the Jewish community abandoned the East Side for North Buffalo, a city neighborhood several miles north of downtown. And in the past few decades, most Buffalo-area Jews have moved to Amherst, a northern suburb. In the 1950s, virtually the entire Jewish community of Cleveland moved to the inner ring suburbs of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights; in the 1980s and 1990s, Jews have begun to abandon these racially integrated suburbs for relatively lily-white outer suburbs such as Beachwood and Solon. Similarly, in my parents' lifetime, the center of the Jewish community has moved from now-depopulated areas near downtown Atlanta to the Morningside neighborhood northeast of downtown to the city's northern suburbs, where a child has to be driven just to meet his or her neighbors. 



As Jews have moved every generation, the once-tight bonds of Jewish community have frayed. In greater numbers every generation, Jews marry non-Jews and abandon their faith. As late as 1968, Albert Vorspan, director of the Commission on Social Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (an association of Reform Jewish synagogues) wrote, "Many more Jews are marrying out of the faith than anybody had realized" because about 20% of all marriages involving Jews were mixed marriages. By contrast, today, among the generation of Jews who mostly grew up in suburbia, as many as half of Jews marry non-Jews, most offspring of mixed marriages are non-Jewish, and the future of American Judaism is thus in doubt. It cannot be proven that suburban life causes intermarriage, but common sense dictates that if children grow up in areas (even disproportionately Jewish areas) that require them to be driven almost everywhere, they will have weaker ties with their Jewish neighbors than if they grew up in a traditional urban neighborhood, especially if that suburb is likely to be deserted by the time they grow up. It further follows that those Jewish neighbors will therefore be less likely to grow up to be Jewish wives and husbands, and their ties to a geographically defined community will vanish. In such a situation, it is certainly possible for a single person to go out of his or her way to associate with Jews and to become part of the Jewish community, but it will take the kind of effort that will deter all but the most motivated, and as with the Jews, so with every other type of community. 



In sum, suburban sprawl, like the French Revolution, devours its own children. Sprawl creates inner ring suburbs, only to destroy them a few decades later by creating outer suburbs to skim off their elites. So as long as sprawl is the status quo, no community is truly safe from the ravages of neighborhood decay, and no stable community can long endure. 



Sprawl Versus Work 



Conservatives tend to believe that people should be independent and work for a living rather than relying on government for handouts. For example, it took a Republican Congress to enact the welfare reform bill that limited the amount of time anyone can spend on welfare. 



But sprawl punishes work and rewards welfare dependency: Thanks to suburban sprawl, most low-skill jobs are located in areas that are inaccessible by public transportation or nearly so. For example, in small cities such as Macon, many jobs are inaccessible without a car either because the public transportation system does not reach major employers or because the buses stop running early in the evening. And even in the relatively transit-friendly Boston metropolitan area, just 32% of entry-level employers are within 1/4 mile of transit, 43% are within 1/2 mile, and 58% are within 1 mile. Just 14% of entry-level jobs can be reached by transit within an hour from Boston's poorer neighborhoods. So to get off welfare and get a job, a welfare recipient often needs a car that she probably cannot afford (otherwise she would not be on welfare in the first place). The recipient may be stuck in a vicious cycle: She needs the car to get a job, but she cannot get a job unless she has a car first. Thus, the dispersion of employment opportunities caused by sprawl frustrates welfare reform and encourages welfare dependency. 



Even if one assumes that the welfare recipient could somehow obtain a car, the costs of auto ownership encourage welfare dependency or even crime at the margins. For example, suppose that welfare recipient A can earn $700 a month on welfare (by engaging in some illicit activity, or through a combination of the two) and $900 after taxes at work but would have to spend $250 a month on a car if she gets a job. On balance, A would be better off on welfare because the cost of a car reduces her overall pay to $650 ($900 in wages minus $250 in auto expenses). Thus, the auto dependency caused by sprawl discourages work and has helped to turn the uneducated but law-abiding and hard-working working class of the 1940s to the uneducated, lawless underclass of the past few decades. 



What Conservatives Can Do About Sprawl 



Conservative hostility to anti-sprawl measures exists for a good reason: When environmentalists propose to fight sprawl, their remedies often involve a bigger, more intrusive government. For example, in his first major "anti-sprawl" speech, Vice President Gore endorsed $700 million in newtax credits to entice state and local governments to issue bonds to "build more livable communities," $6.1 billion in public transit spending, $1.6 billion for "state and local efforts to reduce air pollution and ease traffic congestion," and a $50 million "Regional Connections initiative." At the state level, environmentalists have often endorsed regulating land use and development more intensely, rather than trusting the market. Conservatives should learn, however, that even if they must agree to disagree with environmentalists on some fiscal and regulatory issues, they can still fight sprawl in other ways consistent with conservative values. 



For example, conservatives can focus on (a) eliminating highway spending that encourages sprawl, (b) breaking the link between residence and schooling, so that families can live in cities without being trapped in crumbling urban schools, and (c) limiting sprawl by reducing rather than increasing government regulation of land use and property rights. 



No New Roads 



If state and federal policy caused our urban crisis, the logical solution is to stop the policies that led to the crisis. Because highway spending has been a major cause of suburban sprawl, we can take a significant bite out of both sprawl and big government by eliminating sprawl-generating highway spending. 



Specifically, the state and federal governments should prohibit the use of their funds to build or widen roads in or near suburban areas. Because highway spending totaled $77 billion in 1995, such a "paving moratorium" would give taxpayers a significant break (including, ironically, drivers, whose fuel taxes pay for more than half of government highway spending). A paving moratorium would not prevent settlement in existing suburbs but would prevent government from creating new suburbs by building more highways and thus would prevent government from turning today's suburbs into deserted slums. 



Government justifies new and widened roads on the ground that more roads, not fewer, are needed to deal with traffic congestion. But the claim that new roads eliminate congestion is at best speculative and at worst laughable. I concede for the sake of argument that if new and widened roads did not affect development patterns, a new or widened road might reduce traffic congestion. But in reality, highway building affects where people live and work. If government builds highway X to suburb Y, homeowners and businesses will soon move to subdivisions near X's interchanges, thereby increasing traffic along the interchanges. Thus, new suburban highways typically fill up with cars almost from the moment the ribbon is cut. Even people and groups generally identified as pro-sprawl admit as much. As Joel Garreau (1991) of the Washington Post has written, "The more capacity you add, the more likely you are to make the place more popular . . . creating more traffic" (p. 128). Garreau is hardly an anti-sprawl activist; for example, he has described the status quo as the "manifest pattern of millions of individual American desires over seventy-five years." Similarly, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) conducted a survey that reveals that highway access would influence 55% of respondents to move to a new community, more than any other community. By suggesting that highways encourage movement to areas with highway access, the NAHB has effectively conceded that highways shift development to suburbs (thus making those suburbs more rather than less congested). Similarly, Alan Sipress (1999) of the Washington Post apparently defends sprawl-induced traffic, claiming that unspecified "researchers agreed that building roads can still be crucial for fostering economic development, even if the potential for easing congestion is limited" (p. B1), in otherwords, that road building is good because it promotes sprawl (a.k.a. "economic development") even if it does not stop congestion. 



Numerous studies have documented that "induced traffic" eliminates some or all of the reduction of congestion caused by new roads and road widenings. For example, Mark Hansen, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, used statewide California statistics in concluding that new road capacity is almost entirely offset by induced traffic within five years. He found that a 10% increase in capacity leads to a 9% increase in miles driven. A study conducted by Robert B. Noland, a former transportation analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, similarly found that a 10% expansion in roads produced a 2.8% rise in travel more than 2 to 4 years. In fact, studies such as Hansen's dramatically overestimate the benefits of new roads by failing to account for the long-run changes in development plans caused by new and widened roads. 



For example, in 1991 Montgomery County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington) widened Interstate 270 to as many as 12 lanes to reduce traffic congestion. According to Sidney Kramer, Montgomery County executive from 1986 to 1990, "You saw a tide of development go forward because of that improvement." One of the high-growth suburbs created by the I-270 widening, Germantown, Maryland, grew from just more than 41,000 people in 1980 to 70,000 people in 1998. In turn, the growth of Germantown and nearby suburbs caused traffic to increase. In fact, traffic along I-270 has surpassed the levels state highway planners forecast for 2010 in their 1984 study of the proposed widening. The Maryland highway department reported that the 1997 volume at Route 28 in Rockville was 193,000 vehicles per day-2,000 more than the 2010 projection. According to David Palank, an area real estate broker, "With all the lanes that are there, it just doesn't seem to be moving that quickly. . . . I haven't found any relief at any time. It seems like it was congested and continues to be congested." 



If I-270 were an aberration, areas that increased road space would have experienced a reduction in congestion during the 1990s, or at least less congestion than areas that did less road building. But recent studies show otherwise. The Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, areas experienced similar population growth (13% and 9%, respectively) over the past two decades. But Hartford actually reduced its road capacity, whereas Providence increased its road mileage by 59%. If road-building reduced congestion, Providence would have far less congestion than Hartford. But a study by the Texas Transportation Institute revealed that the two areas had similar levels of traffic growth and traffic congestion. In 1997, the cost of congestion per eligible driver was $390 in Hartford and $360 in Providence (Numbers 49 and 50 of 68 areas surveyed). Rush-hour congestion increased by 200% in Hartford and 225% in Providence between 1982 and 1997. Annual delay per driver increased by 283% in Hartford and 320% in Providence between 1982 and 1997. In other words, Providence built far more roads, yet congestion increased by slightly more in Providence. 



The correlation between free-flowing traffic and free-spending road builders is equally weak in fast-growing metro areas. For example, Charlotte and Fresno had comparable population growth rates (64% and 57%). But Charlotte increased its highway mileage by 113%, whereas Fresno's road-building lagged behind its population growth (with only a 27% increase). Charlotte's congestion cost $680 per driver, whereas Fresno's cost only $315. Annual delay per driver increased by 356% in Charlotte and only 171% in Fresno, whereas peak hour congestion increased by 229% in Charlotte and 225% in Fresno. 



In sum, both common sense and actual experience lead to the experience that suburban road building creates sprawl without mitigating congestion. Thus, continued road widening and road building is nothing more than a boondoggle. 



Ending the School Crisis 



In recent decades, middle-class families have fled cities to avoid public school systems full of low-achieving students from low-income families. As explained above, a "bad" school (one with a low reputation) is typically bad not because of its teachers, its school board, or its principal but because of its disadvantaged student body. It logically follows that even if government can improve poverty-packed urban schools slightly by spending more, raising expectations, or other reforms, it probably can never make such schools as attractive to middle-class families as suburban schools filled with middle-class children. It logically follows that if government wishes to stop driving middle-class families out of cities, it must stop forcing parents to choose between middle-class schools and city living. The most market-oriented remedy for the urban education crisis (other than the complete abolition of government-funded education in city and suburb alike) is the policy commonly known as the voucher system. 



Vouchers 



The obvious remedy for government's anti-urban education policy is a voucher system. Under a voucher system, children can obtain free, or partially free, education in private or suburban schools regardless of their mailing address. Under a voucher system, the government provides parents with a voucher or chit (analogous to food stamps) to pay for the child's education at the school of their choice. The parents then give the voucher to the school officials when the child is enrolled. The school then returns the voucher to the government, which in turn, sends the school a predetermined amount of publicly raised tax dollars. The purest form of voucher system would require the government to pay for a student's education in any public or private school that accepts the student. Less radical voucher plans might require the government to pay only part of a student's private school tuition, just as college students obtain tuition assistance through government- backed loans and grants. 



Any form of voucher program (other than one limited to the poor) would discourage middle-class flight by ensuring that parents could live in the city and send their children to private or suburban schools. Such a plan would also encourage residential desegregation because some parents unwilling to send their children to poverty-stricken city schools might be willing to live in diverse neighborhoods or at least live in the same jurisdiction as diverse neighborhoods. 



Some criticize the voucher system as a repudiation of the American ideal of the "common school" where children of different backgrounds cross paths and learn about one another. In pre-suburban America, this argument might have had some relevance to reality. But in major metropolitan areas, the common school concept has been assassinated by sprawl: Middle-class families live in middle-class suburbs with homogeneously middle-class schools, whereas poor families live in cities or poor suburbs with homogeneously poor schools. By contrast, a voucher system will increase children's exposure to diversity by enabling parents to live in or near diverse neighborhoods without sending their children to widely feared urban schools. For example, suppose Mr. and Mrs. X are willing to expose their children to city life but fear city schools. Under today's educational system, when the X children reach school age, they would reluctantly leave the city to avoid city schools. Under the voucher system, Mr. and Mrs. X would be able to live in a diverse city neighborhood and send their children to the same schools that their children would attend if they lived in suburbia. 



A related argument is that competition between city schools and private schools would be "unfair," because private schools could exclude the least desirable students, such as disabled students and those from low-income households. This argument is beside the point, because suburban schools can also exclude some of the least desirable students by using zoning and the resulting high property values to exclude low-income households whose children are more likely to be slow learners. Whether upper middle-class children go to exclusive urban schools or exclusive suburban schools, those schools will be segregated by class and/or ability: But under the status quo, this segregation creates the additional evil of urban decay. In other words, the status quo equals segregation plus sprawl, but vouchers would at worst create segregation minus sprawl. Because two social evils are worse than one, the voucher system is obviously preferable to the status quo. 



Voucher critics predict that an increased demand for private schools might cause private schools to raise tuition and make vouchers so fiscally impractical as to make private schools financially unaffordable and that vouchers will naturally lead to government over-regulation of private schools. These arguments overlook the fact that the United States already has a modified voucher system at the college and university level: the intricate web of grants and loans that help Americans attend college. If vouchers reduced access to college or made colleges worse, America's college and university system would be smaller to and inferior to that of other countries. In fact, Americans attend college in greater numbers than citizens of other affluent countries, and our university system, far from being burdened by government regulation, is so superior that in 1995, 23,276 foreign students came to American universities to learn. Thus, vouchers have worked well at the university level and accordingly should be provided for younger students. 



Another common anti-voucher argument is that vouchers violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by subsidizing church-run schools. As long as vouchers subsidize both religious and secular private schools, this argument borders on the frivolous, because under the First Amendment, government need only treat religion and irreligion equally rather than favoring the latter. A modified version of this "church/state" argument (recently endorsed by a federal judge in Cleveland in the case of Simmons-Harris v. Zelman [1999]) is that in areas in which most private schools are religious, a voucher system would favor religious schools so heavily as to effectively favor religion over irreligion. This argument rests on the assumption that vouchers will not change the size of the private school market: an assumption that may make sense when (as in the Cleveland program) vouchers aid only a small number of students but not when vouchers would affect every student in a city. If, thanks to government aid, millions of consumers entered the market for private schools, new secular private schools would probably spring up to meet this demand, just as developers built homes to satisfy the demand for suburbia created by government-funded highways. 



To give governments a chance to evaluate the validity of opponents' concerns, any voucher plan that includes private schools should be limited to the group that needs vouchers most, residents of cities where the school system drives out the middle class. Thus, a state or federal voucher plan might give vouchers only to residents of cities above a certain size that had lost population in recent decades. If the voucher system worked as intended, governments could follow up by expanding vouchers to all children. 



Vouchers Lite 



A less radical plan would be a "public schools only" voucher plan. Under such as system, the federal or state government could radically expand consumer choice by enacting the following statute: "No publicly funded elementary or secondary school receiving state [or federal, depending on who enacted the statute] shall discriminate in its admissions on the basis of residence." Under a "public schools only" voucher plan, parents would be free to send their children to suburban or urban schools, no matter where they lived. This plan would increase individual freedom without creating the practical, constitutional, and fiscal difficulties of a voucher system that included private schools. However, a "public schools only" voucher plan would do less to combat sprawl than a pure voucher plan, because parents with children in suburban schools might be tempted to move to suburbs to reduce their commutes to suburban schools. 



No More Coercive Zoning 



As explained above, traditional, walkable neighborhoods have been outlawed in most of suburban America, thanks to dictatorial zoning laws. Under zoning laws, a command-and-control bureaucracy, aided and abetted by suburbanites who wish to use government to limit their neighbors' property rights, dictates that almost nothing may be within walking distance of anything else, that commercial streets must be built for the happiness of cars rather than people, and that densities must be lower than a free market could tolerate. 



One remedy to this policy might be the complete abolition of zoning laws (excepting perhaps restrictions on pollution-spewing industrial sites). The abolition of zoning would maximize individual freedom and reduce housing costs by allowing developers and homeowners to build as they please, without any interference from government. On the other hand, the abolition of zoning would eliminate sprawl-limiting ordinances (such as those limiting development in newer suburbs) as well as sprawl-creating ordinances. 



A narrower (and thus more politically feasible) remedy to zoning-generated sprawl would be a developer's bill of rights, which would target zoning laws that most directly encouraged sprawl. Such a statute would limit localities' zoning powers by eliminating many of the most onerous sprawl-creating zoning restrictions. 



First, states should outlaw government-imposed minimum lot sizes, yard sizes, house sizes, or setbacks (that is, the distance between a house and the street). Where lots, yards, and setbacks are humongous, houses are so far from each other that their occupants cannot walk from one house to shopping or even other houses. If people want to live in such an environment, they have a right to, but there is no reason why government should force them to by ordering developers to create unwalkable subdivisions. 



Second, states should outlaw municipal restrictions on residential development in commercial zones and allow some retail development in apartment buildings and other residential areas. Under the status quo of single use zoning, suburbanites who would like to walk to work or to shopping often cannot do so, because the dead hand of government prohibits would-be landlords from building or renting apartments in commercial zones. By contrast, if shop owners or office park developers were consistently allowed to rent surplus space to residential tenants, more Americans would be able to walk to work, shopping, and other opportunities. Similarly, states could allow some commerce in residential areas while preserving their residential nature by allowing retail development in residential zones up to a certain percentage of a subdivision's or apartment building's square footage (up to, say, 10%) so that homeowners could walk to some amenities without having their neighborhoods completely transformed. 



Third, duplex homes and apartments should be permitted by law in all residential construction. If a homeowner wants to rent out his basement, he should be allowed to do so. Restrictions on rental use of homeowners' property are far more intrusive than similar restrictions on commercial use and increase auto dependency by artificially reducing population density. 



Fourth, municipalities should be required to permit home offices and telecommuting not involving show windows or exterior display advertising. Just as Americans should be allowed to walk to work, they should be allowed to work at home. 



Fifth, states should preclude municipalities from discriminating among permitted structures (such as apartments and homes) on the basis of the number of housing units contained therein or on the basis of form of ownership (e.g., homes vs. condominiums vs. rentals). In other words, if developer A wants to build an apartment building on its own property in suburb X, it should not be prevented from doing so merely because a vocal minority (or even a vocal majority) of X's residents do not like apartment buildings. Such a statute will not preclude the market from making such distinctions; there will always be significant separation of income classes that depending on consumers' choices, may be related to population density. However, the market should be allowed to make less land-consuming forms of development available. 



Sixth, municipalities should not be allowed to require more free parking than the market would dictate. If a business believes it will benefit by encouraging customers to park for free rather than parking on the street, it will build free parking without government encouragement. This rule prevents government from subsidizing drivers by artificially increasing the supply of free parking and makes streets more pedestrian- accessible by encouraging on-street parking (which buffers pedestrians from traffic). 



As a rule, metro areas with few zoning restrictions have cheaper housing. For example, Houston has no zoning at all and is far more affordable than other cities of comparable size. It logically follows that in addition to making American cities and suburbs more walkable and increasing property owners' freedom, zoning deregulation would have one other beneficial side effect: increasing the supply of low-rent, affordable housing, and thereby limiting the demand for public housing (which as explained above, has turned cities into dumping grounds for the poor). 



Conclusion 



Suburban sprawl is not an invention of environmental extremists but a serious problem that conservatives can and should solve. Sprawl exists in large part because of government policies favoring suburbia and forcing auto dependence and can be at least partially remedied by policies that make government smaller and less intrusive. More important, sprawl offends values that conservatives should care about, such as consumer choice, because when an American family moves to a suburb because they feel that they have to do so to educate their children decently or buys an extra car because they think they cannot live without one, we are all a little less free. 



References 



Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 

Garreau, J. (1991). Edge city: Life on the new frontier. Washington Post, p. 128 Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968). 

Jencks, C. (1972). Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America. New York: Basic Books. 

Kunstler, J. H. (1993). The geography of nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.

Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974). Hayward, S. (1999, March 22). Suburban legends. National Review, pp. 35-38. 

Postrel,V. (1999, March). The Pleasantville solution. Reason, p. 4. Rusk, D. (1995). Cities without suburbs. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. 

Sipress, A. (1999, January 4). Widen the roads, the drivers will come. Washington Post, p. B1. Simmons-Harris v. Zelman, 54 F. Supp. 2d 725 (N.D. Ohio 1999). Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971). 

Traub, J. (2000, June 16). What no school can do. The New York Times, p. 52. 

Utt, R. D. (2000, January 20). Cities and suburbs [Online]. Available: http://www.heritage.org/issues/chap13.html 



Michael Lewyn is an associate professor at John Marshall Law School, Atlanta, GA. 

Back to the Walkable Streets home page.


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## _00_deathscar (Mar 16, 2005)

Do you seriously expect anyone to read all that?


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## steric (Aug 3, 2007)

^^ seriously!! Looks interesting but omg :lol:


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

A few entirely random comments . . .

*Author's claim:* FHA and other government-subsidized loans have encouraged mass-scale homeownership, and therefore, sprawl.

*My rebuttal:* Sprawl is found in many other countries besides the US. Have they all done the same thing? Could be, but I doubt it. Furthermore, even if it was true, so what? Is mass-scale homeownership a bad thing? I hardly think so.

--------------------------------------------------------

*Author's claim:* Government-built roads have encouraged sprawl.

*My rebuttal:* Well - duh! Governments have been building roads since at least the Roman Empire. So what? Who else is going to build them? You aren't going to get private developers to build highways between all the cities, that's the government's responsibility anyway.

--------------------------------------------------

*Author's claim:* Most American cities gained population in the 30's and 40's, but now are losing population.

*My rebutal:* God, is this guy an idiot? Last time I looked, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Tampa, Billings, Las Vegas and a whole ton of other cities were gaining population. Many other cities have been losing population only because they've been unable to continually annex territory. I'm sorry, but you just ARE NOT going to fit all, or even most, of the 4 million (or whatever) population of metro Atlanta into the Atlanta city limits.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Wow, this is truly, utterly awful . . .



> While the federal government was bribing middle- class homeowners to leave cities, it was bribing the poor to stay in cities. In 1937, the federal government began to fund local housing authorities to provide housing for the poor. The housing laws provided that any city desiring public housing had to create a municipal housing authority. At that time, cities encompassed rich and poor alike . . .


Good god, what a complete idiot. Public housing was originally built to replace dilapidated slums. It didn't import poor people from Mars and dump them all into central cities just for the sake of dumping them into central cities, most of the people moving into public housing already lived in the central city beforehand. And how does the mere building of public housing somehow make an inner city the exclusive bastion of poor people? As I already said, those poor people already lived there in dilapidated slums - how does replacing a dilapidated slum with a housing project, in itself, drive rich people to move to the suburbs??



> But sprawl creates constant instability: Today's suburbs can quickly become tomorrow's slums. Some of today's poor city neighborhoods were once rich, outlying areas comparable to today's suburbs.


Wow, if this guy had a brain he'd be dangerous. Here he's saying that, both in the inner city as well as the suburbs, housing can go from nice to slum. So what? All that says is, no matter what you do, some housing has the potential to turn into slums. How will getting rid of sprawl solve this problem? If you crammed everyone into inner-city apartments, lots of those would become slums too, as he's already admitted has happened.

And contrary to his implication, there were plenty of slums in American cities before freeways and mass-scale suburbs were built. Suburbs are not the cause of slums.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

I love it! This is this guy's biggest solution!!!



> One remedy to this policy might be the complete abolition of zoning laws (excepting perhaps restrictions on pollution-spewing industrial sites). The abolition of zoning would maximize individual freedom and reduce housing costs by allowing developers and homeowners to build as they please, without any interference from government. On the other hand, the abolition of zoning would eliminate sprawl-limiting ordinances (such as those limiting development in newer suburbs) as well as sprawl-creating ordinances.


He thinks the lack of zoning will help eliminate sprawl. Well I've got news for him: If you get rid of zoning, all this does is give you Houston , which has no zoning, but which is as sprawly as any other city, if not moreso.

Incidentally, his solutions #2-6 would largely be the result of solution #1 anyway (the elimination of all zoning).


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## rantanamo (Sep 12, 2002)

Too wordy. The answer is simple these days. Conservative business men making as much money as they can. That involves cheap land. Spacious, cheap land is easy to sell to people as is the notion that with that spaciousness everyone can get their "castle" and their kids can go to school with like minded people.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

Too much words...does not compute.

:dizzy:


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Incidentally, here's a graphic I just made showing why and how the lack of ability to annex creates central cities where poor people dominate.

This is the same city/metro - on the left is the city in, say, 1930, and on the right is the same city in 2007, after the population has gotten much larger.

In both time periods, the proportion of poor people to middle class and wealthy people is about the same.

Due to the expanding population, the urbanized area must get bigger.

This, of course, means that the land area taken up by both rich and poor must get bigger.

The poor, who tended to live somewhere in the middle of the city in 1930, will gradually expand their "territory" to the nearest neighborhoods as their population increases. If the central city is not allowed to annex land, this means that the poor area will simply expand to gradually fill up more and more of the original city limits. The overall health (in terms of being rich-poor) of the entire metro is no different in 2007 than it was in 1930, but simply because of their growing population, coupled with the city's inability to annex, means that the central city will gradually become "poorer."


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## James Saito (Nov 6, 2002)

This is the longest post I've ever seen!!!


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## SuburbanWalker (Jun 23, 2007)

All you need to know is this:



> Highways enabled people to live farther away from downtown jobs by giving commuters easy access to central business districts from once-distant suburbs. Thus, highways create residential development in suburbs near highway exits. And where highway-driven residential development goes, commercial development inevitably follows, as retail businesses move to a suburb to serve its new residents, and the new residents in turn move their businesses to suburbia to reduce their commutes.


I'm not a fan of urban sprawl but it's a bit odd the author essentially acknowledges suburban life is more convenient to a lot of people and yet maintains urban sprawl is a statist process.


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

Lengthy post alright- but an interesting read.

Though I don't buy that suburban growth is a result of state policies. Such developement has been due to a aggregate of changing demographics, new technologies and market forces. Government didn't contrive to create suburbs. Polices were put in place concerning suburban development simply to tackle the basic problems of new housing construction. If they have aided the growth of suburbs than that is pretty much a unforeseen consequence. I mean, there's a bit in the article about parking laws and how they encourage car use and suburban growth. But if suburb development is already served by highway off ramps - how could local government not enact such regulations? Think of the outcry if they hadn't. 

And as for zoning, to assume that it's removal would end sprawl seems a little preposterous. In most cases more stringent zoning does have a large impact on the density of the development. Anyway, on the most fundamental level zoning is necessary simply to construct infrastructure, and try and curb it's cost. Such costs increase exponentially as suburbs grow further and further away from the city itself. 

In addition the stuff about education is somewhat specious. There's little evidence to show that state schools somehow err towards inequality, a huge number of factors have to be considered before such a conclusion. As for schools run on market principles - please, a lot more children would get screwed in that system than in even the most inefficient state run system. Markets don't do anything positive for the bottom 25% of the population and don't do much else in terms of equality for most of the rest. The voucher system would just open the door to even greater selection, schools could even try and avoid enrolling students that would use stamps in favor of those privately paying. The article sort of acknowledges this but some how claims it's not important. In addition voucher use would just make parents still move to certain areas for a simple reason - catchment area. It's all very well saying an inner city parent could send their child to a suburban school with vouchers, but it could be miles away! The school won't be able to accept those living near wishing to enroll and those miles away simply because they also have vouchers. It's a simple limit on numbers. If a school did start taking more and more students then it is likely to decrease in quality and the whole cycle will start over again.

Not all of the stuff in that article is realistic.


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## Paddington (Mar 30, 2006)

rantanamo said:


> Too wordy. The answer is simple these days. Conservative business men making as much money as they can. That involves cheap land. Spacious, cheap land is easy to sell to people as is the notion that with that spaciousness everyone can get their "castle" and their kids can go to school with like minded people.


What about those same businessmen who build highrises apartment buildings, and not just Donald Trump. They're going up in downtowns of every city, and are priced such that few middle class folk can afford to move into them. Where's the real greed? In the suburban house that sells for $150,000 for a family of 4, or the condo in Manhattan that goes for $1,000,000?


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## Paddington (Mar 30, 2006)

One thing is true about the zoning laws. The biggest source of sprawl, IMO, is the huge parking lots that are built. Here in Ohio, I think every store is mandated to have x amount of parking per square foot of retail. But that amount is enormous that I've never seen the parking lots here fill up, not even on the day after Thanksgiving. If they eased those restrictions, I think the amount of sprawl might go down by a surprising amount.


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## HirakataShi (Feb 8, 2004)

If the population of a given metro area increases, then so will sprawl. It isn't rocket science or even advanced economics 5001. 

Imagine city XYZ, 100 sq kilometres in size and with a population of 1 million in Year 0. If people continually move into the city proper over a period of say 30 years so that the population in Year 30 is now 2 million, you have twice the number of people competing for property in the same space. Add in inflation and home prices have probably skyrocketed during that time period. 

Now imagine you've just graduated from college and need a place to live. Will you pay $500,000 to live in the city or would you rather spend $40,000 on a car and buy a home outside of the city for $250,000? For many people it is simply cheaper to live in sprawling suburbs than in city centres. When I first moved to Osaka Prefecture I didn't live in Osaka city. I would have been insane to do so, the prices simply weren't within my price range. I lived in the suburbs, and have only recently moved into the city proper now that I've worked here and saved up enough money to make a proper investment in real estate. 

Expensive city = sprawling suburbs. It can never be otherwise.


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

^^ Exactly, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

I mean, it's easy to slam suburbs and their sprawl, (and I'm sympathetic to environmental concerns) but to a majority suburbs are the only affordable way to live near a city with it's facilities and employment opportunities, whilst still having a decent sized home.


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## Nouvellecosse (Jun 4, 2005)

HirakataShi said:


> Expensive city = sprawling suburbs. It can never be otherwise.


So fine, if demands drives up prices in the central city, then many people will have to live outside that area. But why can't suburbs be built densely? If the demand forces prices for one house to be too high, why can't a property of the same size/land usage be built farther from downtown?


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## Robert Stark (Dec 8, 2005)

I'm not for ending zonning laws but left wing policies did drive the middle class out of cities.


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

^^ Left wing policies tried to help those left behind after the flight of the middle class.


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## virgule82 (Apr 9, 2007)

There is always going to be sprawl and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The question, I think, is rather how much sprawl we're going to have. In much of the US, there is arguably too much of it. If there ever is an oil crisis, the us will be hit much harder as a consequence since its cities depend so much on cheap and abundant energy.


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## Robert Stark (Dec 8, 2005)

another cause of sprawl is corporatism where develpers use eminent domain via the Government to gain land, as is done to buils roads and highways. if property rights remained intact there would be much less sprawl.


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## xXFallenXx (Jun 15, 2007)

damn, that article took me 20 mins to scroll through! :lol:


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## Brandon1978 (Aug 31, 2006)

Bond James Bond said:


> A few entirely random comments . . .
> 
> *Author's claim:* FHA and other government-subsidized loans have encouraged mass-scale homeownership, and therefore, sprawl.
> 
> ...


Whoooaaa. No need to insult him. I think his argument was very cogent and persuasive, if not flawless. Regarding the last point, in which you called him an idiot even though he presented a well thought-out argument, you are correct in implying that many of the cities you mentioned are simply annexing surrounding territory. That is reason to sit back and contemplate. Could they be doing things differently? To go to the extreme and argue that Atlanta simply won't be able to fit 4 million people into its city centre sounds to me like an exaggeration. The city of Atlanta COULD compromise by funnelling SOME of those people in-city. Right now, it's more like an abcess that has exploded. A good example of an American municipality that has more or less recently avoided this type of de-centralisation and succeeded in funnelling is Seattle.


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## Brandon1978 (Aug 31, 2006)

*Example of Buck in Trend of Urban Decay*



Robert Stark said:


> Why Sprawl Is a Conservative Issue
> 
> Michael Lewyn, John Marshall Law School
> 
> ...


Seattle's growth is at its fastest in decades
Healthy job climate attracting residents statewide
By AUBREY COHEN
P-I REPORTER

Seattle's growth over the past year was the fastest of any year in at least the past four decades, according to new state estimates.

The city grew by 1.3 percent between April 1, 2006, and April 1, 2007, putting the new total at 586,200, according to data the state Office of Financial Management released Wednesday. The growth rate was up from 1 percent the previous year; the rate was the highest of any year in state records since 1968. The closest year was 1992, when the rate was 1.26 percent.

Meanwhile, in U.S. Census Bureau population numbers released Thursday for July 1, 2005, Seattle moved past Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., to make it the nation's 23rd largest city. The Census estimate for Seattle of 582,454 people was just 8,309 people behind Boston.

"I knew we had passed Milwaukee. I didn't realize we had passed Washington as well," Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said. "It says that we're an attractive city, we have jobs and opportunities, and people want to live and work here."

The greater Seattle metropolitan area remains about 1 million people smaller than Boston's and 2 million people short of the Washington, D.C., area. 

Abie Flaxman, 29, moved to Seattle from Pittsburgh last July to take a job as a mathematician at Microsoft, and found things were different here.

"Housing is the major issue in everyone's life in Seattle," he said. "Pittsburgh's got houses for everybody. It's got twice as many houses as it needs right now."

Theresa Lowe, chief demographer for the state of Washington, cautioned against reading too much into year-to-year changes in city population estimates. 

But Seattle has shown strong growth in the number of homes -- up 1.2 percent in 2006 and is up 8 percent since 2000 -- and the percentage of its homes that are occupied has increased. 

The city's growth rate has averaged 4.1 percent from 2000 to 2007. Its rising growth rate came in a year when county and state rates dipped slightly from recent highs. The city's rate still lagged behind those of the county, state and many smaller cities.

The state's new population estimate is 6.49 million, up 1.8 percent from last year, while King County hit 1.86 million, up 1.4 percent. Both growth rates were down one-tenth of a percent from 2006 rates that were the highest this decade.

The new statistics show that efforts to concentrate growth in existing cities such as Seattle are paying off, Nickels said.

"One of the secrets I think to our success to be able to battle climate change will be for cities to become really compelling places to live, because we can't afford to have people driving 40, 50, 60 miles alone from work anymore."

King County Demographer Chandler Felt said Seattle growth, and the lack of growth in unincorporated King County are successes of growth management.

"I think it's pretty remarkable that Seattle is managing to grow at a comparable rate to its county and region," he said.

While most parts of the state, and Washington as a whole, added fewer homes last year than the year before, the opposite was true in Seattle and King County, thanks to a boom in new apartments and condos. 

King County gained 124,254 people since 2000 -- by far the most of any of Washington's 39 counties. Its growth rate of 7.15 percent, however, was good for 21st place, well behind first-place Franklin County's rate of 36.58 percent.

About two-thirds of Washington's growth comes from people moving in "attracted by the state's good employment climate," Lowe said in a news release accompanying the numbers. The state's economy still is outperforming the nation's, but the margin of difference has declined, according to the release.

"As always, continued population growth in Washington depends on how our employment opportunities stack up against what other states have to offer," Lowe said. "Washington still appears to be in a good position to add nearly 1 million people over the present decade and reach 6.8 million by 2010."

King County regional labor economist Cristina Gonzalez said growth in the state's labor market has slowed somewhat.

"Seattle is still fairly strong," she said. "But you're going to eventually see an effect to the area if the rest of the nation and the rest of the state have slowed down."

Non-farm employment in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area was up 3.2 percent in May from a year earlier, compared with 2.1 percent for the state as a whole and 2 percent for the U.S.

Seattle-area employers are having increasingly tough times filling jobs, Gonzalez said. "Everything from machinists to construction workers to the health care industry has a terrible time getting skilled workers."

Gains should continue at least through the end of the year, she said. "I just don't think they'll be as strong as they have been."

Jeff Hibbert, managing partner at the Laurel Group, a Seattle-based executive search firm, said he's seeing strong demand for workers in retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance and technology.

One sign of the high-demand market is the return of a "bridge effect" that was common in 1999 and 2000, but dissipated after the tech bust, Hibbert said.

"People have multiple options wherever they may be geographically, and they're just not interested in hearing something that would cause them to have to drive over the bridge," he said. "We certainly hear that on a daily basis."

The number of people moving to the area for jobs has picked up in certain sectors, such as life science and key engineering jobs, but has not returned to 1999 and 2000 levels yet, Hibbert said. "We'll see it more widespread in the next six months and beyond as long as the economy continues in the Seattle area at its current rate."

Driver's license data show 40 percent to 50 percent of new Washington residents move to the state from California, including 34,000 in the past year -- down from 38,000 from April 1, 2005, to April 1, 2006, and a peak of about 40,000 in the early 1990s. Movement from Oregon, the second-largest contributor of migrants into Washington, also has slowed.

State officials determine population based on actual change in enrollment, housing, voters, drivers and other indicators. The state uses the estimates in administrating programs and allocating spending and distributions to local governments.





CENSUS HIGHLIGHTS

Seattle leapfrogged Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., one of several moves within the 25 largest U.S. cities, according to estimates the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday. 

Phoenix passed Philadelphia to take over fifth place. Fort Worth, Texas, claimed the 18th spot from Baltimore. Phoenix actually was bigger back in 2005, although officials only realized this after a recent revision of those estimates, census spokesman Robert Bernstein said. 

The new top five according to 2005 Census numbers are New York (8.2 million people), Los Angeles (3.8 million), Chicago (2.8 million), Houston (2.1 million) and Phoenix (1.5 million). 

New York, Chicago and Philadelphia were the only three carryovers in the top 10 from 1910 to 2006. Three of the new top 10 -- Phoenix, San Jose, Calif., and San Diego -- were not in the top 100 cities in 1910. 

Seattle's 3.4 percent growth from 2000 to 2006 was good for 127th place among U.S. cities with at least 100,000 people. McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, led that list, at 97.6 percent. Seattle's yearly increase of 1.1 percent was 83rd in the country, with the city of North Las Vegas coming in first at 11.9 percent. 

New Orleans had by far the largest population loss among cities with at least 100,000 people from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, and since 2000, losing more than half its population in both periods, because of Hurricane Katrina. 


P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen can be reached at 206-448-8362 or [email protected].


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## Xelebes (Apr 1, 2007)

Did you need to re-quote the whole thing?


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

I fully agree that local zoning laws ARE a major driving force of 'sprawl'. I have never heard of a local zoning battle where the neighbors have been demanding MORE unit density that what the developer was proposing, it is ALWAYS neighbors demanding less.

Thus, with the same population, allowing developers to build what their own marketing studies say is demanded will eat up LESS LAND than what they would with the zoning restrictions - thus causing less 'sprawl' and more compact urban areas.

I have been increasingly souring on zoning laws in recent years and have noted that more and more are breaking down as more people move into areas than there are legal places for them to live (creating a development 'black market'). Some parts of Los Angeles have houses built and zoned for one family being shared by as many as *five*, this due to a lack of 'legal' units. I am also seeing this in other areas such as Long Island, Miami and many other places.

The free market will ALWAYS prevail and I do hope that those in charge of over-restrictive zoning laws will realize that and adjust accordingly.

Mike


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

PresidentBjork said:


> ^^ Left wing policies tried to help those left behind after the flight of the middle class.


And ended up driving even more people out of the cities into the suburbs. It's a vicious circle.

Mike


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

mgk920 said:


> The free market will ALWAYS prevail and I do hope that those in charge of over-restrictive zoning laws will realize that and adjust accordingly.
> 
> Mike


Um, lets try and remember those unavoidable monopolies that the market can create, where regulation is necessary, e.g. railways, telecommunications, etc...

Also, no one claims all zoning laws prevent sprawl. It's precisely because some are too lenient that allow developers to build to sparsely. The answer is NOT in relaxing current zoning laws.


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

mgk920 said:


> And ended up driving even more people out of the cities into the suburbs. It's a vicious circle.
> 
> Mike


Sorry, don't buy that. Suburbs continued to grow due to natural population change. Socially responsible policies can help people escape grinding poverty that would otherwise let them fall into an inescapable sub class. Leave it to the housing market and the poorest of society would be unlikely to even have a roof over their head - and their children would have even less of a chance.

No platitudes about how free markets always triumph will convince me otherwise.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

PresidentBjork said:


> Um, lets try and remember those unavoidable monopolies that the market can create, where regulation is necessary, e.g. railways, telecommunications, etc...
> 
> Also, no one claims all zoning laws prevent sprawl. It's precisely because some are too lenient that allow developers to build to sparsely. The answer is NOT in relaxing current zoning laws.


The problem is that they are too strict, REQUIRING density that is too low. The hallmark of suburban zoning in the USA are strict density limits, some are as low as one unit/4 Ha.

Again, *ALL* of the local zoning battles that I have ever seen here in the USA are between developers whom want MORE units and neighbors whom want FEWER. To make up for it, the units that are built must be more expensive than they otherwise would be. Explain that.

Mike


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

mgk920 said:


> Again, *ALL* of the local zoning battles that I have ever seen here in the USA are between developers whom want MORE units and neighbors whom want FEWER. To make up for it, the units that are built must be more expensive than they otherwise would be. Explain that.
> 
> Mike


Well maybe that's a good sign that sprawl is becoming less economically feasible. However, this is a because new suburbs have to now be built beyond the originals. The price to supply these new developments with basic infrastructure increases as they grow more distant from the cities (where these services are coordinated/supplied), thus costing developers a lot more to build. 

In the past however, there were no such concerns. For a start developers were unsure how to price land - suburbs were a new phenomenon. So, they bought wide stretches of land at a low cost and waited to see if people demonstrated an interest in living there, if not at least the cheap land would not have been too much of a loss- they could just rent it to industry. To entice people to the new suburbs many developers advertised the space available.

Yes big government projects like highways and subsidies for infrastructure aided this process, but it needs to be remembered that suburbs were a new concept. City governments were expected to amalgamate suburbs and give them the same priority as urban areas since it was the older city population moving out to them. Only later did it become apparent that sprawl damaged cities as it cut their tax income (as inhabitants and business moved out) whilst increasing their expenditure on infrastructure and public projects to supply the suburbs. 
Zoning laws that waste land need to be changed, but the reason why they were instigated in the first place is simply because people then didn't foresee the problems that are apparent now.


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

double post


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

mgk920 said:


> I fully agree that local zoning laws ARE a major driving force of 'sprawl' . . .


Then why is Houston, which has no zoning, so sprawly?


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

Office parks are known to be another cause of sprawl b/c business are using this threat if they can't get tax breaks within the city on the claim of the property taxes.


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## Robert Stark (Dec 8, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


> Then why is Houston, which has no zoning, so sprawly?




because of freeways. I support zonning by the way. the issues is not all black and white its alot more complex.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

Robert Stark said:


> because of freeways. I support zonning by the way. the issues is not all black and white its alot more complex.


Easy access all around, LOTS of land to work with (southeast Texas is very flat) and a surprising amount of the Houston 'sprawl' is in fact outside of the city.

From what i can tell, the inside the city developments, while very spread out, are themselves on the dense side. Not a lot of 'big lot sprawl' type development in the city.

Mike


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Bond James Bond said:


> *Author's claim:* Government-built roads have encouraged sprawl.
> 
> *My rebuttal:* Well - duh! Governments have been building roads since at least the Roman Empire. So what? Who else is going to build them? You aren't going to get private developers to build highways between all the cities, that's the government's responsibility anyway.


Its not that there should not be any roads. Thats a straw man.
The point is while the highway system has been pushed with loads of public money, the railway system and other parts of public transport have been bleeded out.

The question remains why it is totally justified to heavily subsidize the streets, but why keeping the balance by granting public transport the same condiditions was so undesireably.


The decline of public transportation as far as it got in the US was not a god given incident. It is the direct consequence out of the priority setting of your nation. If your sole priority is the car, then dont wonder if that is all that is left after a few decades.


And of course, all improved means of transport may they be private or public enourage the spreading out of cities. But PT does so in a far more environmentally way, are a ver strong argument for a remaining at least mid densitiy of suburbs and not to rasie the quality of life significantly in the cities as the number of cars decrease significantly (and so the need for parking space) and the walkability of them increase again.


Some cities seem to have got that hint already, otherwise it would be hardly explainable why such a PT desert like LA tries to establish a basic metro system. 

Interestingly such new arising PT networks even if they are only basic in their extend in the beginning, will lead to a rise of density, so if you let that happen and dont forbid it by insane zoning. Its like with the car, just in the other direction, where eg subways are created, the developement of its hubs cause denser and more walkable regions around it.


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

Bond James Bond said:


> A few entirely random comments . . .
> 
> *Author's claim:* FHA and other government-subsidized loans have encouraged mass-scale homeownership, and therefore, sprawl.
> 
> ...



Nice try, but sprawl in the U.S. is largely due to what the article states, whith PERHAPS some exagerrations. I have worked for a municipality's planning department as a cartographer and GIS coordinator and here is how it largely works: cities, either the core city or a suburban city on an edge, annex undevelopped land and a developper comes in and builds suburban-type sprawl because the city and the deveopper knows that they sell like cupcakes, that is, because the American lifestyle has developped to think this is better. The city's planners, who should be experts in city development, don't propose alternatives, either because they don't know better or because they fear too much opposition from neighboring suburbs at time of public hearings or because they are afraid a more "urban" type development will fail, thus not provide enough tax-base, which is what the city is really after. However, more mix, urban development has been succeeding. Perhaps its just a phase, as most things are, but my downtown has changed like day and night with condos and a vibrant downtown life. One of the problem is, that this type of development is only occurring in downtown and other established, central neighborhoods, thus those condos and mixed development projects (which also include single-family but not sprawled) are very pricey. But why not take that same model and take it further out? Tradition? Yes. Fears? Yes. City's that kiss up to those boring developers? Yes. Can we educate ourselves in the attempt to reduce such land-munching developments that force people to drive everywhere for something as simple as milk and eggs or meat from the butcher? Yes. Should a city stand up and tell those developers to plan something different or they'll wait for another developer? Why not? Has it been done with success in the US of A? Yes.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> Its not that there should not be any roads. Thats a straw man.
> The point is while the highway system has been pushed with loads of public money, the railway system and other parts of public transport have been bleeded out.


But this is not true of all American cities. Particularly in the Northeast, many cities have well-used (and highly subsidized) rail systems, both for commuters and for intra-city travel. And yet, the suburbs in those cities are still very sprawly.

One might also ask *why* it is the roads and not the rails which have received the lion's share of funding: The reason why rails have received less attention, is because people stopped using them.

Sprawl is a function of personal choice (people like living in their own house, with their own yard), enabled by technology (cars) and further enabled by high levels of affluence. Not to mention that the large American population will inevitably take up large amounts of land for urbanization. If you subsidized railways up the kazoo in every single American city, it would make little difference.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

edubejar said:


> Nice try, but sprawl in the U.S. is largely due to what the article states, whith PERHAPS some exagerrations. I have worked for a municipality's planning department as a cartographer and GIS coordinator and here is how it largely works: cities, either the core city or a suburban city on an edge, annex undevelopped land and a developper comes in and builds suburban-type sprawl because the city and the deveopper knows that they sell like cupcakes, that is, because the American lifestyle has developped to think this is better. The city's planners, who should be experts in city development, don't propose alternatives, either because they don't know better or because they fear too much opposition from neighboring suburbs at time of public hearings or because they are afraid a more "urban" type development will fail, thus not provide enough tax-base, which is what the city is really after. However, more mix, urban development has been succeeding. Perhaps its just a phase, as most things are, but my downtown has changed like day and night with condos and a vibrant downtown life. One of the problem is, that this type of development is only occurring in downtown and other established, central neighborhoods, thus those condos and mixed development projects (which also include single-family but not sprawled) are very pricey. But why not take that same model and take it further out? Tradition? Yes. Fears? Yes. City's that kiss up to those boring developers? Yes. Can we educate ourselves in the attempt to reduce such land-munching developments that force people to drive everywhere for something as simple as milk and eggs or meat from the butcher? Yes. Should a city stand up and tell those developers to plan something different or they'll wait for another developer? Why not? Has it been done with success in the US of A? Yes.


Well whoop-te-do, I have a master's degree in urban planning, have worked as a planner, and am now doing GIS as well.

Your criticism fails to ask the most important question of all: Why does the developer come in and propose single-family houses in the first place?

Because that's what the public wants.

All this talk about the public being somehow deceived and brainwashed to believe that suburban life is bliss, and that somehow they'd all really like to live in a rowhouse if they were only properly educated, is such complete garbage I can't believe anyone actually believes it. Why don't you ask some people who actually live in houses like that? They will tell you they like having their own house and their own yard because they don't like being cramped up so close to other people. If they can afford their own house on their own yard, that's where they'll live. And in turn, that's what real estate developers will build.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Here's the professor's actual paper:
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkbrueck/socinteract.pdf
^
Conclusion, page 21-22:


> "Various authors, most notably Putnam [20], have argued that low-density living reduces
> social interaction, and this argument has been used to buttress criticisms of urban sprawl.
> But inefficient urban expansion must involve market failures, and the first contribution of this
> paper is to show theoretically that such a failure arises if low-density living depresses social
> ...


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Euklidisk said:


> I Agree with Bond James Bond, families often strive for low dencity suburbs - In the USA aswell as in Europe! The opposite holds for youth and retired in at least Sweden (where I come from).
> 
> But isn't there a middle way like building low dencity suburbs around public transit, with good connections down town? In that way supporting the city core and therefore making commerce, work opportunities and education accessible for all groups. I have myself grown up in such an area (in Sweden) and always used the bus (or bicycle) for school, work and down town shopping. Sprawl is a big problem in Sweden too (but not widely discussed). Despite that, there is often no problem commute by public transit.
> 
> ...


Euklidisk, this discussion with Bond actually brought me a bit away from what I wanted to say innitially.

Low density suburbs are not the ultimative evil. They are however the source of a hell of a lot problems for the functioning of a city and the environment. Thats why the suburbs even the more than the city (that are no excemption however) a very clever design/layout and infrastructure.

In America many suburbs if not most simply totally lack that necessary design. Walkability at least of some basic sense is no impossibility in suburbs. But it needs walkable distances. And honestly most supermarkets in suburbs I have seen on Google maps dont make the impression like they would expect pedestrians. I know a "shopping park" in Vienna that looks similarely, thats why I evade that usually unless I need to go to the sole shop of a specialized dealer. You nearly feal like a thief, or an adventurer moving through the jungle. Like you would have taken the wrong way. But then you realize that there is simply no nice way for pedestrians. 


Regarding socialisation, where did you read again that I claimed that children in suburbs are isolated? What I said however was that I can't see in how far such a nice public playground should be inferior. 


And your picture. Actually I think thats a rather ugly suburb. I mean you have far nicer suburbs out there, why show me that one?
First of all, those homes look like they alltogether have pure ugly concrete plates to the garages. If someone has a focus on building a nice one family home at least here he wont do that, but get something else than this eyesore on his ground. Secondly, the gardens look rather dull. Well at least they dont waste their whole property just to place a swimming pool into it. Thats a pluspoint.

And while in your last picture there seems to be fall, in the one before it looks like a more fruitful time, still where are the flowers? Noone ever heard of a nice garden design?

And last but not least the question. What if you are fed up with being catched down in your property, and want to experience the free nature without being bothered by neighbors or humans etc?
What do you do in a suburb then (especially in those where one borders on the other) How long is the drive to get out of that all?

Where I live in Vienna, I need 20 min with PT to be in the middle of the woods of large massive woods.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Bond, you showed already that you do not value "commie blocks" very much, it also seems you do not really think that large blocks are a nice place to live for families.

How do you explain yourself that:










Those large blocks in the center are the complex "Alt-Erlaa". The costs of living there are on the upper end of public subisidized appartments but still fairly cheap in comparision to the real estates market of Vienna.

A few thousand people live in those blocks. A quite depressing place? No, not at all, its one of the residential districts with the highest satifisfaction among the inhabitants in entire Vienna. The community sense in the block is already legendary and its extremely hard if not impossible to get an appartment there as usually those ones that get free because the inhabitant died or moved to another town (not many people leave it in order to get to another location in the city), the grown up children of inhabitants are already eager to get it.

The list of services you get in the complex are long, and the most interesting might be the large swimming pool on the top of each block. They are heavily used by the people who live there, as all public rooms in the complex are. In fact that complex is a city on its own, not just a sleeping quarter. The people who live there might however describe it not as city but as (large) village where people know each other.

But its far away from being an isolated island, as it has its own subway station that brings you fast into the city center.

PS:
Have I already said that the majority of inhabitants have an own private garden of 4 sqm right next to the terrace. They can plant their what the want, also bushes and etc, or even vegetables if you are into that direction.


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## Euklidisk (May 14, 2005)

^^ 
That development looks nice, but i prefer old city blocks style as in right corner. I agree with you about the lack of design in low dencity suburbs, it's common in big swedish cities. But this is what I mean with transit oriented low dencity:









_This example is a small low dencity village called Stenstorp in western Sweden. ca: 2000 inhabitants. Regional trains goes to region centra and other important cities in 160 to 200 km/h (100 to 125 mph). Cars have no chance beating it._


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

Nice funky design


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## Euklidisk (May 14, 2005)

^^ 
Hehe... I'm pretty sure it's not intentional although


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas, I'm sure that that apartment complex is a decent place to raise your kids. But it would still suffer from the problems I outlined above - problems which would go away if you had your own house on your own lot.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> In America many suburbs if not most simply totally lack that necessary design. Walkability at least of some basic sense is no impossibility in suburbs. But it needs walkable distances. And honestly most supermarkets in suburbs I have seen on Google maps dont make the impression like they would expect pedestrians. I know a "shopping park" in Vienna that looks similarely, thats why I evade that usually unless I need to go to the sole shop of a specialized dealer. You nearly feal like a thief, or an adventurer moving through the jungle. Like you would have taken the wrong way. But then you realize that there is simply no nice way for pedestrians.


Most suburbs have sidewalks, and people do plenty of walking on them. Sometimes a grocery store is close-enough to walk to, sometime it isn't. Even when it is, most people drive to the supermarket anyway, because, as I mentioned before, it's quicker and you can carry more groceries with you. Other times people use the sidewalks to go jogging, or just to go for a walk.

Incidentally, I have a sneaking suspicion that lots of supermarkets in European cities aren't close-enough to all houses and apartments for everyone to walk to. And that lots of (if not most) Europeans drive to the supermarket, just like Americans.



> Regarding socialisation, where did you read again that I claimed that children in suburbs are isolated? What I said however was that I can't see in how far such a nice public playground should be inferior.


You said, *"Yes I know, that looks like a terrible place for a family to live, doesnt it? And the worst, at the playground might even play other children than your owns as well. No, beware they might even socialize... aaaah."* That implies that you think kids who don't play in a neighborhood playground don't socialize. That is ridiculous. Neighborhood playgrounds aren't the only places where kids can socialize. There are neighbor's kids, there are kids at school, and a zillion different places and situations where they can meet. I grew up in a typical American suburb, and it was hard for me to *not* meet a ton of other kids and socialize with them.



> And your picture. Actually I think thats a rather ugly suburb. I mean you have far nicer suburbs out there, why show me that one?
> First of all, those homes look like they alltogether have pure ugly concrete plates to the garages. If someone has a focus on building a nice one family home at least here he wont do that, but get something else than this eyesore on his ground. Secondly, the gardens look rather dull. Well at least they dont waste their whole property just to place a swimming pool into it. Thats a pluspoint.


That is your subjective opinion. There are tons of people who think that a suburb and houses like that are a slice of heaven. But if you want to look for something that looks different, I've got a whole collection of American sprawl pics here:


> Link to the first thread in this series:
> USA Sprawl Festival
> 
> Or, click on the following links to see just individual cities in that thread:
> ...





> And while in your last picture there seems to be fall, in the one before it looks like a more fruitful time, still where are the flowers? Noone ever heard of a nice garden design?


Wow, you are really quibbling over nothing. The springtime picture I showed didn't happen to have someone with a garden, and you think this means that EVERY house in American suburbs doesn't have a garden, and that the lack of gardens means that American suburbs are miserable failures??? What kind of nonsense is that?



> And last but not least the question. What if you are fed up with being catched down in your property, and want to experience the free nature without being bothered by neighbors or humans etc?
> What do you do in a suburb then (especially in those where one borders on the other) How long is the drive to get out of that all?
> 
> Where I live in Vienna, I need 20 min with PT to be in the middle of the woods of large massive woods.


Ummm . . . duh. Suburbs have big parks too, with lots of "free nature." You think that, just because a suburb has big lots with trees in the backyard, means that there aren't any parks nearby. hno: Really, it's obvious to me you've never been in an American suburb in your life.


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## Euklidisk (May 14, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


> Incidentally, I have a sneaking suspicion that lots of supermarkets in European cities aren't close-enough to all houses and apartments for everyone to walk to. And that lots of (if not most) Europeans drive to the supermarket, just like Americans.


Yes, that's true. One wiered thing is that even though people live in an apartment in a dence area they take their cars and drive to the outskirts for the mall. European malls is although diffrent from American ones. They are fewer, smaller and has less entertainment, restaurants, clothing etcetera. In these areas the city holds strong.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Euklidisk said:


> ^^
> That development looks nice, but i prefer old city blocks style as in right corner. I agree with you about the lack of design in low dencity suburbs, it's common in big swedish cities. But this is what I mean with transit oriented low dencity:
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, that goes in the direction I have in mind. Of course not every village can have a connection to such a great rail link (even if its only a regional station), but the design is there. The Optimal design would be small entities with an own center, with distances that are still walkable and also designed walkable friendly. A good PT access should go to the center which would be if its ideal also the place where the larger shopping locations are to be found (in a compact way... ie without a parking field that is three sizes the shopping facility). 

I am aware that its very hard to change existing settlements, but it would be rather easy to take a clever design into consideration when building new ones which is happening often enough in the US and other places in the world. 

An PT accesible suburb is no utopy. But it needs clever design. And in order to get a clever design one must dare to question the absolute hegemony of the car. Its hard to get the perfect car and PT oriented settlement at the same time.

Actually I do not hate that people dare to have gardens. That could not be further from the truth. My concern are our responsabilities we have, its not just all options, we have responsabilities. Of course an ultimative egoist might say, f*** the responsabilities, I want the options. 

The point is, the exclusively car focused suburb is all the options without caring at all about the responsabilities we have towards our own children (no not that they need an own garden, I mean that they need a liveable world even after we have ceased already long ago), towards the environment, the neighbors, our resources (energy resources are just a small part of that category) etc etc. 

In short: Stress the overused word "Sustainability". Thats the word of the day. Exclusively car focused suburbs are everything else but the last thing they are is being sustainable.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Bond James Bond said:


> Most suburbs have sidewalks, and people do plenty of walking on them. Sometimes a grocery store is close-enough to walk to, sometime it isn't. Even when it is, most people drive to the supermarket anyway, because, as I mentioned before, it's quicker and you can carry more groceries with you. Other times people use the sidewalks to go jogging, or just to go for a walk.
> 
> Incidentally, I have a sneaking suspicion that lots of supermarkets in European cities aren't close-enough to all houses and apartments for everyone to walk to. And that lots of (if not most) Europeans drive to the supermarket, just like Americans.


I lay my hand into the fire that at least two third of the entire Viennese population (in the somewhat denser parts for sure which is a quite large chunk of the total city) have supermarkets (often a number of differen) within convenient walking distance. 
As I said, I live already in the periphery on one side there are already houses with gardens. I have several supermarkets within walking range. And I see far far more people walking to the supermarekt than taking the car. I dont think I live in such a special corner of Vienna. Its my conviction that this is rather the rule than the exception in areas here where the supermarket is in reasonable distance. 

Of course I am talking about cities here. On the countryside the situation is often (however not always and not for all) different.



> You said, *"Yes I know, that looks like a terrible place for a family to live, doesnt it? And the worst, at the playground might even play other children than your owns as well. No, beware they might even socialize... aaaah."* That implies that you think kids who don't play in a neighborhood playground don't socialize. That is ridiculous. Neighborhood playgrounds aren't the only places where kids can socialize. There are neighbor's kids, there are kids at school, and a zillion different places and situations where they can meet. I grew up in a typical American suburb, and it was hard for me to *not* meet a ton of other kids and socialize with them.


No it doesnt automatically imply that. Thats flawed logic. My argument A does not imply automatically your argument B. 

Anyway, I dont want to quarrel about words. What I had in mind was that a public playground is not a bug but a feature. Its definitely a place where childrens easily socialize, I hope we are not arguing about that, are we? Yes, perhaps one could even claim that it is in this aspect superior to a private garden. I mean that children socialize slightly easier on public playgrounds where they are put into one place in contrast to private gardes where they have to have the intend to mee themselves first before they meet. 

This alone does not suggest or prove or anything else that suburbs as a whole are less able of socialisation. Actually this lies far beyond my possibilities of speculation. I keep myself out of that.

I wanted to say something about public playgrounds and that they are not bad, no in contrast that they are a nice thing for families. That you can find something different, with different advantages and disadvantages, but equally good as replacement for your garden in regards to raising childrens.

BTW, when I played with friends when I was a child, I was often in a different place than at home/garden or someone elses home/garden. And I grew up in a rural setting.



> Wow, you are really quibbling over nothing. The springtime picture I showed didn't happen to have someone with a garden, and you think this means that EVERY house in American suburbs doesn't have a garden, and that the lack of gardens means that American suburbs are miserable failures??? What kind of nonsense is that?


I just said, that this picture you posted (forwhatever reason) did not impress me. 



> Ummm . . . duh. Suburbs have big parks too, with lots of "free nature." You think that, just because a suburb has big lots with trees in the backyard, means that there aren't any parks nearby. hno: Really, it's obvious to me you've never been in an American suburb in your life.


No I haven't.
But I will soon be able to see some in real life. In a mont I will know considerably more about how its like in some of the suburbs of DC, Philly and perhaps also NYC.

I am looking forward to get an impression on my own on this subject.


PS:
Looked into some of your links.
There are some nice pictures indeed. But the more I look at denser approaches of suburbs, the more I come to the conclusion that there really is no necessity, but its mostly a lack of will to get eg a working PT system running. (in case those regions dont have an efficient one already.) The same regarding walkable distances, the density would be in some regions already there, but it does not really look like the feet would be considered a significant means of transport in any of those places. (apart from visiting your neighbour). The "centers" of those suburbs I have seen there were not at all looking like they would expect people to walk to them.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas, it may interest you to know that many suburbs not only have parks, but playgrounds as well. In fact, in many larger new developments, cities *require* developers to build small parks with playgrounds amid all the new houses.

Some examples:

Las Vegas









Houston









San Diego









Denver









In many sunbelt cities, developers usually build public swimming pools in their developments. I've noticed this is especially true in Texas. Kids, of course, like to play in the pool, and it is in effect another playground.










And then of course, elementary schools are scattered frequently among all the houses, and they, too, will have their own playgrounds.










You are right, American suburbs are mostly designed for the automobile. But that's because that's what Americans mostly like.

Have fun on your trip.


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

go to a playground by car?very healthy...


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

RawLee said:


> go to a playground by car?very healthy...


Ummm, it looks to me like almost everyone who lives around that playground can walk there. hno: I mean, gosh, there's even sidewalks going right up to it from the residential streets.


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## Euklidisk (May 14, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


> Ummm, it looks to me like almost everyone who lives around that playground can walk there. hno: I mean, gosh, there's even sidewalks going right up to it from the residential streets.


Is the park fenced except from the main street side?


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Euklidisk said:


> Is the park fenced except from the main street side?


If you look closely, you can see at least 1 sidewalk going from a dead-end street at the bottom into the park (at the bottom-left).

It's hard to tell from the pictures about the other streets (though the ones at the top do look like they're fenced), but even if they are, we're hardly talking about long walking distances from the other houses to the park. Like, wow, walk a block or two. :| 

And that wasn't the only example I gave anyway:










It seems the Europeans in this forum like to go out of their way to criticize American sprawl. :| When you're complaining about having to walk a block or two to get to the nearest playground, I mean . . . really. :|


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## Euklidisk (May 14, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


> If you look closely, you can see at least 1 sidewalk going from a dead-end street at the bottom into the park (at the bottom-left).
> 
> It's hard to tell from the pictures about the other streets (though the ones at the top do look like they're fenced), but even if they are, we're hardly talking about long walking distances from the other houses to the park. Like, wow, walk a block or two. :|
> 
> ...


I was not criticizing. I just asked a simple question.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

^
Apologies, then.

Maybe I'm just too accustomed to European criticism, so when someone says something like that I assume it's meant to be critical.


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## virgule82 (Apr 9, 2007)

The reason a lot of people dislike American-style sprawl is that it makes you completely dependen on cars. You may be within walking distance to a playground or a supermarket or an elementary school. But you're very rarely within walking distance of everything you need (or near public transportation that can take you there), just one or two of those things. Which is fine, I guess, if you don't mind driving.


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## xXFallenXx (Jun 15, 2007)

^^ im in walking distance of a elementary school, middle school, high school, costco, mall, 3 parks and 2 movie theaters. So that pretty much covers everything.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

SFPlanner said:


> well, I do have to wonder why all of the homes back onto what is clearly a civic park - the situtation is not all that uncommon - nor are the other examples - that said, I would rather see better connections to this apparently important piece of public infrastructure -- let the houses face the park - and yes, keep the road around it - - let the park become a formative neighborhood element and not an incidental one --
> 
> and, as for the parking, why can't it just be regular parallel on street parking along the edge? - or, if your really need an abundance of parking - make it perpendicular on the street nosing toward the park - - yes, I know traffic engineers will warn of doom and gloom - but, consider the on-street parking a catalyst for traffic calming - - - cars should travel slowly around a park in any case --
> 
> I don't see this as a nitpicky point - really more of a fundamental criticism of neighborhood design -- -


I really think you have put it as I could not have said it better.


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

dont be so critic. Have you ever been to Paris? there,the roads lack signings,they are only present at crossings(you know,the white lines that define lanes).Here,though crossing signs are present,pedestrians dont really care to use it,if nothing comes,they pass through everywhere. Maybe the designers thought the same...why bother painting it,if noone will care about using it. If this is the case, educating adults would be the 1st step,so they would use those crossings, so that they will teach their the children to do the same. Only in this case it has meaning.
or the amount of pedestrians is way too small...every pic I saw about big cities over the ocean had crossing signs at junctions.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

rantanamo said:


> lol @ this garbage.
> 
> European cities are dense and urban because they were built long before cars were around. Most US cities in those time were small towns until the car.


A few months ago theMaster plan for a major city expansion in the periphery of Vienna on what is today a abandoned airport area was presented. It shall be for about 30.000 new inhabitants but also nearly as many jobs. (So it will become a center for the surrounding suburbs as well)

The goals are to create an urban district that enables people to use their feet, the bike and PT to get everywhere they want to go. The density will be that of an urban and not of a suburban place. The new quarter is going to have a very clear center and a ring road encircling that new center. A subway line, trams, biking lanes and yes also a connection to the the cities road network will be created to serve the traffic aspect. The general design will be the construction of city blocks.

I am really enthusiastic about it, if only half of what is planned comes true. The new district shall not only have a long pedestrian shopping street with a tram line on it, but every part of it should not be further away from the next PT stop then 250 meters. The PT network is planned to connect not only the new district with the city center of Vienna via subway, but also the neighborhood of that city developement area with this new urban center of the north of Vienna.



Doesnt sound very suburban, does it? Not car worshipping either...
And it will be brand new, not a tiny bit of old structure there.
Perhaps the self definition of the whole masterplan helps here: An urban alternative to suburbanisation. A city of the short distances (and not of from each other isolated sole purpose areas)


Are European cities dense and urban because they are old? Perhaps, but how do you explain those new neighborhoods that are built dense and urban as well?


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

RawLee said:


> dont be so critic. Have you ever been to Paris? there,the roads lack signings,they are only present at crossings(you know,the white lines that define lanes).Here,though crossing signs are present,pedestrians dont really care to use it,if nothing comes,they pass through everywhere. Maybe the designers thought the same...why bother painting it,if noone will care about using it. If this is the case, educating adults would be the 1st step,so they would use those crossings, so that they will teach their the children to do the same. Only in this case it has meaning.
> or the amount of pedestrians is way too small...every pic I saw about big cities over the ocean had crossing signs at junctions.


Of coures its a cultural question as well. But as I saw that pedestrian crossings all along the parc it looked very weird that none crossing at all exists to the the parc. I mean if they make sense along the parc, it would at least as much sense to lead them to the parc as well.

Its contradictory what I see there. Or perhaps the right hand does not know what the left does. 


But dont get me wrong, the parc itself is nice, really. I think the mere fact of its existance is already very favourable and nice.


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## OMH (Aug 21, 2007)

well europeans just do better urban planing...americans see the aspect of money first,while in europe it's different,here the aspect of good urban planing comes first,if you know what i mean.so its only logical that european places liike this have good access to PT ,and american have not,because american are developed by private companies who want to make profit,whereas european "new cities" are developed by urban planners who work for the city!


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## xXFallenXx (Jun 15, 2007)

Slartibartfas said:


> Lucky guy
> 
> I know I am stretching it a bit, as your neighborhood sounds already really nice, but do you have a PT station in your vicinity as well? (That means a feasable option of going to the city center by PT in an appropriate time frame)


Well since my city only has a population of about 100,000 the mall that i mentioned before basicly is my town's center.


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## dogbo (Jul 30, 2005)

OMH said:


> well europeans just do better urban planing...americans see the aspect of money first,while in europe it's different,here the aspect of good urban planing comes first,if you know what i mean.so its only logical that european places liike this have good access to PT ,and american have not,because american are developed by private companies who want to make profit,whereas european "new cities" are developed by urban planners who work for the city!


That's too simplistic. Most American cities have government paid city planners on staff, so it isn't that cut and dry.

IMO, the problem is that sprawl is too easy in the US. Period. This is because of:

* an abundance of land
* a lack of understanding of the value of traditional neighborhoods to one's quality of life (i.e.….it is easy to think big yard equals good life). 
* past influences of big business (e.g.….oil and automobile) to the culture as a whole.

At the end of the day, we've basically had too much of that attitude that -- because we can, we should and not enough of asking ourselves….but should we? (forgive me for paraphrasing and stealing from Jurassic Park a bit on that one)


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## OMH (Aug 21, 2007)

dogbo said:


> That's too simplistic. Most American cities have government paid city planners on staff, so it isn't that cut and dry.
> 
> IMO, the problem is that sprawl is too easy in the US. Period. This is because of:
> 
> ...


 well you're right with the thinks you said,but i still think a little bit more goverment interception could change things.i mean,they could encourage to build high-density apartments,just like in europe!they could also encourage "green living"or something like this!


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## BuffCity (Jul 29, 2004)

OMH is right...when the government gets involved things always work out better. :lol: 

German sprawl was Poland and Hungry...then France :cheers:


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

BuffCity said:


> OMH is right...when the government gets involved things always work out better. :lol:
> 
> German sprawl was Poland and Hungry...then France :cheers:


:weird: Where is Hungry? why was that a sprawl?


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## OMH (Aug 21, 2007)

man you,re a racist!!


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## virgule82 (Apr 9, 2007)

BuffCity said:


> OMH is right...when the government gets involved things always work out better. :lol:


It's funny how Americans tend to assume that governments always mess things up. I presume they're projecting the incompetence of their own government on to other countries.hno:


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## OMH (Aug 21, 2007)

virgule82 said:


> It's funny how Americans tend to assume that governments always mess things up. I presume they're projecting the incompetence of their own government on to other countries.hno:


that's right!!only because their goverment is sh*t,doesn't have to mean european are!


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

virgule82 said:


> It's funny how Americans tend to assume that governments always mess things up. I presume they're projecting the incompetence of their own government on to other countries.hno:


Probably..what would they think if they would know that there is no opposition in Austria,since both sides are governing parties


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> Pardon... robbers? Such a fence does is no real obstacle for everyone who is decisive to pass it. Its just an obstacle for those who just want to enter a park without climbing over fences (I feel save to say thats the vast majority).


If you've got a stolen stereo or a TV under your arm, yes, trying to climb a fence would be a big deal.



> Btw, the special feature of gates is that you could close them during the night. Some parks in Vienna for example are closed at night. (Not too many, but some)


Not everyone is going to remember to lock the gate at night, and unlock it again in the morning, nor does the parks department want to hire someone to unlock and re-lock every single gate in every single park in Las Vegas every night and every morning. Much easier to just make a fence, if you want to keep out robbers.



> See, you call walkability an "insignificant problem". And probably you are even in the American meanstream by doing so. _Thats the problem._
> Actually the approachability is already significantly better when compared to the former one. But where are the crossings for pedestrians _to _the parc?


Wow! Are blind?? They are right there!! What do you think those cross-marks and circular lines through the park are?? Laser beams?? They're sidewalks!!! :bash: Not to mention the fact that you can easily walk across the grass.












> I mean the planners of that settlement thought on including marked pedestrian crossings _along _the parc. But I can't see a single one _to _it.


Wow! Again, I cannot believe this! Do you not know how to look at an aerial photo??

Here, I made a copy of the picture and outlined all the sidewalks in red. It is filled with them!









^
There is no sidewalk RIGHT along the street bordering the park, but the sidewalk for that is only a few feet in from the edge of the street. And of course you can always walk through the parking lot.



> An ununderstandable major flaw in design. I mean I have no clue how much traffic there exists on that street, but I mean when I would have children going to that parc to play, as parents I would like to see some features that make it safer for them to cross.


As you can tell, there aren't many cars on the street (I see 2). It's not like it a big deal to cross a street like that.



> But when I look at the huge row of parking spots on both sides of the parc I think we can already guess what is the main means of transport to this parc anyway.


EVERY park has a parking lot, it's part of a city's parking requirements. Even European parks have parking lots. That doesn't mean they're going to be used much, unless there's a big event there.



> I can't see the whole parc on that picture, I guess the playground for the children is on the other side (not on the picture), is it?


I'm not sure, but I don't think this was meant to be a park with a playground. There are a zillion parks everywhere - including in Europe - which don't have playgrounds.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Incidentally, here's a link to the other end of the park:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081734&encType=1

Yes, it has a playground. It also has a tennis court, a basketball court, and a . . . I don't know what that other thing is.


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## RawLee (Jul 9, 2007)

Bond James Bond said:


> Incidentally, here's a link to the other end of the park:
> http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081734&encType=1
> 
> Yes, it has a playground. It also has a tennis court, a basketball court, and a . . . I don't know what that other thing is.


the ring for hockey is like this,so I suppose this is for roller skate hockey,or something


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## jarbury (Aug 20, 2007)

I wrote an entire Masters thesis on sprawl vs compaction - based on the New Zealand example. 

If anyone's interested:

http://portal.jarbury.net/thesis.pdf

To summarise a few key points:



> Urban planning literature has made it clear that action must taken to make urban areas
> more sustainable (Elkin et. al., 1991; Jenks et. al. 1996; Ewing, 1997; Williams, 1999;
> Burton, 2000). Cities in the developed world consume a far greater amount of resources than
> any other human environment, offering opportunities for improvements to be made in the
> ...


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

dogbo said:


> That's too simplistic. Most American cities have government paid city planners on staff, so it isn't that cut and dry.
> 
> IMO, the problem is that sprawl is too easy in the US. Period. This is because of:
> 
> ...


You seem to make value points here. My own guess is that even where city planners are working they often do bad work in regards to a good design of a new settlement. 

This premisse that because we can we should, should have overlived itself already. Not everything that can be done is a good thing to be done. For example you can eat until you explode, nearly everyone could afford to do so. Would it be clever? 

I hope Americans have already realized that. (but I hope that about my European fellows as well)


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Bond James Bond said:


> If you've got a stolen stereo or a TV under your arm, yes, trying to climb a fence would be a big deal.
> 
> 
> Not everyone is going to remember to lock the gate at night, and unlock it again in the morning, nor does the parks department want to hire someone to unlock and re-lock every single gate in every single park in Las Vegas every night and every morning. Much easier to just make a fence, if you want to keep out robbers.
> ...


I'm not sure, but I don't think this was meant to be a park with a playground. There are a zillion parks everywhere - including in Europe - which don't have playgrounds.[/QUOTE]

Hm, there might be some, but in my neighborhood all parcs have playgrounds. Smaller ones as much as larger ones. Its simply an important modern feature of a good park. At least if public playgrounds could not be found in another near place. The only exceptions in Vienn are parcs owned by the Republic of Austria and not the city. (the gardens of the Imperial palace and the Summer Pallace for example)


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Bond James Bond said:


> If you've got a stolen stereo or a TV under your arm, yes, trying to climb a fence would be a big deal.


Well in that case that they wont to steal a couch or other heavy or bulky good, they easily can cut silently a hole into the fence, that can be done pretty fast and unproblematic. (I mean no one wants to steal a non Flat TV set anymore, at least in Europe)
I mean what kind of discussion is this here? The fence normally is the least problem of all for thieves. Parc or not. I did not even start that weird discussion, as I never asked the fences towards the house backyards (apart from the fact that its bad planning that the parc is not better integrated into this neighborhood.)

Fact is, there are 4 streets directly leading to the parc. The main entrance is always open, the other 4 streets always face a fence. 
Thats nonsense, its not more than bad planning. Period. No one breaks into a parc, thats hillarious.

[qutoe]
Not everyone is going to remember to lock the gate at night, and unlock it again in the morning, nor does the parks department want to hire someone to unlock and re-lock every single gate in every single park in Las Vegas every night and every morning. Much easier to just make a fence, if you want to keep out robbers.[/quote]
Dont you have maintenance forces for your parcs? Hardly believe though. A parc is a whole lot of work, from a mid size on it probably will keep a single man busy. 



> Wow! Are blind?? They are right there!! What do you think those cross-marks and circular lines through the park are?? Laser beams?? They're sidewalks!!! :bash: Not to mention the fact that you can easily walk across the grass.


Straw man.
Dont insult, read my post as it stands there.

I did not critize the park layout with a single word. Just the cross street connections to it.

I dont know how the American crosswalks look like, but I guess they look like those white strips one can see along the park on the other side of the street. Thats fine that they are there, it shows that the planners saw the necessarity to imiprove the walkability from one block to another. 

But thats the point, if those marked crosswalks between the blocks make sense, why can't I see a single one _to _the park. And your red lines are nice and lovely but there is no marked crosswalk as there are many between the blocks (along the park)

Google maps is really no tool of choice to estimate the traffic density, you excuse, so I can see how heavy the traffic really is. I just see a road that is really wide for being not frequented much at all. If you are right and this road is really so little frequented, then the street itself is bad planned and wasting space + increasing unnecessarily the unwished border function for pedestrians. 



> EVERY park has a parking lot, it's part of a city's parking requirements. Even European parks have parking lots. That doesn't mean they're going to be used much, unless there's a big event there.


Hard to say, cities have a lot of parking lanes directly next to the street. (Why again are those parking lots not directly next to the street again?) Streets between parcs on one side and residential blocks on the other are often no exception.
So they could be for the neighborhoods and not for the park. But if you drive to the park by car you would be silly as you could not expect one of those parking lots to be free anyway, that would be luck. 



> I'm not sure, but I don't think this was meant to be a park with a playground. There are a zillion parks everywhere - including in Europe - which don't have playgrounds.


Hm, there might be some, but in my neighborhood all parcs have playgrounds. Smaller ones as much as larger ones. Its simply an important modern feature of a good park. At least if public playgrounds could not be found in another near place. The only exceptions in Vienn are parcs owned by the Republic of Austria and not the city. (the gardens of the Imperial palace and the Summer Pallace for example)


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## SFPlanner (Feb 23, 2007)

This disucussion has changed into one of design in regard to that park and the fact that the nhood surrounding it completely turns its back to it - and does NOT provide crosswalks to get to it - 

If you look carefully at the loop road surrounding it, you can see it has left turn pockets into the nhood - suggesting anyway, that there are either lots of trips at peak hours, or the rqmt for the lt turn pockets is normative and non-site sensitive - and I suspect its the latter- - again, begging the question of cross walks - if the road is indeed so busy, there should be cross walks.

And, as I mentioned before the roads around it are fine - - but, change the organization - - let the homes front onto it in the first place - -would likely reduce the suggested possibility of crime associated with it - which I don't buy in any event - - you know, the old, but valid notion of eyes on the street etc -- not a bad way to keep track of what's going on --

So does this lead us back to the root question about the political nature of this issue? - - why build a big park like this if it so disconnected from the nhoods that surround it? - is it inteneded to be used by others from out of the nhood? -- if it were supposed to be used by the neighborhood resident's it would be a focal and conveniently accessible to them -- 

Further, newer communities aren't doing this sort of thing as much anymore anyway - - (are instead facing homes onto the green) and, yes, parking for the park is located on the street, crosswalks are provided, and traffic calming is used to keep it all working as planned -- 

Even in other parts of Las Vegas, throughout Phoenix, and all over Ca -- and around the world - 

Even the big, US national, publicly traded homebuilders we all know of are doing it - They are essentially using the green as part of their marketing center, with each of their various housing models fronting onto it - -and yes, I can say with certainty that this is being done, and with crosswalks.

So back to the fundamental question of the political nature of sprawl - is it a conservative issue or not? - on many levels I'm sure that it could be argued that it is, but other factors add to it - including the market place, local government and designers - 

In many places zoning precludes mixed use -- the photos shown earlier in this thread show shopping centers next to homes - this might look like mixed use in a concept diagrm - but not in real life - again, look closely for nhood connections and you'll find block walls (and in one of them, it looks like grade separation too)....or loading and trash areas conveniently located between homes and shops....not really too dissimilar to how that park would look in diagram - -

Streets are also a major challenge - why are they so wide? to accommodate safety and convenience? well, yes, but often using out of date stds which result in increased auto accidents because of the use of high speed design standards in residential areas - - 

And now for the market - as housing sales in the US have hit a big slump, undeveloped land values are dropping and builders are already re-tooling plans to accommodate larger lot homes....when the market is cooler, as it is now, builders try and sell homes more on lot size than home size...and the issue once again becomes a design question --


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## EtherealMist (Jul 26, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


>



Im always amazed at how close these homes are built in alot of the pics you post. They're all single story homes built like 20 feet apart it looks like.


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## EtherealMist (Jul 26, 2005)

Bond James Bond said:


>



Im always amazed at how close these homes are built in alot of the sprawl pics you post. They're all single story homes built like 20 feet apart it looks like.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

SFPlanner said:


> This disucussion has changed into one of design in regard to that park and the fact that the nhood surrounding it completely turns its back to it - and does NOT provide crosswalks to get to it -
> 
> If you look carefully at the loop road surrounding it, you can see it has left turn pockets into the nhood - suggesting anyway, that there are either lots of trips at peak hours, or the rqmt for the lt turn pockets is normative and non-site sensitive - and I suspect its the latter- - again, begging the question of cross walks - if the road is indeed so busy, there should be cross walks.
> 
> And, as I mentioned before the roads around it are fine - - but, change the organization - - let the homes front onto it in the first place . . .


There is an extremely good reason why so many houses in newer American cities do not front major (or even semi-busy) roads, such as (possibly) the one surrounding this park: If you have too many driveways emptying out onto a busy road, that reduces traffic flow on that road, and creates more opportunities for accidents as well.

In other words, a lot of cars coming in and out of driveways along busy streets not only slows down traffic, it creates additional hazards.

Therefore, in a lot of newer suburbs, you will find major arterials without any houses fronting them, and all local traffic is diverted onto residential roads. These residential roads aren't so busy, so it is not a big deal to have all the driveways empty out onto them. In addition, many people prefer to have their house front a residential street instead of a busy street because their kids, their dogs, etc. can run out onto the street with little danger of being hit by a car, plus it's a lot quieter.

In fact, now that I think of it, that could be a reason why there were only crosswalks at the western end of that Las Vegas park: It might be a busier street, so they may want to *discourage* too many people from crossing the street onto that park except at a certain point.

Most of these design features you criticize have much better reasons for existing than you realize.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> Hm, there might be some, but in my neighborhood all parcs have playgrounds. Smaller ones as much as larger ones. Its simply an important modern feature of a good park. At least if public playgrounds could not be found in another near place. The only exceptions in Vienn are parcs owned by the Republic of Austria and not the city. (the gardens of the Imperial palace and the Summer Pallace for example)


I did show a link above showing that that park does have a playground at its western end. Here it is again:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081734&encType=1


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> Well in that case that they wont to steal a couch or other heavy or bulky good, they easily can cut silently a hole into the fence, that can be done pretty fast and unproblematic. (I mean no one wants to steal a non Flat TV set anymore, at least in Europe)
> I mean what kind of discussion is this here? The fence normally is the least problem of all for thieves. Parc or not. I did not even start that weird discussion, as I never asked the fences towards the house backyards (apart from the fact that its bad planning that the parc is not better integrated into this neighborhood.)


You had asked why the park might be fenced on 3 of the 4 roads going into the park. I gave you one possible reason.



> Fact is, there are 4 streets directly leading to the parc. The main entrance is always open, the other 4 streets always face a fence.


No, 1 of the 4 roads on the south end does have a sidewalk entrance into the park. I've already pointed this out several times.



> Thats nonsense, its not more than bad planning. Period. No one breaks into a parc, thats hillarious.


You're right - no one would want to break into a park . . . but they might use a park as an escape route. Which is what I was talking about when I mentioned parks and criminals.



> Dont you have maintenance forces for your parcs? Hardly believe though. A parc is a whole lot of work, from a mid size on it probably will keep a single man busy.


If every single last solitary park in Las Vegas had a fence with lockable gates where the park abuts a residential street end, there would be a zillion gates for maintenance staff to unlock and relock every day. There really are better things for maintenance staff to do.

But frankly, from those pictures you can't tell if the fence has a gate or not. Maybe it does.



> I did not critize the park layout with a single word. Just the cross street connections to it.
> 
> I dont know how the American crosswalks look like, but I guess they look like those white strips one can see along the park on the other side of the street. Thats fine that they are there, it shows that the planners saw the necessarity to imiprove the walkability from one block to another.
> 
> But thats the point, if those marked crosswalks between the blocks make sense, why can't I see a single one _to _the park. And your red lines are nice and lovely but there is no marked crosswalk as there are many between the blocks (along the park)


I showed one here. This is a typical American crosswalk:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081734&encType=1



> Google maps is really no tool of choice to estimate the traffic density, you excuse, so I can see how heavy the traffic really is. I just see a road that is really wide for being not frequented much at all. If you are right and this road is really so little frequented, then the street itself is bad planned and wasting space + increasing unnecessarily the unwished border function for pedestrians.


You're right, maybe it really is a sort-of busy street. But if that's the case, that might be why there aren't more crosswalks along it. Maybe they only want people to cross at certain spots. Maybe, because of the curving road, the only safe place to cross the street - even with crosswalks - is at the west end of the street.



> Hard to say, cities have a lot of parking lanes directly next to the street. (Why again are those parking lots not directly next to the street again?) Streets between parcs on one side and residential blocks on the other are often no exception.
> So they could be for the neighborhoods and not for the park. But if you drive to the park by car you would be silly as you could not expect one of those parking lots to be free anyway, that would be luck.


Having seen tons of parking lots in American parks, I can guarantee you that there is never a problem finding a parking space in a park like that. Never, ever ever. Unless there happens to be a special event at the park, perhaps.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Incidentally, here are some more neighborhood parks in Las Vegas. As you can see, there are a variety of them. Some are entirely surrounded by roads, and some aren't. Very often they locate them next to elementary schools, too.

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5062984&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5060395&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5061020&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5059442&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5059292&encType=1

This one has a pathway not only between some houses on the south side, but also from the cul-de-sac south of that. This is a close-up:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5059905&encType=1

Here's a bigger one:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5066654&encType=1

And a very small one:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5077695&encType=1

This one *does* have a path from the end of the street to the park:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5079364&encType=1

And this one actually has no parking lot at all:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081637&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5085081&encType=1

"Roundabout" park in an older neighborhood
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5078119&encType=1

Mainly soccer fields:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5072921&encType=1

Mainly baseball fields:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5069070&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5063158&encType=1

This is interesting:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5059703&encType=1

Nice park with a small lake, soccer fields, playground and other things in a still-under-construction neighborhood, near both stores and houses:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5061369&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5063310&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5088573&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5094174&encType=1

Here's something you commonly see: A park located under a power line right-of-way:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5102972&encType=1

This is a bit to the west of the one above, you can still see more recreational use of the power line right-of-way:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5102154&encType=1

This one is like the one you've been objecting to, in that the ends of the cul-de-sacs have fences which don't let you into the park. However, in this case it appears there is a good reason for this: It looks like there is a steep (but short) hill between the end of the cul-de-sacs and the baseball fields/parking lot area. They probably don't want people going down the steep hillside.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5111047&encType=1

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5107829&encType=1

Here's a park which has been built long before the surrounding neighborhood has been completed:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5095537&encType=1

Anyway, that should give you a good idea. Not all parks in Las Vegas are like that one. There are a variety of configurations, sizes and locations.


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## SFPlanner (Feb 23, 2007)

Bond James Bond -- I'm pretty familiar with the reasons you suggest for not having parking on a street like that -- I think the bigger point, as long as we're discussing nhood design, and that park in particular, is that if you reconsider how your street system works, and consider land use and transportation together when doing your design - you could develop a completely difft solution that would allow that park to become an accessible and focal nhood element, while safely meeting traffic demand --

As you suggest, some streets are intended to carry higher volumes of trips than others - in these cases you might not want to front them with homes or a park - - or, maybe they're (parks) only bound by busy streets on one side and nhoods on the others -- 

As for homes, there are several ways to consider how they address busy streets as I'm sure you're aware -- 

If you have a high volume street -and want front doors on it - alley load the garages, include on street parking for guests, include sidewalk and landscape, making the street attractive and functional, while setting home back enough to still be desirable - - 

If you don't want that, but still want better access to something along a busy street, you can do side-on conditions with homes accessed via paseo's etc, or yes, if you really hate connected streets, you might prefer the oddity of "live end" cul-de-sacs (really just odd along arterials - ok at OS) -- plus lots of other ways --

the overarching point I am making, and again, having little to do with the politics of suburban life, is that there are pretty easy ways to make a park like that shown more physically and visually accessible to the neighbors surrounding it, while accommodating traffic considerations, and making streets in general more user friendly -- 

A simple way to do it is to just provide more than one connection to the arterial by the nhoods its serving, reducing the trip demand on that segment of roadway - - 

"flow" of traffic (as you mention) can be interpreted several ways -- you can have really good flow on one arterial, and disconnected nhoods (with big ADTS at a few intersections), or have really good flow across several interconnected streets, with lower ADTs at several intersections -- I'd rather see the latter -- 

I suppose a fundamedntal question behind all of this is do suburbs want to be composed of several isolated pods connected via walled off arterials, or connected neighborhoods? - the pods and their circ system are simple enough to design and build - - but the notion of connected nhoods is more like small town or district living - which can accommodate large or small lots, town, cluster or a wide variety of homes - which are more effectively integrated with one another - 

I'm not sure that the latter would address the concern of those who really hate the idea of living at densities well below 50 du/ac, but for those who can live with it, the connected, mixed use nhood seems more appealing than the more disparate alternative -- and, land developers and home builders are willing to do it and are.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

SFPlanner said:


> If you have a high volume street -and want front doors on it - alley load the garages, include on street parking for guests, include sidewalk and landscape, making the street attractive and functional, while setting home back enough to still be desirable - -


Yes, I've seen that a lot in my Sprawl Festival threads - especially in (surprisingly) Dallas.




























Though even in these areas I think they still tend to keep housing fronts off the main arterials. I suspect the reason for that is because people prefer houses that don't front a busy street, for the reasons I mentioned above.


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## SFPlanner (Feb 23, 2007)

who'd have guessed Dallas would be leading the way to clever (or at least different) solutions? Although, yes, I realize all of this was fairly common pre ww-II

I'm going on about this because I don't believe that the suburbs are likely to disappear any time too soon, but that doesn't mean they need to still be designed the same way and have a strict seggregation of land use and roads - -or for that matter specific housing types and densities - 

Some peopel are already doing this (like the reuse of stapleton in Denver, Veraddo in Phoenix etc) - but many are still pretty content with arterials, pods and separation of uses -- so, that's what will be fun to change!


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

One other thing which just occurred to me. Once again, click on this link:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=5081734&encType=1

Notice it has a tennis court. In fact, nearly every one of those Las Vegas parks I showed above has at least one tennis court (except for a few of the very small parks). One reason why almost all of those parks have their own parking lots is because lots of people like to bring a lot of stuff with them when they go play tennis. Sometimes you bring a lot of tennis balls, extra towels, lots of water and other stuff to drink (esp needed in Las Vegas), and other stuff like that. If you're going to do this, it's not easy carrying all that stuff with you, even if you live just a few blocks away. So, many people who want to play tennis in the park like (need!) to drive there, and having a few parking spaces sure comes in handy.

Those who advocate street-side parking face an uphill battle. Let's face it - many people do not like to parallel park. Also, if you provide parking along the street, you will have to make the street a bit wider. If you do that, you will end up with at least as much paved area as if you provided a small parking lot. So, not only will you have as much paved area, you will also annoy people who don't like to parallel park, and you will potentially interrupt traffic flow (and create additional hazards) by having parallel parkers always going in and out of spaces. With a simple parking lot, you do not have that issue.


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## SFPlanner (Feb 23, 2007)

you're right -- about that parking problem - it is a tough battle to fight -- for all of the reasons you cite - so, I won't fall on my sword quite so quickly over that - 

the new pics posted are interesting - -lots of ways to address the challenge -- my biggest, and obviously most vocal complaint is having a big nhood or even community park completetly bounded by rear-on conditions with walls -- 
By doing this the park, which could otherwise be seen as a common and formative nhood design elment and amenity, becomes a nhood separator - which is a drag - particularly if you are trying to create less disparate places -


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## virgule82 (Apr 9, 2007)

I think my biggest gripe about American-style suburbs is not the lack of density - some of those pictures show relatively densely populated suburbs. What I don't like is 

1) The monotony. All those pictures show almost identical houses in almost identical rows. It's not appealing on an esthetic level

2) The zoning. There's not necessarily a grocery store or much of anything within walking distance. Just row upon row of houses. 

3) Although you could walk around, that's not really what they are designed for. It's not that hard to design suburbs that are suitable for both pedestrians and drivers.



This is e.g. a typical suburb in Oslo. It's not particularly densely populated, but there's a variety of buildings, some regular houses, some row houses and some apartment buildings. You can walk to the local store and although you can't see it on the picture, it's not far from public transportation towards central Oslo.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

SFPlanner said:


> This disucussion has changed into one of design in regard to that park and the fact that the nhood surrounding it completely turns its back to it - and does NOT provide crosswalks to get to it -
> 
> If you look carefully at the loop road surrounding it, you can see it has left turn pockets into the nhood - suggesting anyway, that there are either lots of trips at peak hours, or the rqmt for the lt turn pockets is normative and non-site sensitive - and I suspect its the latter- - again, begging the question of cross walks - if the road is indeed so busy, there should be cross walks.
> 
> ...


Thanks for your comment. It sounds very conclusive. I appreciate to hear a third voice on this issue. 

Hopefully the worst design faults are overworked and not present in the newer developements anymore.

Crosswalks, the width of streets, the speed on those streets, the quality of the way (no trash sites, no walls, no uncomfortable crossings etc) to important crosspoints (shops, public places etc) are all key factors in making a neighborhood walkable apart from a real mixed structure of a settlement of course.


@ bond
We are talking in circles. Parks as thieves escape routes... come on, thats not conclusive. Do you fence in your woods and madows as well? (They could serve even better as escape routes)
And I still can't see how those parks look like they are truly integrated into the neighborhood and not only situated in it without standing in an efficient connection to them.

Regarding the playground on the westside, its indeed a nice one. Point taken.


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## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

In my opinion, adding alleys and rear garages to a walled neighborhood with cul-de-sacs just makes it feel creepy and lifeless. You can bitch about cars, but the fact is, if 99.5% of the trips in and out of the neighborhood involve cars, and you hide those cars from the 3 or 4 pedestrians who are left, what you're really doing is hiding that one sign of life from those pedestrians. My brother lives in a neighborhood like that. Amusingly, when his neighbors walk to a neighbor's house, they usually walk through the _alley_ and avoid the sidewalks & nearly-abandoned street because it's a psychological "no-man's land". Everyone, including guests, parks in the rear. My brother could literally line the "foyer" with bookcases (blocking the door) & turn it into a mini-library, and nobody would really notice because I've never seen anyone actually use that door.

IMHO, the best compromise is to keep the cul-de-sacs and front garages, but stick a mini park between facing cul-de-sacs and build a regular grid of sidewalks and bike paths. And instead of building a wall separating the neighborhood from the surrounding arterials, line the arterials with strip malls & multifamily residences, and extend the grid of sidewalks and bike paths into them from behind. Circle the neighborhood and separate it from the rentals & strip malls with a fence instead of a wall, with self-closing gates that aren't locked, but have a latch that requires a few seconds of fumbling to open (the delay will still scare thieves and serve almost as well as outright locks).


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## SFPlanner (Feb 23, 2007)

miamicanes - agree with many of your points - I don't buy alleys for the sake of alleys either. 

That said, there are some pretty good reasons to use them if you are using higher (in very relative terms when considering the root of this website) densities - specifically small lot, clusters, town homes or apartments, which would otherwide have a streetscape dominated by garage doors (a 25' wide home including a 16' wide garage door - not much room for a front door and not too attractive) - or, as mentioned before, if you want homes (SF or MF) to front onto busy streets. 

You are really not gaining too much in nhood walkability if you're using large lots, set on alleys, along cul-de-sacs - - might look nice, but you would likely still have a disparate pod nhood - and haven't done too much to change nhood form

I wouldn't concende though on inter-connected streets with swalks on both sides and a path system - which could easily be a flexed or even curving grid - "rigid" grid for the sake of the grid without considering context could just be heavy handed unless you are doing something pretty special and have somebody to follow through during const - - Lots of cities push the grid right over topo - - only drawback today is cost - will a developer actually be willing to do it? - some yes, plenty no

In general though, just make the connections work, and as you note, with parks and shops woven into the nhood, or at least not intentionally separated


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## PresidentBjork (Apr 29, 2007)

I'm afraid the minutiae of suburban parks goes a little over my head, but I reckon suburbs should try and centre themselves around parks and shops, instead of having them arbitrarily thrown amongst houses. 

Maybe with that you might even create (shock horror) a town! - or something similar. 

And what's the big deal with that? Why is it so important to dogmatically segregate certain areas from each other? Why does everything have to be separated into 'suburban' and 'urban.' Middle ground people, middle ground!


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## OMH (Aug 21, 2007)

virgule82 said:


> I think my biggest gripe about American-style suburbs is not the lack of density - some of those pictures show relatively densely populated suburbs. What I don't like is
> 
> 1) The monotony. All those pictures show almost identical houses in almost identical rows. It's not appealing on an esthetic level
> 
> ...


yeah,you,re right!the monotony in american suburbs is justhttp://www.skyscrapercity.com/images/smilies/mad2.gif
:mad2:...why dont they built more apartments and make it more urban...but practically the whole north american continent looks the same...it,s just a shame really!!


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## EtherealMist (Jul 26, 2005)

virgule82 said:


> I think my biggest gripe about American-style suburbs is not the lack of density - some of those pictures show relatively densely populated suburbs. What I don't like is
> 
> 1) The monotony. All those pictures show almost identical houses in almost identical rows. It's not appealing on an esthetic level
> 
> ...


I disagree with you about the monotony. Monotony is everywhere in our neighborhoods not just in the suburbs:



















and definitely isn't a necessarily bad thing.

My biggest problem with suburbs is just how spread apart everything is. Which is why I think alot of the suburbs shown in this thread are not that bad becomes the homes seem to be built fairly close to each other.


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

I agree, transit (buses) in the suburbs is appalling. No good routes can be taken, because few roads actually continue on and go through for long distances. Thus, only a few routes exists and access to much of the region is severely restricted. The timetable for suburban buses is like every 30-60 minutes...juh? How is this "pretty good"? The reason cities has very good bus systems is because most cities are on grids with major streets close to each other...just run the buses down the major streets and transferrers are easy.


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## Bond James Bond (Aug 23, 2002)

Slartibartfas said:


> Whats "pretty good"?
> I mean regarding average distance to the next stop, frequency, and the potential to get to the place you want to get to in a reasonable time with not too many switches.


It depends on your specific location, obviously.

There are suburban areas around Seattle where you can catch a bus every 15 minutes, while other areas you might have a bus running every half-hour. The number of switches depends on where you want to go, of course.

When I lived in Charlotte, Spokane and Silverdale (west side of Puget Sound), most buses ran every half-hour. But again, that depended on exactly where you lived. If you lived near a major destination, you could catch a bus to somewhere more often. If you lived out in the boondocks, you might not have bus service at all. But of course no one expects many buses to run in rural or semi-rural areas.


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