Cost of Sprawl

INTRODUCTION

In the last half-century, the third slowest growing state in the United States developed the sixth largest amount of land. That was Pennsylvania, which now ranks second only to West Virginia in consuming the most land for the least population growth. According to a study funded by the Brookings Institution, the past fifty years have seen a population growth in the Philadelphia area of only 66 percent, yet astoundingly land-development has grown at 401 percent. In other words, development in Pennsylvania is decidedly taking the form of sprawl. The consequences are grave: not only has sprawl contributed to the erosion of our natural resources, infrastructure, and air quality, it has also contributed to a marked decline in individual happiness, civic contribution, racial and social equality and personal health.

Many of the costs of sprawl have been enumerated specifically and theoretically by several scholars and prominent authorities, including the Brookings Institute (with regard to Pennsylvania in particular) and National Research Council, in cooperation with Rutgers’s University in terms of the nation as a whole. Other important works in this field – in no particular order- include Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (2000) by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zybeck and Jeff Speck; This Land (2006) by Anthony Flint; and Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development by Robert Burchell, Anthony Downs, Barbara McCann, and Sahan Mukherji. The last is based in large part on the findings of the Brookings report, first mentioned. This paper does not seek to replicate the work of these fine scholars nor do we profess to present new empirical data or information on these costs.

We summarize them here with reference to their original authors as background to inform the reader, because we believe they bear repeating. We present, hopefully, a new depiction of their full dimensions. Furthermore, this paper aims to lay a framework for a new legislative approach: it is a new solution we are proposing, not a new problem or a new recognition of an existing problem. Already-published ideas and theories from economics, ecology, and even ecological economics are combined here in a way we hope brings fresh light on the problem, one that points to a local solution.

In Section I, a review of the relevant academic disciplines and bodies of knowledge will be presented to lay the conceptual framework for Section II wherein the costs themselves will be described. The distinction between direct and indirect costs will be blurred at times, and the reason for this blurring ought to be more fully understood after a review of the theories.

Avoid the erroneous supposition that “grayness” in categorization of costs arises from a lack of discipline or rigor. Actually, greater sensitivity is required to fully perceive cost impacts, encompassing: (a) the more esoteric implications of a direct cost and (b) the more concrete repercussions of an indirect cost. That sensitivity – the ability to at once see the “big picture,” while still noting minute details; to perceive the over-lapping, interwoven short runs within long runs, is essential for envisioning transformation to the unsustainable systems of development currently in practice.

Ultimately, our goal in this paper is to give the reader a thorough picture of the ways sprawl impacts (i.e costs) us on individual and community levels. This should serve as a useful springboard from which to discuss reform measures. This paper is as yet a work in progress; deeper exploration will yield perception of more unapparent, but important costs. The economics will continue to be developed as we gain ground in understanding the true depth of sprawl’s impacts. Most importantly, solutions will be developed and refined as knowledge increases.

SECTION I.

Sprawl is a major problem facing the United States generally, and Pennsylvania specifically. Fortunately, there is a rapidly growing awareness of this problem: scholars and leaders from many disciplines are asking important questions and working on solutions.

While there are some discrepancies in how sprawl is understood, it is generally characterized by low-density, unlimited growth peripheral to cities, and leapfrog development in greenfield or pristine locations. More important than what it looks like is what it does: sprawl wastes resources from the social, human, built, and natural capital realms. This paper will explore these costs in detail, while providing a framework for understanding their intricacies.

The fundamental economic principle is that resources are scarce. This truism underlies the very conceptions of cost and value. All economic analysis is at heart a method of comparison for alternative courses of action, in terms of their costs and consequences (good and bad). The time frames for these analyses have fluid borders; no one has ever definitively determined – nor, unsurprisingly, have scholars come to a consensus on - the precise length of the “long run.” ¹Nevertheless, economic analysis not only lends important insight to decision-making; all decision-making is ultimately and inherently economic analysis.

For that reason, we approach the problem of sprawl in the language of economics. It is important to separate economics from capitalism or free-market advocacy. Although these are dominant paradigms – bordering on dogma at times - in economics, they represent only one set of interpretations among many possibilities. Ecological economics is a growing field which provides vital insight to many the development problems facing our world, including the problem of sprawl.

Ecological Economics as a school of thought was founded by Herman Daly, former Senior Economist at the World Bank. Ecological economics understands capital (an essential input for production) in four categories: built, natural, social, and human. Its reference to and prioritization of “Natural Capital,” which consists of environmental resources – water, breathable air, land, trees, etcetera, is its most significant departure from other schools of thought. Neoclassical economics, the framework of today’s mainstream economics, typically sees natural capital as just one input of production and a not-so-vital one at that. Ecological economics sees natural capital and the ecosystem as the location and source of all economic activity: no other forms of capital could exist without it. In this view, the value of ecological “services,” is much higher and must be taken into account when analyzing decision possibilities that may affect those services.

The second vital departure from neoclassicism is ecological economics’ recognition of limits to growth stemming from limited substitutability. Neoclassicists do not worry about the depletion of natural resources because in theory, when any good’s scarcity peaks, consumers simply substitute it with another. This theory makes a lot more sense when applied to the proverbial apples and oranges; it is less conceivable in the case of potable water and some imagined substitute. Recognition of limits to substitutability is closely tied to the school of sustainability, which focuses on attaining an optimal rate of growth – which would likely be negative for a while, then remain close to zero. Advocates of this idea can be found at Center for the Advancement of the Steady-State Economy, directed by Dr. Brian Czech.

Some related organizations are International Society for Ecological Economics (ISSE), founded by Dr. Robert Costanza, and its US chapter, USSEE. Dr. Costanza currently directs the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. All of these people and groups are wonderful resources for anyone wishing to learn more about these new ideas, and would serve as an extremely useful background for obtaining new perspective not just on the costs of sprawl, but in understanding the social-level mind blocks/ misperceptions that create sprawl and its other unsustainable cousins.

One type of indirect cost is that of opportunity cost, which is usually thought of as it applies to individual decision making – it is the “road not taken,” or the value of options forgone in favor of a given choice. There is good reason to consider it on the social level, inasmuch as there are “real” social resources (public funds are the most tangible example, but natural capital, physical and service infrastructures, etc are also key) and there are collective benefits to be yielded from proper investment and use of those collective resources. When it can be demonstrated that a given use of public/collective resources has resulted in an opportunity cost, the utility² of which (as determined by majority preference) is not greater than the opportunity forgone, then that opportunity cost must be considered and included in the final analysis of whether that investment is worthwhile at a community/social level.

This should hold as well in cases where misinformation prevents the majority from developing the preferences they would, given ideal level of knowledge about the options. One of the most insidious aspects of sprawl is that it wastes human /social capital resources by creating new problems to solve, rather than investing them in building a better society, development of new technologies, etc, resulting in a steep society-level opportunity cost. It further wastes natural capital by consuming un-substitutable, non-signaling resources³ – again creating more problems to address, thereby sucking more resources. The inefficiencies just described are costs in themselves.

Major studies have recently been conducted assessing the costs of sprawl. Costs of Sprawl 2000 (TCRP 74) was a joint project conducted by Rutgers University Center for Urban Policy Research, and The Brookings Institute, with sponsorship of the Federal Transit Administration and the Transit Development Corporation. It analyzed the impact of urban sprawl on a national level, noting that sprawl is most severe in the Southern and Western regions of the US, and that cost impacts are divided into two categories – resource impacts (in this paper, called societal-level costs) and personal costs. Resource impacts included land conversion (this simply refers to the change from open land to developed land), water and sewer infrastructure, local road infrastructure, and local public service costs (fire, police, ambulance and postal). Meanwhile, personal costs include travel miles (including time and cost of vehicle ownership), quality of life (variables were: aesthetic displeasure, weakened sense of community, stress, higher energy consumption, air pollution, decreased historical preservation), and urban decline (defined as loss of fiscal and population strength⁴).

The second major study, Back to Prosperity: A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania was published in 2003, and deals with the impacts of sprawl specifically in our state. It was also conducted by the Brookings Institute, this time by their Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. It found many of the same cost impacts on the state level, exacerbated by the fact that although PA is among the fastest-sprawling states in the nation, its economic growth is among the slowest. That means that PA must contend with additional complications: isolation of low-income residents from opportunity, and the loss of young workers, are both causes and effects in the downward cycle of sprawl.

SECTION II. THE COSTS

The costs of sprawl stem from a few of its major attributes and splinter into countless resource-draining veins. The nature of traffic, infrastructure, storm water, and social fabric as they exist specifically “in sprawl” impose great costs to society and individuals. The scope of these costs will be described here; many of them overlap and feed into each other, conglomerating into one very expensive way of life, one that society simply can no longer afford.

Traffic

The rapid planning and building of diffuse, low-density, discontinuous residential and commercial development in the second half of the 20 th century has made the automobile an indispensable part of American life. Public transportation has become increasingly untenable as development has been specifically geared toward cars. The increasing separation of industry and residential areas has increased traffic congestion, commuting time, and health problems such as breathing disorders, as well as those associated with obesity and stress.

Traffic Congestion is a cost first because it arises from an inherently inefficient transportation system, based on the individual automobile. This system is inefficient because of its constant redundancy; consider for example how often several separate cars, not filled to capacity, are traveling to and from the same location, albeit at minutely different times. Inefficiency itself can be understood as a social-level opportunity cost and therefore undesirable and counter-productive.

Other costs incurred from traffic congestion include those which affect individual drivers –travel time, car maintenance, fuel, and health. Health costs arise in the form of increased traffic accidents, rising obesity, and decreases in happiness. Costs at the social level include: increased road expenditures (including the opportunity cost had these funds been otherwise invested) and environmental damage. The latter then directly causes more health damage, a disturbing cycle resembling a game of “hot potato” in which the spud only gets hotter and the players more averse to it.

A large portion of public spending focuses on the “supply side” of auto congestion. The proposed remedy is building or widening more roads and highways. The immediate alleviation of traffic problems are offset by the long term problems associated with these incentives for more cars on the road. Eventually the new roads will reach capacity, and as Todd Litman describes it, that solution is analogous to, “buying bigger pants to deal with a weight problem.”⁵ While many economists warn that supply side solutions to the problem will not be effective, the federal government continues to allocate over $200 billion for highways, highway safety, and public transit. Only $50 billion of that amount is spent on public transit.

According to a recent Pennsylvania pew poll, the most important issue facing southeastern Pennsylvanians today is traffic congestion. The combination of growing incomes and the widening gap between homes and jobs has steadily increased the number of cars on the road. Increased use of the automobile, in turn leads to more sprawl. As complaints rise in connection with auto related issues such as traffic congestion, noise, and parking problems, many people seek relief by moving to the suburbs, which again, exacerbates the problem. These cycles of auto dependence are difficult to address, as many of the proposed solutions also ultimately contribute to the problem.

Problems associated with the automobile are not limited to traffic congestion however; problems associated with the loss of community and social capital⁶ are largely facilitated by increased auto usage. Cars discourage pedestrian and bicycle travel; as roads widen and traffic increases on a street, homeowners feel less safe, children cannot walk or play outside, and interest in the neighborhood wanes. One way people traditionally develop a sense of community is physical immersion within that community: in practice, this often means walking among neighbors and shops, and visiting centralized public gathering locations. If everyone spends all their time in their cars, social cohesion suffers and individual isolation rises. Robert Putnam cites increased commuting time as one of the major factors inhibiting community interaction and social capital. More time spent in the car, is less time available for family, friends, or neighborhood associations. Those driving alone to work have grown from 60 percent in 1960 to 91 percent in 1995.

Increased commutes and congestion also contributes to a decline in productivity and wages. In their 2000 exposition of sprawl’s negative impacts, Duany, et. al. pointed out that a one hour drive to and from work equals 500 hours per year or nearly three weeks. It is worthwhile to consider what each of us might accomplish in our personal agendas with an extra three weeks – or even a week and a half- per year. Or if those three weeks were converted to working hours, how much more productive our governments, industries, and services might be. In addition to the time –opportunity cost, there are real wage losses. In a case study of the heavily suburbanized Memphis area, Ciscel ⁷ found the cost of a daily city commute reduced individual’s annual incomes by 10%. With the current national real median income at approximately $44389,⁸ this translates to approximately $369 per month: a significant sum for most families.

Also, the estimated cost of maintaining a second car – nearly mandatory for many families in the suburbs, where a car is essential to reach any businesses or schools, is $6,000⁹ per year. The same opportunity costs as discussed above apply here. Interestingly, the typical American family spends four times as much as the typical European family on transportation. ¹⁰ The comparison is relevant because the European lifestyle and standard of living is most equivalent to that of the US, suggesting that our vehicular patterns are not necessarily essential to our way of life.

Mainstream economics tells us that people simply prefer to commute despite the costs; that people chose this path is evidence that some compensating differentials must exist. This argument has two faults. First, consumers are arguably rational decision-makers but they are rarely omniscient. In other words, rationality can only work with information on hand, and that information is rarely perfect. Secondly, consumers’ decisions are made among limited options and they respond to incentives, if present. In a fascinating analysis of urban structure based on myriad empirical studies, Whyte¹¹ has found that individual’s behavior responds to the accommodations. For example, construction of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure causes more people to walk, and even leads to a more efficient organization of goods, services, and housing, saving time and other resources. On the flip side, some studies have even found that increasing road capacity actually attracts – “induces” - more traffic, rather than solving problem of over-used roads.¹²

Finally, increased auto usage is often associated with health problems. For instance, relying on a car to get from place to place may help to explain the expanding cases of obesity within America over the past several decades. Only 10 percent of US children aged 5-15 walk to school, another possible factor in the rise of child obesity ¹³As alternatives to driving are steadily reduced, a more sedentary life style is taking over. Other health-effects suffered due to extensive car usage are asthma, which is on the rise, as toxic ingredients in motorcycle and car fumes contribute to illness. Sulfur dioxide and particulates remain above safe levels in a number of major cities.

Storm water

One far-reaching effect of sprawl is storm water runoff. FEMA’a National Flood Insurance program states on its website, “New land development can increase flood risk, especially if the construction changes natural runoff paths.” ¹⁴ This creates numerous problems and therefore incurs costs in several ways. Storm water runoff results from the decrease of permeable surface. Asphalt, concrete, and buildings all make the earth beneath them unable to absorb storm water, causing the water to “run off” in more concentrated levels to the remaining permeable areas.

Increased storm water runoff means increased flooding, leading to sometimes extensive private and public property damage. Average annual flood damage in the United State for the past ten years is $2.4 billion.¹⁵ And Pennsylvania ranks 18th in the nation for Flood Losses due to property damage alone.

There are also serious damages to natural capital, in particular to water and soil resources. As water flows over driveways and parking lots, it gathers contaminants such as motor oil, anti-freeze, heavy metals, and road salt, washing them into the streams and rivers. This can occur either through constructed pipes and channels or simply “overland.” These contaminants cause serious damage to the plants and animals in the streams, dangerously throwing off the ecological balance. Erosion of rich topsoil is another uncompensated depletion of precious natural capital. Finally, increasing impermeable surfaces inhibits the replenishment of aquifers.

Another subtle but important opportunity cost results from storm water. Management costs for storm water are high and will only increase as the storm water runoff does. This is mainly a society-level cost, but it can impact individuals as well in the form of taxes. Management costs include infrastructure – construction of ditches, drains, holding pools and the like. They also include research and development for new technologies to address an increasing problem. Salaries of engineers and policy makers must be paid; these professionals must spend their time addressing increasing but avoidable storm water problems, incurring immeasurable opportunity cost. Essentially, we are creating more problems for our society’s engineering professionals to solve rather than freeing those experts to solve other, existing problems.

Opportunity costs also arise on the individual level. Money and time spent cleaning up storm water damaged to homes is money and time that is now unavailable for property improvements, paid labor, or educational investments. These individual costs combine to form a societal level cost - a more educated, harder working population is a desirable asset for society. There is the additional possibility that time spent cleaning flood damage might otherwise have been invested in social capital- participation in civic organizations or forming networks with neighbors. ¹⁶ Neoclassical economics would not recognize these as costs; indeed, neoclassical purists view forest fires and natural disasters as gains for society because the increased demand for services (such as repairs and medical care) can raise the GDP. The faultiness of this kind of thinking should be clear; this is why ecological economics accounts for the difficult-to-measure but absolutely valuable losses such as described. As Nobel laureate and noted economist Amartya Sen has observed, “It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”

Infrastructure

Sprawl also imposes costs by straining existing infrastructures, requiring new infrastructure, and decreasing efficiency/ underusing of that new infrastructure (decreased efficiency occurs, for example, when sewer pipes must be twice as long between houses to serve the same number of people- the pipes are said to be underused.). Infrastructure costs include roads, schools, sewers, postal services as well as fire, ambulance, and police services.

Roads include the cost of constructing and maintaining them, the fact that they attract traffic, as seen in the previous discussion of traffic costs, and they also contribute to storm water runoff. In sprawled communities, roads are a major cost – there is on one hand the problem of traffic congestion and high maintenance, and on the other hand an inherent inefficiency in that more miles of road are needed to serve the same number of people or cars that might be served in a compact city-type community.

Schools are a prime example of infrastructure strain– the burgeoning number of new students overwhelms existing capacity, and classrooms overflow. Incredible amounts of resources must be used to rectify this problem: it is not simply the cost of constructing new schools; the expansion of school capacity uses more land, water, services etc much in the same way as residences and shopping malls do, and increase the number of buses, further degrading the roads and incurring more cost through afore-mentioned traffic costs.

The postal service is significantly impacted by sprawl. In traditional cities and towns, postal delivery persons can walk from door to door. When houses and businesses are sprawled out, they must drive – incurring the cost of a larger vehicle fleet, as well as wear and tear on road infrastructure and finally increasing exhaust imposing some of the costs seen in the discussion on traffic congestion. ¹⁷

Fire, ambulance and police services become less efficient when they must spread out coverage areas/dilute concentration of service providers within a given area. Either the same number of providers must cover a wider area (increasing response time) or a less-than optimum ratio of providers to consumers must be employed. In both cases an inefficiency and opportunity cost are present.

Social scientists are increasingly searching for alternative theories to gauge well-being that complement traditional economic analysis. In so doing they have begun to broaden the scope of indicator variables when examining the health of society. Through this expanding search the concept of social capital¹⁸ has gained popularity as an indirect, but important measurement of social well-being. Social capital is understood as the fabric of society itself; more than an aggregate of individual capital, it is manifested in the social networks, organizations and institutions which provide forums for social interaction.

According to Robert Putnam, one of the originators of the concept of social capital, it is a designation that includes, “networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.¹⁹” The alarming rate of unfocused development in Pennsylvania has diluted older, more traditional communities while simultaneously creating new interchangeable communities, such that the character, culture and history of “place” have been lost. The trend of declining social capital that Putnam documents coincides with and reflects the statistics of expanding sprawl.

Civic engagement, for Putnam, plays a significant role in a well functioning democracy, without it, not only do our communities suffer, but our governance does as well. The myriad concepts of what constitutes “well being” contained under the umbrella of social capital are important indicators of economic and civic health, as social capital is often incorporated into analysis as a key factor in new economic thought.

Throughout the country, as development outstripped population growth, Americans’ engagement in politics and community organizations have declined. While it is difficult to point to causal relationship between the rise of sprawl and the decline of social capital, individual isolation on the rise and social trust (two indicators of the status of social capital) on the decline certainly has a corollary in the loss of community facilitated by haphazard development and continued de-concentration.

Social trust is one important element in conceptualizing social capital as a whole. The emergence of social trust helps to create “networks of civic engagement and foster norms of generalized reciprocity.”²⁰ These networks lay the foundation of a healthy, functioning civic society characterized by high levels of community participation. According to Putnam, “numerous studies of organizational involvement have shown that residential stability and such related phenomena as home ownership are clearly associated with greater civic engagement.”²¹ The decentralization of community as people continually expand into farther suburban reaches has a distinct effect on levels of social capital.

One of the major byproducts of sprawl is a disregard for the importance of residential stability. The ethos underpinning sprawling development lies in upward mobility, which in turn means geographical mobility. In a study of inequality and segregation within housing markets, Ariel Espino notes that, “when a household’s income increases, the idea is that it should move to a higher income subdivision, rather than improve on the spot, which is both discouraged through regulations and considered irrational from an economic standpoint.”²² The consequences of this emphasis on mobility for community engagement and stability are staggering.

A lack of investment in a community encourages development of anonymous, non-interacting societies. As the “detached, single family house with garden” becomes a prized possession, home life becomes increasingly privatized and individualized. For Putnam, this burgeoning individualism comes at the expense of “generalized reciprocity...and allowing dilemmas of collective action to be resolved,” thus lowering political and community participation and ultimately, quality of life.²³ Highly individualized communities, often the products of sprawl, inflate a sense of opportunism. Without community roots, there is no “taste for collective benefits.”²⁴

Homes are chosen mainly for the quality of the house, not the value of the neighborhood, as many suburban communities spring up as similarly monotonous and mass produced, fulfilling the need of either a large house or a large yard at the expense of distinction and character. Ultimately, it seems that the current trends indicate that a large house is the more important concern. Many people are now interested in newly built homes that are becoming increasingly large, often to point of maximizing lot sizes with “monster houses.”²⁴ The size of housing has expanded while lot sizes have decreased. As “monster houses” maximize lot space, a new important question enters into the debate over housing densities in our communities; viz., how to balance the scale of a neighborhood with the space demands of homeowners. Although one of the stated objectives for continued development in a metropolitan area’s outer fringes is the enjoyment of open space, more often, the search for green space is being replaced with bigger, more ostentatious homes that belie these supposed intentions. Uniform housing that continually increases in size only emphasizes the pattern of thinking that equates moving out with moving up.

The US has one of the highest residential mobility rates in the industrialized world, and for Putnam, the key to maintaining the “social capital” which in turn consolidates democracy and contributes to individual happiness, is a sense of place or roots. By interpreting the home as primarily an investment opportunity or an economic resource, and not as a part of a community or family, the impetus for community involvement becomes negligible. The upsurge of automobile usage, the massive production of homes, and the division of functions i.e. the separation of work, shopping and home, makes community life a series of commutes, differing points on a map.

Ironically, a distinctive landscape, community cohesiveness and stability of a neighborhood are desirable traits that homeowners theoretically appreciate but often do not invest in. These traits augment property value while the paradigm associated with sprawl corrodes and cheapens the values instilled within a tight knit community. In short, the drive toward mobility and expansion cleaves our connection with the past, opting instead for rapid, unplanned, uncoordinated growth. Established networks of communication and social support become more difficult to regain as these links have been built and developed slowly, deliberately, through years of community investment.

Civic responsibility can only be fostered in individuals through a sense of belonging to something greater and deeper than themselves. Community roots are invaluable in creating this sense of purpose and place. The loss of a sense of community often leads to a personal dislocation and disconnection, intangible individual conditions that are not really quantifiable. However, this loss is manifested in the increasing lack of social trust, not only in the people around us, but in the government as well.

Individuals have increasingly disengaged from political life, not only physically but mentally. Apathy has, to a certain extent, taken over the common cultural relationship to our government and institutions. According to Putnam, the percentage of people who report that they trust the government only “some of the time” or “almost never” has risen from 30 percent in 1966 to 75 percent in 1992.

Disengagement has increased institutionally and interpersonally as well. Community civic organizations, religious organizations, and even recreational clubs have all steadily declined in participation in the past thirty years. However, one of the only counter trends in the decline of community associations is the expansion of support or self-help groups, organizations specifically designed to fill a void within individuals’ lives and communities.²⁶ It is bitter beyond irony that the only increases in group participation are venues to commiserate over the state of ourselves and our society.

Individual health is largely connected to higher levels of social capital. According to Simon Szreter,

“social capital has been empirically linked to, among other things, improved child development and adolescent well-being, increased mental health, lower violent crime rates and youth delinquency, reduced mortality, lower susceptibility to binge drinking, to depression, and to loneliness. Communities low in social capital, residents report higher levels of stress and isolation.” ²⁷

A loss of identity and a sense of place stems not only from haphazard planning models that destroy community, these social ills also are manifested in the architecture and building practices associated with sprawl. Suburban strip malls, office buildings, fast food chains and big box retail reflect a lack of respect for community by replacing it with cheap, standardized boxes with no concept of artistic integrity. James Kunstler addresses this phenomenon with the observation that the architecture associated with sprawl physically represents the aforementioned loss of community and connection with the past. Buildings are constructed with the “fully conscious expectation that they will disintegrate in a few decades”²⁸. The conception of architecture as dispensable and purely utilitarian denies any semblance of place. Our surroundings become indistinguishable from one another and so any respect for or investment in these communities is diminished. Mobility becomes important because there no longer remains any reason to stay.

Urban Decline

As new indistinguishable communities continue to spring up, older, urban communities are slowly collapsing. Newly developed housing concentrates itself in the outer suburban ring, and vacancy rates within the older areas are rising. In the older townships and urban communities in Philadelphia the vacancy rate is three times higher than that in the developing outer townships in the surrounding region. Housing value also lags behind.²⁹

Out-migration to the suburbs is significantly outstripping urban growth, and is contributing to depressing property value in our cities and eroding the tax base. In the Philadelphia area between 1993 and 2000, second-class (suburban) townships saw a 7.5 percent increase in their tax capacity per household as the area’s three cities’ tax capacity declined by 6.5 percent–which, according to the Brookings Institution, was one of the larger hits in the state. The traditional concept of urban centers as attractive staging areas for the congregation of young, educated workers and innovative companies has also fallen behind. Middle class workers and families are increasingly siphoned off, leaving in their wake, higher concentrations of poverty and neglect.

The underlying reasons for this destabilization are not merely a matter of individual preference. Suburban sprawl development builds homes that are disproportionately marketed toward those with higher income, and as development increases, these homes are becoming more and more distant from the urban core. And people are leaving the older, more urban communities at an alarming rate. The Brookings Report gives an indication of the extent of outward migration, stating that between 1970 and 2000 the outer townships increased in population by 48 percent while cities and boroughs lost 23 percent and 9.8 percent of their respective populations.

This decentralization also results in a severe discrepancy between the amounts of new housing being built in the outer-townships versus the cities in Pennsylvania. The rise of suburban sprawl throughout the decades coincides with the decline of urban communities. Contributing factor are: a stagnant housing market (more than 90 percent of the Commonwealth’s new households were established in outer townships); disproportionate income levels, and a steadily accumulating concentration of poverty. Combined, these elements establish a climate of social and racial segregation, and erode the tax base, exacerbating disparities in opportunity and education for those who remain in the city.

As stated earlier, the dominant trend in metropolitan housing markets is outward migration or de-concentration. The consequences of development outstripping growth are that the far edges of metropolitan areas are developed for higher income families. These families leave the inner suburbs for the developing fringes for the allure of a larger house with a larger yard, acting on the cultural perception that upward mobility means geographic mobility. As the high-income families leave the inner suburbs, typically, the middle class leaves the urban residential areas to take their places. According to Paul Jargowsky in his study of sprawl and the concentration of poverty, “this process of selective out-migration systematically reduces the income level of the residents left behind in the neighborhoods near the center of the metropolitan area.”³⁰ The primary relationship between sprawl and economic inequality is demonstrative: greater physical separation between income classes is a manifestation of growing social inequality. This inequality exists but is less obvious in cities where, although physical distance between neighborhoods may be less, the opportunity chasm is the same. While sprawl itself does not cause inequality, it perhaps reinforces it with its very concreteness.

Unfortunately, the current trends indicate that concentration of poverty is significantly worsening. The population of the central cities of the 100 largest metropolitan areas grew by only 9.2 percent from 1970-1992 while the suburbs of those metropolitan areas grew by 59 percent.³¹ This disparity in population growth has coincided with job growth as well. In 1999, the poverty rate of central cities was 16.4 percent, compared to 8.3 percent in suburban areas.³² In Philadelphia, the numbers are even more alarming, with a poverty rate of 24.5 percent, the highest of the ten largest major metropolitan cities, compares to a rate of only 3.6 percent in the area’s outer suburbs.

As people leave urban communities, the jobs leave with them. 87 percent of the jobs created in Philadelphia between 1994 and 2001 lay more than 10 miles from the area’s central business districts. Those living within the hollowed out urban communities are not only seeing their property value decline, they are also becoming increasingly isolated from job opportunities. With the advent of de-industrialization, employment has become increasingly suburbanized. Part of the development of sprawl includes newly built office parks, and “mini downtowns at the intersection of major thoroughfares” (Jargowsky 24). As residential networks boom at increasing distances from the city, many jobs connected to the residential base must move with it.

Service industries within urban areas decline with the residential neighborhoods they service as spending power fades. Without disposable income, the levels of consumer consumption necessary to facilitate expanding businesses are simply not there. The rise of economic segregation directly links with the rise of suburbanization and the evolution of the automobile. Corner grocery stores are replaced with big-box retail accessible only by car. The proliferation of low-density housing within the outer suburbs, where many of these jobs are located, almost ensures the necessity of owning an automobile due to the difficulty in maintaining a cost-effective public transportation system over so wide an area.

Despite the inefficiency of the automobile in terms of space requirements, it has risen to a level of absolute dominance in our society. Auto dependence further isolates the poor within the older, urban areas. Donald Olsen encapsulates the phenomenon in terms of general technological advancement,

“It was only when the servantless, do-it-yourself household became the norm, with the large refrigerator, deep freeze, and the family car shopping at a distant supermarket, that the cluster of mews, back courts, and mean streets ceased to be the necessary adjunct to any middle class neighborhood” (Olsen 133).

Although the elimination of “mean streets” may be seen as a good thing, the increasing isolation and concentration of communities with higher income levels only serve to exacerbate problems of poverty and neglect in the urban neighborhoods left behind. Lessening social and racial inequality in these newly built communities by eliminating people of lower income contributes only the “out of sight, out of mind” approach to the continuing problems plaguing our cities.

Many residents of older communities cannot afford the costs of transportation to areas of concentrated job growth. The increasing commutes and traffic congestion, externalities of sprawl, significantly lower the effective wage rate, a devastating consequence if that rate is low to begin. This “spatial mis-match” creates difficulty even in finding jobs, let alone maintaining them, as information about job opportunities often don’t reach inner city neighborhoods that have little to no social or economic connection to the suburbs.

The effects of urban sprawl are not limited to economic disparity either, they also greatly contribute to an increasing racial segregation between our communities. Philadelphia has experienced large loss of Caucasians due to sprawl, thus increasing the concentration of minorities. Statistical representation of the US’s major metropolitan areas shows that all suburban neighborhoods are about 80 percent non-Hispanic white. Newer neighborhoods are proportionally more segregated with a higher percentage of whites.

Consequent erosion of the tax base in inner city neighborhoods has had dire repercussions for the public educational system in the US as well. Schools have become increasingly segregated throughout the 90s, primarily due to the residential segregation enhanced by urban sprawl.

Low property value undercuts the sources of income for these schools, making it harder to hire quality teachers, purchase text books, and maintain facilities. The proportion of black students in majority white schools has decreased by 13 percent, to a level lower than any year since 1968.³³ The percentage of poor students in primarily white schools has decreased from 1998-2000, while the percentage of poor students in the primarily black schools has increased. 86 percent of intensely segregated black and Latino schools had more than half of the students on free or reduced lunch³⁴. These statistics reflect the racial and economic residential segregation perpetuated by sprawl, contributing to the decline of our urban communities.

The proliferation of expensive development in suburbia has continued to polarize communities and contribute to urban blight. New construction replacing older units has become increasingly more expensive, pricing those of moderate income out of the communities in which they once lived. The social and racial segregation facilitated by the dynamics of sprawl are real problems that continue to plague our cities today.

CONCLUSION

Sprawl’s costs are steep and their impact two-fold: individuals experience certain aspects while other costs are imposed at the social level. Since individuals exist within society, social and individual costs have a great deal of transfer and mutual impact. These costs are increasingly unbearable, and we cannot continue to pay them. Our communities must find a new way to approach development that is affordable and sustainable, one that has an awareness and is prepared to address full costs of its actions.

¹To this end, however, Keynes has helpfully contributed, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

² Here, this can be understood to mean “benefit” or “value”

³ Non-signaling resource is one that is not subject to normal supply-demand principles; most goods “signal” their growing scarcity by becoming more expensive, until the price is so high buyers substitute another good. This doesn’t happen when the good seems to be “free.” In this case, we are referring to natural capital as the resource consumed.

⁴ TCRP 74 XII 373

⁵ Litman 1995

⁶ Discussed at length later in this paper.

⁷ Ciscel 2000

⁸ US Census Bureau 2005

⁹ Duany et al

¹⁰Ibid.

¹¹ Whyte 1988

¹² Behrens and Kane 2004

¹³ Sheehan 2001

¹⁴ http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/fastfacts.jsp

¹⁵ http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/fastfacts.jsp

¹⁶ A fuller discussion of sprawl’s impact on social capital resources follows later in this paper.

¹⁷ Duany et al

¹⁸ A term often used interchangeably is “Civil Society.” We use “social capital” here because the latter more accurately expresses the important role it has as an “input” for the “production” of well-being; it fits more appropriately into the language of economics.

¹⁹ Putnam 1993

²⁰ Putnam 1995

²¹Ibid.

²² Espino 2001

²³ Putnam 1993

²⁴Ibid.

²⁵ Danielson 1999

²⁶ Putnam 1995

²⁷ Sretzer 2004

²⁸ Kunstler 1996

²⁹Building Prosperity 2003

³⁰ Jargowsky 2001

³¹Ibid.

³² Census 2000

³³ Orfield 1999

³⁴Ibid.