This article is from the Richmond Times-Dispatch and, curiously, mentions some of the potential problems regarding taking the "urban sprawl" argument TOO far.
The recent Times-Dispatch series on sprawl led off with some seemingly strange poll results: A majority of those surveyed consider sprawl a serious problem and want open spaces protected. But a majority also say their community is growing at an appropri- ate rate and oppose changes that would restrain the rate of growth. This is not as great a contradiction as it first appears. To some degree, sprawl and its consequences are merely the unpleasant side-effects of otherwise pleasing changes.
For example: In recent decades development has grown
twice as fast as population, and the number of vehicle-miles traveled has
increased four times faster than population. Why?
For one thing, more women entered the workforce. For another, minorities and
immigrants climbed up from poverty and bought houses and cars. Census
figures show the median income for an African-American household, in constant
dollars, rose from $5,537 in 1970 to $25,050 in 1997. Median Hispanic income
more than doubled. And the bigotry that once consigned
minorities and immigrants to certain neighborhoods is now, mercifully, mostly a
thing of the past.
In fact, just about everybody is doing better than they used to. Fifty years
ago, the typical family home was a one-story, 1,000-square-foot residence.
Houses are roughly twice as large today, when a great many families bring in two
incomes, and even single-earner families enjoy much higher wages.
SO PEOPLE buy more cars and bigger houses farther out, and therefore suffer
longer commutes. Unfortunately, the drive-time problem proves The Second-Order
Rule of Bureaucracy, which states: The more directives you issue to solve a
problem, the worse it gets.
One answer to congestion - widely advocated in Northern Virginia - is to build
more roads. That will work only if the land near the new roads stays
undeveloped. Yet the most powerful Northern Virginia voices urging road
construction say the region needs roads to sustain economic prosperity - i.e.,
to continue adding more businesses, more stores, and more residents.
Some advocate increasing regional density. But density is no panacea. The
longest average commute time in America - more than 36 minutes - is to be found
in New York (with a density of 23,700 persons per square mile). The
second-longest average commute takes place in Washington, D.C., (9,882 persons
per square mile) and the third-longest in Chicago (12,251 persons per square
mile). All three have extensive public transportation, suggesting that might not
be a silver bullet, either. Where is the nation's briefest commute?
Mitchell County, Kansas (10.3
persons per square mile).
Density also increases air pollution. Assume a region's population density
doubles, and 25 percent of drivers then decide to save themselves some grief and
take mass transit instead. Vehicle emissions still have increased by half.
WHAT PROSPERITY and progress have wrought, prosperity and progress might help
repair. In the information age, telecommuting can keep some vehicles garaged.
Wireless sensing technology might be able to track traffic flow, relay real-time
road conditions to drivers, and suggest alternate routes. Flex-time and
peak-time pricing of tolls could adjust incentives to clear up rush-hour
bottlenecks.
Technology also figures strongly in the loss of farmland - an issue about which
some state legislators and localities have shown a concern that is admirable but
disproportionate. While the state's farm acreage has decreased more than 30
percent since 1964, an acre of cropland can produce three times the food it
could in 1960. Hence, more farmland reverts to meadow and forest than is
consumed by development, the federal government pays farmers $1.7 billion a year
to let fields lie fallow, the United States remains a major food exporter, and
the Agriculture Department says "losing farmland to urban uses does not threaten
total cropland."
Still, though 75 percent of the nation's populace lives on just 3.5 percent of
the land, there is no point in developing more of it recklessly. An instructive
study of the Washington metro region two years ago found that 75 percent of the
drivers on the road between 4 and 7 p.m. were engaged not in the daily commute
but in attending to matters such as errands and shopping. The same probably
could be said of the Richmond area.
The fault lies largely with zoning that too often separates home, workplace, and
shopping by too great a distance. (This ink-stained wretch resides in an
apartment building less than two miles from work, but has to drive 10 miles or
more for many of life's amenities; others have it much worse.) Relaxing zoning
ordinances could provide some surcease from that particular sorrow. However,
doing so would require planners to exercise less control rather than more.
But what of that? Though John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek eventually
stood at opposite ends of the debate over economic intervention, the early
Keynes observed: "Our power of prediction is slight, our command over remote
results infinitesimal." In this he agreed with Hayek, who held (in the words of
Oxford professor John Gray): "Because the planner cannot know relative costs and
scarcities, the planned economy will in fact be chaotic and vastly wasteful."
Given planning's track record, a little less of it might not be altogether bad.
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Last updated 6/25/05