Smart Growth America Economy
How smart growth strengthens regional economies
Smart growth is critical to the longterm economic sustainability of metropolitan regions.
When employers can’t recruit a reliable workforce because of grueling commutes; when working parents can’t find housing that puts them within reach of both jobs and their children; when key industries are scattered randomly so that they have all the disadvangtages and none of the important benefits of aggregation; when quality of life begins to erode – people and businesses leave and economies decline.
Beyond that, however, there is growing research demonstrating that productivity and overall economic performance are improved when smart growth elevates regions’ employment density, improves transportation efficiency, and reduces city-suburb gaps in economic health.
The following evidence is summarized from a forthcoming paper from the Brookings Institution:
A study by Ciccone and Hall (1996) found that workers in the ten densest states were 25 percent more productive than those in the least dense states. They attributed most of the difference to the density of economic activity, rather than other factors, such as population size. In 2000, Robert Cervero confirmed these findings and extended them, demonstrating that compact, “accessible” cities with efficient transportation links were more productive than more dispersed places. That same year, Nelson and Peterman demonstrated that metropolitan areas that practice growth management actually can improve their economic performance relative to other regions. They found that restraining sprawl can yield sufficient taxpayer savings, efficiency gains, and quality-of-life benefits to boost economic development. At the same time, a 1998 study showed shown that, to the extent smart growth revitalizes urban centers and reduces core distress it also benefits the entire regional economy. It found that shoring up older urban centers—as smart growth attempts to do—can build wealth for entire metropolitan areas, city and suburbs alike.
Community character, quality of life and the “creative class”
Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” offers yet another argument in favor of the kinds of communities smart growth aims to produce. According to Florida, metropolitan regions that are mostly placeless sprawl lacking in vibrant centers of urbanity are competing poorly in the changing economy. In a recent article for Washington Monthly, he writes:
“In all parts of the country, some regions are moving toward higher creative growth (Austin, Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Portland) while others become mired in either slow growth (New Orleans, Grand Rapids, Buffalo), low-end service-economy growth (Las Vegas), or no growth at all. Those in the first group are emerging as the clear overall winners in the new creative economy.
What’s driving this split is a massive flow of human creative capital. My research finds mobile, demanding creative workers migrating to certain kinds of places they favor: places where they can find not just “a job” but lots of opportunities, and where they can find participatory amenities—active outdoor sports, not just stadiums; café-and-gallery “street-level” culture, not the symphony. They also seek places of demographic diversity, openness to newcomers, and stimulating cultural interplay. And the catch is, such regional qualities tend to be self-reinforcing. A region with many creative industries and creative-class workers will thus attract more of both, while the losing regions—well, they lose them.”
Labor’s support for smart growth
In the last couple of years many union leaders have come to recognize the negative effects that sprawl is having upon their members.
Anti-sprawl resolutions have recently been adopted by the national AFL-CIO, by one of its largest affiliates, and by a state labor federation. One union — the 1.4 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) — knows the sprawl issue because of its long antagonism with virulently anti-union Wal-Mart. And a few unions that represent public transit workers, especially the Amalgamated Transit Union, have long advocated for transit service.
For more see, Greg LeRoy’s, “Smart Growth: It’s a union thing.”
Expanding consumer’s purchasing power with smart growth
The following is an excerpt from a December 2002 story in The Atlanta Journal Constitution headlined “Transportation Outstrips Housing in Costs”:
"As bigger and cheaper homes pull people ever farther from their jobs, they pay the hidden sprawl price in commuting costs, not realizing or not caring that the combined cost of owning and operating a new car was put by the American Automobile Association at 50.2 cents a mile, including loan interest, tax, registration, insurance, gas, maintenance and depreciation.
According to U.S. Department of Labor 1999-2000 data, annual household spending for transportation has reached $7,118, compared with $7,114 for housing (both 18.7% of total spending).
Although transportation takes a big bite out of family budgets, some mortgage lenders, including Bank of America, gloss over its impact on borrowers’ cash flow. Not the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, whose chief economist Richard Fritz stresses the need to ask not only ‘’where people are going to live and can they afford it,’’ but also ‘’where they are going to work and can they afford to get there?’’ Consumer driving needs are also important to many car insurance companies that offer low-mileage discount rates, in the case of Allstate Insurance Co. for driving fewer than 7,500 miles a year.”
Smart Growth America Transportation
Transportation is the backbone of smart growth. The structure of the transportation network is the skeleton which supports smart growth or sprawling development. Learn about the problem, and potential solutions, below:
TRANSPORTATION & SPRAWL
SMART TRANSPORTATION
FEDERAL POLICIES THAT ENCOURAGE TRANSPORATION CHOICE
Transportation & Sprawl
Until recently, the transportation system primarily supported sprawl. The almost single-minded focus on highway development from the 1950s through the 1980s encouraged spread-out housing, and made it easy for businesses to locate in remote office parks, far from traditional, walkable downtowns. As a result, the automobile became almost the only way to travel, and traffic increased exponentially, bringing with it congestion and frustration. Sixty-nine percent of the increase in traffic can be attributed to factors associated with sprawl.
Attempts to ease congestion with road-building have been only temporarily effective; communities that have built the most roads have had no more success in keeping congestion in check than areas that have not added much road capacity – and in some cases less. Automobile-oriented transportation is also expensive: most Americans spend more on transportation than on health care, education or food, and those costs are highest in the most sprawling metropolitan areas.
Most of us like to think of America as a land of choices. Yet in just about any community built in the last 50 years, when it comes to transportation there is only one choice: to own a car and use it for every single activity of the day. In this environment, those who try other ways of getting around do so at their peril: the most sprawling places have proven the most dangerous for people who use the simplest form of transportation of all, walking.
Wide, high-speed arterials are dangerous for foot or bicycle traffic, while winding subdivision streets that end in cul-de-sacs don’t provide the direct access that makes walking convenient (or driving, for that matter). Large subdivisions with one way in and out dump all their traffic onto overloaded arterial roads and make it difficult to provide bus service that comes within a reasonable distance of homes. And spread-out homes and offices make it tough for people to find convenient vanpool or carpool partners
The heavy reliance on driving that sprawl requires has an impact far beyond today’s traffic jam. In fact, people of color, who are less likely to own cars (African Americans are about three and half times more likely not to own a car than white families; for Latino households, it is about two and a half times) and more likely to rely on public transportation, are particularly impacted by poor development patterns. Those working families who do own a car are taking on an expensive burden. Purchase, maintenance, registration fees, fuel and parking can strain a family's income, particularly among low-income populations, who, in 2000 spent 36 cents out of every dollar on transportation, compared to the 18 cents out of every dollar spent by the average American.
For more on the equity issues in transportation, such as how poor, minority, or elderly Americans are disadvantaged by the current system, see the Social Equity section of this website.
Smart Transportation
Land use comes first, then transportation. You build the transportation network to serve the kind of development pattern you want. You don’t just build roads and watch what happens.
What does a ‘smart growth’ transportation system look like? Smart Growth transportation provides choice and convenience, and is coordinated with the way the community is growing. The movement already is catching on in many places. Communities such as Dallas, Denver and Salt Lake City have built new transit systems and seen ridership exceed projections. Other communities have put some highways on a “road diet”, taking unneeded lane space for amenities such as sidewalks, plantings, express buses or bicycles. Below we’ve listed some primary features of smart transportation:
Transit Oriented Development puts bus and train stops at the center of communities, so that housing, offices, and shops are all within walking distance. People have more opportunities to live or work near a bus or train, and to run errands, on foot, on their way to or from the bus and train.
Walking Gets Priority Smart growth communities are often designed first for walking. They feature a grid street pattern that makes it easy to make direct connections on foot; while sidewalks, traffic circles, and other devices slow automobile traffic and maintain a safe walking environment. Many developers try to locate essential services, such as a corner store or a bus stop, within a few miles of all homes, to encourage walking.
Bicycle-Friendly Communities The Bicycle Friendly Community Campaign is an awards program that recognizes municipalities that actively support bicycling. A Bicycle-Friendly Community provides safe accommodation for cycling and encourages its residents to bike for transportation and recreation.
Smart Growth America Preservation Revitalization
For every suburban big box and urban freeway, there lies an empty main street and a crumbling neighborhood. This is sprawl’s legacy. But by seeing these old buildings, once-vibrant neighborhoods, underused strip centers and vacant parking lots for the valuable assets that they are, flagging economies can be revived.
Sprawl and the Preservation-Revitalization Connection
We lose more than beautiful buildings from sprawl. We also lose the community character that makes each place unique. This character, made up of the architecture, people, and landscape of a particular place, offer regions some of the best opportunities for economic development. Many of the most impressive examples of revitalization around the country, whether urban downtowns or rural Main Streets, have had the preservation of historic architecture and character at their core.
Giant Sucking Sound
Sprawl drains resources away from existing communities. Sprawl’s transformation of the American landscape has led to declining cities and inner suburbs, while imposing daunting new infrastructure and public service costs on suburban communities. Many inner suburban communities are suffering from the same neglect and disinvestment as their urban neighbors. Even suburban jurisdictions on the metropolitan fringe are not immune from sprawl’s pernicious effects on their economy. Because rapid residential growth often fails to pay for itself, many local officials feel forced to accept any commercial development in whatever form it comes – typically, cookie cutter shopping centers and big-box stores. These patterns lead to the same problems – increasing traffic, marginal services, lack of open space and rising taxes – that many residents tried to leave behind.
Preservation-based Revitalization
While cities pay consultants thousands of dollars to come up with the Next Big Thing (usually with a huge government subsidy attached), some creative communities have realized that their best assets are what drew them to the place originally. Historic architecture, diverse neighborhoods, and scenic vistas are just a few of the assets that can be built upon for successful and long-term economic revitalization.
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