by Alex Marshall - articles and essays

Land Use: A Search For Common Ground

A Debate

Joint Legislative Air and Water Pollution Control and Conservation Committee
9 a.m., June 14, 2000
Capitol East Wing, room 60E.
Position Paper

By Alex Marshall

Where Does Sprawl Come From, and How Do We Stop It?

It's quite easy to stop sprawl. Simply stop building highways. Sprawl as such a low-density pattern of development, characterized by subdivisions, office parks, shopping centers and virtual total dependence on the automobile is virtually entirely a product of public spending on roads and highways. Without them, sprawl does not exist.

This year, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is scheduled to spend about $4 billion dollars, the vast majority on highways. To start controlling sprawl, that budget where it is spent, and how it is spent needs to be the first item on the table. Unless it is the centerpiece of debate, than most other measures, such as zoning and land-use policy, are mere window-dressings.

The central question to ask is what portion of that budget is being spent on highways on the edges of metropolitan areas. To stop sprawl, simply stop building or widening highways on the fringes of metropolitan areas or within suburban areas that could develop further. Shift that money into mass transit, which would promote a resurgence of inner city neighborhoods and older suburbs.

An easy way to stop sprawl would be to half the state's highway budget, and put the savings into mass transit of all forms. Just as highways produce sprawl, mass transit trains, trolleys, buses produce walkeable cities and inner-city revitalization.

I'm a fan of growth boundaries, which have been used effectively in Oregon and have been authorized in Tennessee. But in the long run, they are effective because they signal where public investment should and should not go. Beyond the growth boundary around Portland, the state does not widen highways and does not build new ones. Of course, the region also does not extend water and sewer lines.

Land-use should not the first question when addressing sprawl. Transportation spending should be. Only when a shift in transportation spending is made, does it make sense to start asking what land-use policies make sense. Land-use policy should follow transportation policy. It doesn't work the other way around.

But what about traffic congestion, some might ask? If we stop building highways, then won't our roads become even more congested?

A former colleague of mine, Patrick Lackey of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, said that Americans resemble that reputed primitive tribe of savages who did not know where babies come from. When it comes to traffic congestion, he said, we are similar because we haven't learned that traffic congestion comes from highways. Babies come from sex; traffic congestion comes from highways.

A similar equation is true of sprawl. It comes from highways. So while if we stop building highways, it might increase traffic congestion, it's a mistake to think that if we build them, traffic congestion will decline. For the past 50 years, we have built more highways than at any other time in human history. And yet somehow traffic congestion and delays have only gone up in that time. The 1999 annual Mobility Report of the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that the average amount of time Americans spent waiting in their cars because of traffic delay went from 16 hours in 1982 to 45 hours in 1997. Atlanta which has built more highways than in city in the country saw delays go from 16 to 68 hours.

If building highways solved traffic congestion, than Atlanta would be paradise. It isn't. Instead, Atlanta folk not only wait in traffic longer, they drive farther and farther distances, because the highway building increases the physical spread of the metropolitan areas. By comparison, residents of Portland, which has cut back on highway building, has seen delays due to traffic congestion and time spent in cars stay essentially flat over the last 15 years.

So if we don't build highways, then what do we do? We start putting money into mass transit and non-car transportation. Trains, trolleys, buses and bicycle paths. If we stop building highways, then inner-city neighborhoods will gradually revitalize as the housing markets there re-energize because sprawl is no longer an option. When this happens, increased and better mass transit can be worked into the mix, because these older neighborhoods were often designed around streetcars and other forms of mass transit.

When it comes to sprawl, there are a number of myths that should be addressed, ones that often are used, perhaps unknowingly, to relieve us from responsibility for our acts. There are three principal myths about sprawl that sometimes get in the way of effective debate.

Myth Number One: Developers cause sprawl. This seems true at first, because they are the ones we seeing building the subdivisions, the shopping centers and the office parks. But private investment follows public investment. Stop building the highways and the exit ramps, and the office parks will dry up as well. Developers can be blamed only to the extent that they usually have extensive political influence on how the transportation budget is spent. It is usually spent for their financial benefit. Developers don't cause sprawl; highways do.

Myth Number Two: "Good design" will control sprawl. That is, if we just add front porches, or have fewer cul-de-sacs, then we will return to the magic of 19th century neighborhoods and towns, while still being able to allow more suburban growth. This is a fallacy. These new-fangled suburbs, usually called New Urban or Neo-traditional, work about the same as the old-fangled suburbs. Their residents still drive most places, and more land is consumed by development. These places aren't solutions to sprawl. They are sprawl. Stop building highways instead.

Myth Number Three: No one can control sprawl. This logic paints sprawl as an organic, self-propelling force too big to be controlled by anyone or any institution. This logic says sprawl is the product of free enterprise and dynamic capitalism, and that restraining it is an unfair intrusion into the marketplace and the rights of property owners. But if we look at where sprawl comes from, we find publicly financed highways at the bottom of it. Stop building highways, and you stop sprawl. And highway spending choices are firmly within the legal rights of taxpayers and their elected representatives.

In the short run, things like zoning and land-use policy and other measures have relevance. And these tools can be effective when combined with transportation policy. But by themselves, changing land-use policies accomplish almost nothing. Look at where the highways go, and the balance of highway spending versus mass transit spending, and there you will find the causes and cures of sprawl.

So here's a simple policy prescription as a starting point: Examine how much is spent on highways in rural, semi-developed or suburban areas. Cut that in half. Shift the money into other forms of transportation spending, principally mass transit, but also bike paths, maintenance of existing roads, and sprucing up sidewalks and other amenities within existing neighborhoods and areas. This will start controlling sprawl.