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Page added on April 10, 2014
Measuring Suburban Sprawl
Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.
Growth is good. Or so we’ve always been taught. But what if growth is poorly managed, so that it creates serious problems too? In an urban context, that’s what we call sprawl.
Photo courtesy of USDA
Solving sprawl requires alignment of rules and incentives for land-development such that smart growth-management is the rule rather than the exception. Much has been written about this issue, from useful technical overviews, to inspiring examinations of good planning to soulful stories about neighborhoods left behind.
However, as the old management saw goes, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” That’s why the Sierra Club ranked 30 regions in 1998 based on population and land-area growth, traffic congestion and losses of open space (full disclosure, this report was the first in a series produced in a campaign that I managed for the Club), and a few years later USA Today produced its own, more comprehensive index of sprawl based on population density and recent population density changes. And then, in 2002, Smart Growth America broke the mold with Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact, relying ons a larger number of data sets distilled into four factors:
- Residential density;
- Neighborhood mix of homes, jobs, and services;
- Strength of activity centers and downtowns;
- Accessibility of the street network.
I’m delighted that today the group unveiled a new sprawl index, authored by Reid Ewing (a co-author of the 2002 iteration). This new report also uses the four factors, however it relies on a even more data as well as the 2010 rather than 2000 Census results. It also comes at a time when new evidence shows that metros – especially large metros – continue pulling jobs and people into their orbit, as opposed to small towns and the countryside.
The findings are mostly a series of rankings based on sprawl scores, and some patterns jump out at the reader. First, the south dominates the basement of the rankings. Atlanta is the nation’s most sprawling large metro overall and is one of 7 southern regions in the bottom 10. The same picture emerges with the bottom of the small metro ranking, with Hickory/Lenoir/Morgantown, NC as the most sprawling in that category. And the mid-sized metro ranking’s bottom 10 is filled entirely with southern regions. This doesn’t surprise me since it lines up with regular state oil addition reports NRDC used to produce, in which the burden of gasoline purchases on household budgets is invariably higher in Dixie.
Most sprawling medium metros, courtesy of Smart Growth America
It’s a terrible problem for southern states, since sprawl is also statistically linked to negative average outcomes including less economic mobility, higher housing and transportation costs, fewer transportation options, shorter lives, higher obesity and blood pressure rates.
In contrast, California regions really shine in this report. 4 of 10 ranking at the top as “most compact and connected,” with San Francisco as #2 (no surprise that New York is still #1, same as 2002). Half of the top 10 large metros are in CA, and while there are fewer in the top 10 for small and mid-sized metros the state still makes an appearance.
Least sprawling large metros, courtesy of Smart Growth America
California policymakers deserve some credit for these findings. The state has leaped ahead of the nation with growth management in the past three decades. How so? Primarily by sharing more authority and funding with, and increasing accountability of, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), through a series of new state laws. In 1992, the state enhanced the last revolutionary federal transportation bill, 1991’s Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, by “suballocating” more federal transportation dollars to MPOs than any other state. And then in 1997, regions successfully secured project selection authority over 75% of state highway account spending. In 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, into law. This law mandates serious reductions in heat-trapping pollution, and the state has enacted other statutes to fill out the toolkit for achieving its goals. Most relevant here is the landmark Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, or SB 375.
S.B. 375 pushes metropolitan planning and investment portfolios forward even further, requiring that regions develop Sustainable Communities Strategies which align the long-range transportation plan required of them by federal law with the state’s global warming pollution reduction goals. This has yielded an inspiring transformation in long-range plans, most notably in the cradle of sprawl, southern California, as my colleague Amanda Eaken writes.
Solving sprawl in California and other states requires measuring it first, and I commend Smart Growth America for accomplishing that again this year.
18 Comments on "Measuring Suburban Sprawl"
GregT on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 6:19 am
In the picture above, it should be pretty obvious that without fossil fuels, there would not be enough land to grow food for the amount of people present, and a large percentage of the trees would most likely be cut down after the first winter.
Not a sustainable place to live without cheap fossil fuel energy.
DC on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 6:31 am
Notice the NRDC is all for ‘smart growth-management is the rule rather than the exception.’ Like a lot of corporate ‘green’ outfits, they clearly have zero problem with growth-just how it looks. Smart growth is a prettier than just plain old growth-so lets support that instead….
I have been whittling down the critrea somewhat these last few years to help separate the faux-growth-is-good greens, from the real deal. Anything with the words ‘smart growth’ managed growth, green growth, or any of its permutations-immediately gets that group\individual in the corporate\status quo category. IoW they love the shop-dirve-consume economy, they just want a shiny new coat of greenwash paint on it all.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 12:05 pm
DC SAID – IoW they love the shop-dirve-consume economy, they just want a shiny new coat of greenwash paint on it all.
Well put DC these folks are warp by the doctrine of growth and development. Sprawl for me was the great waste of a petroleum endowment that could have been used to power a people into a new era. It took fossil fuels to push man’s understanding through technology, knowledge and science to significant levels never seen before. The problem is the ethical and moral side lacked the strength to counter balance greed, competition and over-maxing carrying capacity through development. “OR” basically we are a “big brained” mammal stuck in a small group and tribal inclination thrust into a massive population growth through cheap energy and technology. The normal checks and balances to our species were suppressed. What we now have is a population overshoot to carrying capacity with a corresponding inability to stop the train of development and growth with enough time to transition to a post carbon world. In effect sprawl is the outward visible view of the entropic development of a species out of control. Yet, our mega dense cities are no better. Both represent a species in hyper overshoot consuming a world, destroying ecosystems globally, and inadvertently practicing its own genocide. We will destroy ourselves. If we had a chance at something greater is was post WWII sprawl and megacity growth. We are now doomed to crash and burn and will take much of the world ecosystems with it. Jelly fish will reigns supreme in the oceans and cockroaches and rats on land. That will be our legacy as a species. Yet, it is all a part of nature’s plan of extinction and evolution of life and death.
Boat on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 1:46 pm
So what is the solution? Stack people up in huge complexes so they have a smaller footprint like chickens in cages?
Boat on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 2:05 pm
Just think of the sprawl if everybody had to have a stream, land to grow food, out house, sheds for tools. Animals to eat. that was the original sprawl. It was totally unsustainable. And the death toll if there were no doctors or hospitals etc. Where we are at now is because we reacted to our environment and made improvements. I think we will continue to do so.
Sage on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 2:07 pm
The solution Boat on Thu is less people.
ghung on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 2:08 pm
“So what is the solution?”
There is no ‘solution’, just resolution. These things have a way of playing out; resolving themselves, not necessarily in ways that most folks will find acceptable. For me, ‘solution’ implies that humans are actually in control.
Boat on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 2:10 pm
Just think of the sprawl if everybody had to have a stream, land to grow food, out house, sheds for tools. Animals to eat. that was the original sprawl. It was totally unsustainable. And the death toll if there were no doctors or hospitals etc. Where we are at now is because we reacted to our environment and made improvements. I think we will continue to do so.
http://thestandard.org.nz/houston-and-the-cost-of-sprawl/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=zuUvDn1DR6_aBM&tbnid=WQh8pxe3ef5K5M:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthestandard.org.nz%2Fhouston-and-the-cost-of-sprawl%2F&ei=GaZGU_KrK8LuyAHxzoCQAQ&bvm=bv.64507335,d.aWc&psig=AFQjCNFMrlfuVtUNXa1-1cNa7vjWokamCg&ust=1397225168940896
ghung on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 2:11 pm
“…we reacted to our environment and made improvements.”
Improvements? Ignores depletion, costs, and environmental consequences.
vulcanelli on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 6:49 pm
ghung,
You are right. There is no solution. What is happening is not the result of any policy or direction. We are driven by the biological imperative to expand to the limits of our food supply. All life forms do this. To think we are smarter than say a bacterium is the height of arrogance. Life is driving itself through myriad of species in endless cycles of expansion and contraction. Sprawl or no sprawl, it makes no difference. We will expand until we hit our environmental limits.
DC on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 6:57 pm
Exactly, there is no ‘solution’, because if there one thing that will get apathetic N.Americans to stop watching dancing with the survivors and into the streets, it would be the idea that ‘govt’ is taking away their precious tar-paper and sawdust shacks stuck 20 miles from the nearest source of water, food, or economic actively. Suburbia, is a stranded investment of the worst kind. Even as salvage, suburbia has limited value. The land underneath these soulless energy sucking spawls may be have some value-the people and current crud on it now-not so much. Thankfully though-there will be little need for ‘govt’ to stop sprawl. The inherent unsustainability of the drive-shop-consume ‘economy’ will take care of the ‘suburbia problem’ for us. It may take some time-and the death of it wont be an even, linear decline-but its happening.
As for huge complexes-yea, most people in the urban world live in those already. Britain, Hong Kong, Europe, large dense complexes are far more common that N.A. car-dependent sprawl. ‘We’ warehouse the welfare poor in vast vertical ‘projects’. ‘Efficient’ in a way-but a ‘solution’,no.
Boat sounds like a ‘developer’. They always talk about how their latest 500 home ‘development’ will be totally awesome. All the unproductive useless land converted(ahem improved) by low-quality-overpriced shacked, roads, tacky strip malls. Think of all the jobs! tax revenue! and consumers the new sprawl will contain! A win-win(cough).
GregT on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 7:47 pm
“Where we are at now is because we reacted to our environment and made improvements. I think we will continue to do so.”
Herein lies the human being’s greatest folly, and his biggest detriment. Thinking that he can somehow improve upon the natural environment, without consequence. It certainly does appear that he will continue his futile attempt to do so, until his numbers are either decimated, or completely removed from the natural equation. Hopefully his brain is big enough, that he will stop before he takes the rest of the natural world with him.
J-Gav on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 8:38 pm
Can’t manage what you can’t measure. Right. However, the ability to measure something is no guarantee that it can be ‘managed,’ i.e. forced to do what we want it to do. Just throwing in my little quibble, as usual.
jiffkins on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 9:27 pm
There sure are a lot of “folks” here, talkin’ bout other “folks!”
How fulksy! How reassuring! Fulks in their “homes” for “jobs” and “the economy!”
MSN fanboy on Thu, 10th Apr 2014 9:40 pm
“Where we are at now is because we reacted to our environment and made improvements. I think we will continue to do so.”
Boat, lol. Improvements…. 😀 pity our improvements kill us.
Boat on Fri, 11th Apr 2014 12:20 am
I wrote a line not to long ago pointing out the US gives out tax breaks for having children. It just doesn’t seem thought out in a world with stretched resources. And thought having no immigration was a good idea because the US is currently at 1.9 children per family and break even is 2.1. 250 million US citizens looks like a nice number to me instead of chasing 350 million. We are currently around 317. Many developed societies are in population decline. So beat me up for thinking that is common sense.
For my Russian buddies, when the USSR collapsed their population rate dropped to 1.2 and is now around 1.6. They reacted like an educated population. Times got tough so they had less kids.
I think everyone should have a home and a car and a tv and computer etc. But I certainly wasn’t responsible or even asked permission by the worlds families to churn out 7 billion people.
So yea, sprawl does not bother me but I hope over time there will be less of it. But no one should have to be stacked inna box. Have less kids and you can knock out a few walls and get some room. And a big screen TV.
Boat on Fri, 11th Apr 2014 12:29 am
wow…what happened to that post
Makati1 on Fri, 11th Apr 2014 1:31 am
Mother Nature is already preparing the world that will follow our extinction. It has been in progress for millions of years. It’s called evolution, not to be confused with creation.
The earths crust, the part we live on, is being sucked under and everything on it is being recycled into the earths molten interior, to resurface at another location as new land. So, all of our metals, radioactive debris, etc., will be gone as if they never existed. A visitor to the earth 500 million years from now would have a difficult time finding ant trace of homo sapiens. They might see the junk we left on the moon and wonder, but…
I have, thus far, enjoyed my brief 70 years here, and hope for a few decades more so I can see our inevitable end, but even that time is not guaranteed. I do my best to live a good life and prepare for those possible years. Do you?