In St. Louis sprawl is the only choice.
Judd, Dennis
Urban sprawl has become a national issue, though perhaps more
prominently in St. Louis than in most places. In his report on the St.
Louis region, Neal Peirce identified sprawl as the cause of a dizzying
variety of urban problems. Summing up his views in an article in the
National Journal a few years ago, Peirce called Americans "the
champion land hogs of history" because the country's urban
areas have been growing in land area at a rate four to eight times as
fast as population growth. The cost of sprawl, he said, was
"frightening" because it brought "despair in the inner
cities, environmental degradation, undermining of old neighborhoods and
suburbs."
The Peirce report was published as "A Call to Action" in
the March 16, 1997, special edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Pointing out that from 1950 to 1995 the St. Louis region's
population increased by 35 percent while its land area exploded by 355
percent, Peirce said that sprawl had led to soaring highway and
infrastructure costs, a "prickly independence" pitting
governments against one another, increased racial segregation, long
commuting times, worsening air quality, loss of farmland and the
"massive hemorrhaging from the center city" that leaves one
"to wonder if the city's vital signs still register."
Since the Peirce report was more or less the Post's official
foray into public journalism, it is hardly surprising that the paper has
continued to devote a lot of column inches to the sprawl issue. In
addition to assorted articles following in the wake of the Peirce
report, beginning on Feb. 22, 1998, the Post spent a week wrestling with
the question, "How should we grow?" The usual suspects again
made their appearance. More recently, beginning on Feb. 7, 1999, the
Post weighed in with a week-long "urban sprawl debate." The
Post has twice published articles profiling Al Gore's stated plans
to make sprawl a major issue in his campaign (Jan. 12, and again on Oct.
12). And on Oct. 5, the Post carried a front-page article featuring a
report by the Sierra Club ranking Missouri as a laggard state in
controlling sprawl.
The Post's coverage seems to be at least as much an exercise
in public journalism (the part about "educating the public")
as it is news. I looked carefully through the Oct. 12 edition of The New
York Times for an article on Al Gore and sprawl, and came up
empty-handed. The Sierra Club's report (which was a national story
carried by the wire services), was placed on a back page of the Times,
in a three-inch column.
With so much coverage and with so many sins to bear, it's
little wonder that some suburbanites and politicians in the St. Louis
region have become sensitive about the issue. Last year, when Mayor
Harmon claimed that the region subsidized infrastructure in outlying
areas, he was quickly challenged by officials from St. Charles County,
and it was no help when he couldn't document his statements.
Earlier this year, Ron Auer, D-St. Louis, said he got "beat
up" when he presented a proposed bill to study growth issues in
Missouri. Some residents of St. Charles County have gone on the
offensive, saying that sprawl is just an expression of people's
right to live where they choose. Accordingly, the Urban Choice
Coalition, whose members come mainly from St. Charles County, would like
to eliminate the word "sprawl" in favor of the term
"choice."
It's tempting to poke fun at those who want to erase
"sprawl" from the dictionary, since they are so willing to
accept government subsidies to help them participate in their
free-market move to the 'burbs. Aside from subsidies for commuters
(gasoline taxes cover approximately 60 percent of the cost of building
and maintaining roads), last year homeowners deducted $85 billion in
mortgage payments from their federal taxes, plus around $10 billion for
local property taxes paid on residential real estate. Forty percent of
the homeowner deduction went to families making more than $100,000 per
year, and the overwhelming proportion of write-offs were for suburban
homes. The free market would probably favor suburban construction all by
itself, but it gets a big boost from the public purse.
It is unconvincing when the would-be dictionary abridgers deny the
problems that obviously accompany sprawl. As anyone can plainly see, it
actually is true that wetlands and farmlands are being devoured by new
housing developments, that the roads are more crowded, that new
development spreads while older areas slip into decline (for a
comprehensive review of the evidence, see a study by the U.S. Office of
Technology Assessment, 1998). All the same, sprawl has tended to be used
as a Christmas tree, upon which every problem that afflicts urban
America can be hung. When this happens, the issue becomes a 900-pound
gorilla that nobody knows how to wrestle.
The political reality is that few states will soon, if ever, force
urban regions to adopt comprehensive land use controls, and those that
have, such as Florida, usually don't enforce them. Nor will most
states soon adopt anything like Portland, Oregon's growth boundary.
It works just like magic: Stand on one side of the boundary, and you see
housing developments; on the other side of the road are fields. Missouri
is not going to get one. Forget it.
The problem with hanging everything on the sprawl tree is that the
enemy becomes too diffuse, too costly to attack, and too politically
divisive. The bigger the enemy, the more formidable the opposition.
Defined so broadly, the enemy becomes us. Americans have chosen to drive
SUVs, to move into larger and nicer homes, to shop at malls and
superstores. At least since the 1920s America has been a consumer
society, driven to consume less by need than by comfort and image. Guilt
won't drive people into not consuming. Guilt didn't work when
Jimmy Carter appeared in a sweater and asked everyone to turn down their
thermostats. Instead we got the Reagan era, a renunciation of
renunciation, the glorification of consumerism and growth. In the sense
we still are in the Reagan era.
So the battle against sprawl is doomed. No. Though more can and
should be done, actually a great deal is being done to ameliorate the
effects of sprawl. The secret to effective action is to pick the baubles
off the sprawl tree and treat them separately.
Open space? People care about it, and they are willing to act: In
New Jersey, for example, the state has adopted legislation that will
preserve substantial pockets of land from development. This won't
curb sprawl whatsoever, but it will create islands in the stream, around
which the sprawl will flow.
Save central cities? States should try Vermont's Downtown
Program (praised in the Sierra Club report), provide tax credits for
investors in historic areas (which Missouri now does), and invest
directly in downtown projects. Regional tax-sharing also helps, as do
multi-jurisdictional tax districts to support regional institutions
located in the inner cities (St. Louis has such a district, which helps
support the zoo and other facilities).
Losing wetlands? Adopt legislation like Maryland's, to curb
development that encroaches on wetlands. Developers are converting
farmlands to houses and shopping centers at an alarming rate? Several
states, such as Ohio, have created Agricultural Protection Districts or
easements that, among other measures, protect farmers from rising taxes
due to escalating assessments.
Air pollution? Adopt stricter emissions controls (finally, SUV
owners will have to comply, as of next year), designate bus lanes, and
invest more in mass transit. High-density, unplanned development? Adopt
sensible zoning restrictions, such as those that exist in many parts of
St. Charles County.
It pains me to acknowledge it, but those who call sprawl
"choice" are right when they say, in essence, that sprawl is
as American as apple pie. In Missouri, at least, sprawl is here to stay.
The trick is to learn to live with sprawl by treating its
consequences as intelligently as possible. Sprawl can either beget hopelessly boring subdivisions and strips of fast-food joints - or
planned communities with parks and wooded areas, bicycle paths, town
squares, and revitalized inner cities. In Missouri, at least, the
consequential decisions will not be whether to sprawl, but how we do it.
Dennis Judd is professor of political science at University of
Missouri-St. Louis.