Points of View
Mini-essays, letters, responses, etc.

Paying for Sprawl

For half a century the United States has grown in a new way: Sprawl. In recent years corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies have studied the impact of sprawl. Every study shows that sprawl has strained public budgets, increased traffic congestion, threatened public health and the environment, over-consumed land, and damaged the social fabric of our nation. "Localities can’t keep up with demand for public services like roads; there are traffic jams, schools are overcrowded, and housing has become unaffordable."¹ It does not have to be this way, there are smarter ways to develop.

Unbalanced Budgets

• New Jersey’s plan for managed growth will save the state $700 million in road costs, $562 million in sewer and water costs, $178 million in school costs, and up to $380 million in operating costs per year.²
• 15 years of continued sprawl would cost Maryland $10 billion more than a more compact pattern of growth.³
• In 1996 Carroll County, Maryland, found that $1.22 was paid out in services for every $1 collected from residential property taxes.⁴
• In 1970 Maine governments spent $8.7 million to bus students to and from schools. In 1995, with fewer students, the cost had risen to $54 million.⁵
• A 1989 Florida study demonstrated that planned, concentrated growth would cost the taxpayer 50% to 75% less than continued sprawl.⁶
• Minneapolis-St. Paul will spend $3.1 billion by the year 2020 for new water and sewer services to accommodate sprawl.⁷
• Prince William County, a sprawling suburb of Washington DC, has the highest tax rates in the State of Virginia yet it still cannot keep pace with the expenditures needed to accommodate new growth.⁸
• Since 1980 the City of Fresno has added $56 million in yearly revenues but has added $123 million in service costs.⁹

Traffic! Traffic! Traffic!

• Between 1970 and 1990, the population of the US increased by 22.5% yet the number of vehicle miles traveled increased 98.4%.¹⁰
• The average American family spends one sixth of its total budget on transportation, more than food, more than clothing, more than healthcare.¹¹
• Between 1980 and 1990 commuting times for residents of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California, increased 13%.¹²
• Due to increased congestion, the average speed of the Washington Beltway has decreased from 47 mph in 1981 to 23 mph in 1991.¹³
• When compared to compact planned development, sprawl growth patterns result in 600% higher police response times, 50% higher ambulance response times, and 33% higher fire response times.¹⁴

Dirty Growth

• Air pollutants from cars are responsible for 20,00-40,000 annual cases of chronic respiratory illness and 50-70 million annual respiratory-related restricted activity days.¹⁵
• Smog costs Maryland $40 million in crop damage each year.¹⁶
• In California sprawl induced air pollution can reduce crop yields by 30% and cost $200 million per year.¹⁷
• Sprawl worsens non-point source pollution by generating 43% more runoff with 3 times greater sediment loads than traditional development.¹⁸

America’s Disappearing Landscape

• Every hour of every day, 50 acres of prime farmland are lost to development.¹⁹
• If sprawl continues, Maryland will consume as much land in the next 25 years as it did in the past 300 years.²⁰
• Between 1970 and 1990 the population of the Los Angeles metro area grew by 45% while developing 200% more land; the population of the Cleveland metro area fell by 11%, while developing 33% more land; population of the Chicago metro area grew by 4%, developed land increased by 46%.
• In contrast, the population of the Portland, Oregon, metro area grew by 50% but only consumed 2% more land. (In the 1970s Portland instituted growth management strategies. Before that, the consumption of land grew at twice the rate of population growth.)²¹

Creating a Sense of No-Place

• "Places…shape people for good or ill"²²
• "It is no coincidence that at the moment when the United States has become a predominantly suburban nation, the country has suffered a bitter harvest of individual trauma, family distress, and civic decay."—Philip Langdon ²³
• "Sprawl eats up our open space. It creates traffic jams that boggle the mind and pollute the air. Sprawl can make one feel downright claustrophobic about our future."²⁴
• "The physical setting itself—the cartoon landscape of car-clogged highways, strip malls, tract houses, franchise fry pits, parking lots, junked cities and ravaged countrysides—[is] not merely the symptom of our troubled culture, but in many ways a primary cause of our troubles."²⁵

Where do we go from here?
Contact the American Planning Association about Growing Smart^SM.