The cost of America’s inefficient sprawl

urbancincy:

American metropolises have sprawled outward for several decades now, and we all know the narrative. Cities lost population while their suburban counterparts grew. While many viewed these boom times as progress, it is now becoming evident that the decision to sprawl outward was a short-sighted policy decision, and is costing American taxpayers dearly. More from CNN:

Every time a new, spread-out subdivision is built far away from existing infrastructure, somebody has to pay for a bunch of roads that serve a small number of residents. And sewer and water lines too. And fire trucks that must travel farther to serve fewer people. And police cars. And ambulances. And school buses. And dial-a-ride buses. And – in many parts of the country – snowplows.

The cost is enormous…Cities can sometimes stay in the black temporarily by approving new development and getting new revenue to pay for the costs. But that’s really just a Ponzi scheme…Balanced budgets don’t just happen. They happen because someone took the time upfront to check the costs and to evaluate what we can afford and what will add the most value.

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emergentfutures: Demographic Reversal: Cities Thrive, Suburbs Sputter Last year, for the first time in more than nine decades the major cities of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas grew faster than their combined suburbs. At least temporarily, this puts the brakes on a longstanding staple of American life—the pervasive suburbanization of its population—which began with widespread automobile use in the 1920s to the present day when more than half the U.S. population lives in the suburbs. Full Story: Brookings

emergentfutures:

Demographic Reversal: Cities Thrive, Suburbs Sputter

Last year, for the first time in more than nine decades the major cities of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas grew faster than their combined suburbs. At least temporarily, this puts the brakes on a longstanding staple of American life—the pervasive suburbanization of its population—which began with widespread automobile use in the 1920s to the present day when more than half the U.S. population lives in the suburbs.


Full Story: Brookings

(via smarterplanet)

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“In the great postwar building boom, developers froze on a pattern that used five acres to do the work of one. They had to, or they thought they had to. For one thing, it was a well-known fact that Americans had a deep psychic urge for a free-standing homestead on a large country plot, or as close a replica as possible. The assumption was self-proving, for it was built into the standards of the Federal Housing Administration and the major lending institutions. If a developer wanted mortgage money, he hewed to these standards or he did not get it.”

William H. Whyte, The Last Landscape (via titularhumour)

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the creation of the subdivision is a disaster to the environment. as urban sprawl happens, the question becomes more prevalent… why build an area where the people only live, but must commute for a long time to get to work, etc.. The typical family relies ever so much on their cars, and there is not as much neighbourhood interaction anymore. We should be building cities that actually have multiple purposes, not just housing.

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Retrofitting Suburbia

kristiankelley:

Ellen Dunham Jones speaks of major retrofitting to improve the financial and social sustainability of suburbia.  This is an inspiring video however I tend to believe in small suburban retrofits like connecting streets, allowing business and multifamily in single family residential buildings, using our unused landscape and providing walkways off of arterials.  If we do these small things first we set the foundation for the more exciting suburban-urban environments Jones speaks of.

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