URAN SPRAWL: DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDIES

Throughout this article, the main focus is urban sprawl and the non-endearing remedies to fix this growing concern. Three influential forces are the end results of urban sprawl: a growing population, rising incomes, and falling commuting costs. Although these sound positive to societies well being, market failures are distorting their positive social desirability. The allocation of agricultural land converted to urban usage has justified the criticism of urban sprawl by not accounting for the benefits of open space, social costs of road congestion, and developers failing to pay for the infrastructure costs generated. The remedies projected for these market failures in hope of alleviating the spatial size of the city are developmental taxes and congestion tolls (1).

Critics raise a few questions about urban sprawl and the possible remedies policy makers could enact. But, are they are justifiable? The first one is, is urban sprawl truly a growing problem affecting American society? Throughout the article, Brueckner states both views on urban sprawl: The criticism against it and how to prevent it, and the benefits of urban sprawl to American society. Another question addressed is, is urban sprawl contributing to the decay of downtown areas? With the growth of urban development, the incentive to rebuild land and housing closer to the city center is reduced. This is because developers can purchase large amounts of farmland further away from the city for cheaper costs and supply the demand for larger houses by Americans. The article proposes another question, is urban sprawl reducing social interaction, creating an unhealthy society? This may seem like a minimal concern, but in actuality reduced social interaction could weaken our society. People spreading out to areas of low population density, has diluted the bonds that create a healthy, involved society. Reduced social interaction could be detrimental for society, since people thrive off one another’s ideas, opinions, views and values. Lastly the article proposes the question, does the invisible hand, which guides the conversion of land to urban use, push too hard in the direction of larger cities? The allocation of land is governed by competition between urban and agricultural use, but society has increasingly driven the land to urban use, by the want of bigger houses and more living space. The population growth with increased household incomes and improved transportation developments are believed to be responsible for the increase of urban sprawl (1).

The main issues of the sprawl include: the failure to account for social value of open space that is converted to urban use, people not recognizing the social costs of commuting, and real estate developers not accounting for the public infrastructure costs they generate. Individually, these issues are completely unrelated, but together they are all effects of urban sprawl. Cities now only take up a small portion of land in the United States. Policy makers have difficulty determining a monetary value on the social benefits of open-space land; this allows developers to easily outbid farmers. Critics state that to remedy this problem, the government needs to implement a tax on the land that is converted to urban use. But, critics then oppose a tax by observing this would be a counterproductive task, since in order to assign a policy for land conservation, there must be a monetary value placed on the social benefits of open space.
Commuting is a norm for a lot of Americans. The want to live in a quiet, open area with a large house has driven people to endure the long commute to the cities for work. The failure to account for commuting costs institutes a market failure because it looks cheap to individuals that choose to commute on congested roadways, which people in society’s view are overused. In the article, critics propose instituting congestion tolls to deter commuters of urban sprawl, since the proper amount of tolls can be determined reliably. But critics suggests that congestion tolls may not fix urban sprawl because commuters will just switch to public transportation or employers may change their work hours to differ from the common work hours to avoid when the tolls are collected (1).
Most people do not realize the costs of public infrastructures associated with urban use. To accommodate for the growth of population constructed by new housing developments, governments must construct public roads, sewers, schools, parks, and recreation are to be built. One may think that homeowners pay for this infrastructure through the property taxes, but in actuality, a market failure arises. The property taxes on the new homeowners are less than the actual infrastructure costs generated, because the costs are shared among the city as a whole. This accelerates urban sprawl because homeowners can pay higher prices for houses since the property taxes are at average cost not marginal cost. In the article, critics propose that altering the financial systems of infrastructures, where the developer is made to pay the costs of the new infrastructure upfront, would greatly deter the growth of new housing developments. Critics then oppose this idea by stating that the impact fees historically have been challenged in court by the developers that the methods used to calculate the infrastructure costs are flawed, and do not properly state the true costs (1).
In the article, the use of urban growth boundaries was mentioned as a possible blunt remedy of urban sprawl. Critic’s state that UGBs are the easiest to enact, but it is hard to determine where exactly the boundaries for a city should be cut off. This could be detrimental to a city by increasing population density of the city and intensely increasing housing costs. They then oppose this idea saying that the best remedies of urban sprawl would be to attack the problem at the source by implementing taxes and policies. By attacking urban sprawl with those remedies, it can help the redevelopment of the decaying central cities. Critics condemn urban spatial spread, for it weakens social interaction of society and they want to return cities to high-density places of intermixing social bonds of people. Even though society’s demand for suburbanization has proven that urban sprawl is what they want, the critics believe that this will make society better off by reflecting formal urban lifestyles (1).

Urban sprawl is not only affecting American Society but is a worldwide problem. According to scientists, by 2030 cities will reach a combined size of the countries, France, Germany, and Spain, if current urban development patterns continue. With the world population increasing from 7 billion to 9 billion by the year 2050, mostly all the growth will be in urban developments (2). Transportation is essential for the development of urban development, but is a pressing concern for environmental health. To show how urban sprawl is truly affecting America, here are some statistics from the World Resource Institute: 46% of people in New York City have personal vehicles, compared to 95% of suburban households having personal vehicles. This is because urban developers do not use efficient designs, which making the simplest task require the use of cars. In the city, people on average spend 9% of their income on transportation, whereas suburban households spend on average 25% of their income on transportation (4). The United States is not the only country where urban sprawl is a growing issue. In developing countries, their share of private transportation will rise from 25% in the year 1995 to 48% in 2050 (3).

The growing environmental issues dealing with urban sprawl is what personally concerns me. I live in St. Mary’s County, which is a very rural area of the southern most part of Maryland and is about an hour and half away from Washington D.C. This area has always predominately been farmland, but, in the last decade, it has increasingly became urbanized with more housing developments taking over farmland. I know personally a lot of people in that area have jobs in the city and commute everyday to work. I desperately think that there needs to be public policies enacted to control urban sprawl, or in the next decade St. Mary’s farmland will be almost nonexistent.

Pollution, congestion, and depletion of agricultural land are all pressing effects of urban sprawl that needs to be fixed immediately before we harm the environment even more so. Personally having urban sprawl effect my life has let me witness the damaging effects that comes along with this problem. It is an issue that is uncontrolled by policies and regulations, and will only continually get out of hand the longer it goes unregulated.

WORKS CITED 1. “Urban Sprawl: Diagnosis and Remedies.” International Regional Science Review 23,2: 160-171. Brueckner (2000). 2. http://www.livescience.com/19302-swelling-cities-threaten-humanity.html. “Swelling Cities Threaten Humanity, Experts Say.” LiveScience Staff (2012). 3. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197397509000757. “Habitat International.” Pengjun Zhao (2010). 4. http://www.embarq.org/en/problem/urban-sprawl. “Urban Sprawl.” World Resource Institute (2011).