Sprawl
Basics
Paul Krugman Links Sprawl to Persistent Social Inequality
Is sprawl holding back social mobility in America? Paul Krugman didn't mince words yesterday in a follow-up to a post he wrote soon after the Detroit bankruptcy was announced. In that initial blog post, he compared Detroit to Pittsburgh and concluded that it wasn't just the loss of manufacturing jobs that hurt Detroit -- it was also the dispersement of jobs away from the city core. Yesterday, in a column titled "Stranded by Sprawl," he took the argument further, arguing, "Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger."
July 29, 2013
A Post-Housing-Bust Prescription for Federal Real Estate Programs
The federal government subsidizes housing and real estate to the tune of about $450 billion a year. Roughly 50 uncoordinated programs influence the housing market, often in unintended and insidious ways.
July 25, 2013
How Sprawl Got Detroit Into This Mess
It wasn't de-industrialization that bankrupted Detroit, wrote Paul Krugman in a New York Times column yesterday. If that was all there is to it, then how do you explain the fact that Pittsburgh, once so dependent on the steel industry, is now recovering? No, what brought Detroit to this low point, more than the loss of factory jobs, was decades of unsustainable development patterns.
July 22, 2013
Strong Towns’ Chuck Marohn: Why Suburban Growth Is a Ponzi Scheme
Chuck Marohn cofounded the non-profit Strong Towns in 2009. Since then he has steadily built an audience for his message about the financial folly of car-centric planning and growth. The suburban development pattern that has prevailed since the end of World War II has resulted in what Marohn calls "the growth Ponzi scheme" -- a system that isn't viable in the long run because it cannot bring in enough revenue to cover its costs.
July 22, 2013
William Fulton on Why Smart Growth Pays and Sprawl Decays
Earlier this week, Smart Growth America released an important study that illustrates how walkable development results in huge savings and significantly better returns for municipalities compared to car-centric development.
May 23, 2013
Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development
Smart growth could increase Fresno's tax revenue by 45 percent per acre. In Champaign, Illinois, it could save 23 percent per year on city services. Study after study has demonstrated: Walkable, mixed-use development is a much better deal for municipalities than car-oriented suburban development.
May 21, 2013
Millennials Will Drive More As They Age, But Still Less Than Their Parents
At some point over the past few years, a lot of my friends started moving to Silver Spring and Takoma Park and Falls Church. These inner-ring, transit-connected suburbs of DC are still far less compact and walkable than the neighborhoods my friends moved from. So they bought cars.
May 14, 2013
Streetfacts: Roads Are a Money Losing Proposition
The majority of the roads and highways built in America are simply bad investments. Continuing this pattern will only ensure that wasteful projects consume larger chunks of our federal, state, and local budgets, without addressing the real need for transportation options.
April 22, 2013
After Years of Unchecked Sprawl, Employment Inches Closer to the City
To hear some urbanists talk, you’d think the outer suburbs have been abandoned wholesale, lawn-mowers still running with no one to drive them, picket fences left open in the owners’ haste to beat it to the city.
April 19, 2013