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Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
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Quote:
Originally Posted by X72
I think sprawl is uncontrollable because the government wants it, developers want it, and most importantly a very large percentage of the American population wants it. The only way sprawl would stop is if the United States experienced an economic stock crash. That could either slow down or stop sprawl, at least temporarily. Only then would that shock the common American and the US government into re-thinking their priorities. Only at that time of great catastophy and struggle would people be malleable enough to accept a solution to save them from their fears, hopefully one that has very strong enviornmental safeguards in place. If people know that U.S. based system of capitalism fails, they will demand a different solution. Maybe the United Nations could step up onto the plate and introduce a new form of economy worldwide, that would put the enviornment as the number one priority, thus ending sprawl forever, perhaps even reversing it. I know this sounds like a movie but to me it seems plausible.
If an economic stock crash doesn't happen, I do not think it is realistically possible that the U.S. government could stop sprawl even if they wanted to. People would be extremely angry if the federal government passed a law stating there are to be no new subdivision development. Not to mention the oil and development companies would also be very angry as well.
Short of an economic stock crash happening or the federal government passing a law, they could impose a higher taxes on all people living in suburban developments or stop funding and subsidizing them. But even that would be a very hard sell and it would be unlikely to pass.
It seems to be an impossible situation because sprawl is wanted by many Americans and preserving the enviornment is anti-thetical to the American way of life. Only if you stop the American way of life can you stop sprawl and save the enviornment and 99% of Americans are not willing to do that.
"If"? What do you think has been happening for the last 3 years?
Sprawl is created as people move out fo teh city then businesses to serve them. Once the city connect they move forther out. The answer I see is for light rail allowing more stable areas and for cities to not annex them at all.Cities would be better offf to sevice the inner city areas than keep annexing to grow. Allthat does is leave inner city areas a poorer and poorer areaas time goes by.
All depends on geography and economy. Obviously, areas in the plains can sprawl endlessly, while mountainous areas not so much. Phoenix, for example, continues to grow because it has the space to grow. Phoenix can grow south, southwest, southeast, Northwest, North, and West. This is because areas like buckeye cover a large expanse of buildable flat land, just waiting to be urbanized. As with peoria, scottsdale, north hoenix, South Phoenix, Sun Lake, Queen Creek, so on. The sprawl will continue until the PHX area meets the Casa Grande Area!
I grew up in a great neighborhood with large old homes & average-sized back yards. We were only about 2 miles from downtown Portland & I loved exploring the city. The majority of my experience with the sprawling suburbs has been crawling through them on the way to a more distant destination. The one thing that has always puzzled me the most is how suburbanites can stand being stuck in all of that horrible traffic? Most people don't live close enough to their local grocer or drugstore to walk. So they sit in their cars waiting 15 minutes to get thru the intersection a block away. I hope that as urban areas continue to develop light rail, higher-density suburban housing will develop around the stations. Vancouver, BC is an excellent example of what can be developed around light rail stations.
puerco - the average commute time in the United States is 25 minutes. The overwhelming majority of people would rather spend 25 minutes sitting in their cars than standing in an overcrowded subway car (want to conduct a poll? Heh). The majority of suburbanites work in the suburbs and thus do not have to deal with particularly bad traffic jams.
Yes, there are plenty of anecdotal examples of people who spend 100 minutes one way commuting to their workplace downtown. Yes, most people would question their priorities in life. But they certainly do not represent a typical suburbanite or, for that matter, an exurbanite.
Look at Kansas City, with the metro population of around 1 million. The largest corporation HQ'd in Kansas City is Sprint telecom, which is based in a deep southern suburb of Kansas City. Plenty of people could live 40 miles south of KC downtown ("scary exurbia"), yet be only within a 15 minute commute of Sprint. Think of all the services (hospitals, accounting firms and, of course, retail/car shops) that are located all over the suburbs and provide tons of upper middle, middle and working class jobs. Don't forget - something like 80% of all Americans are employed in services now and the services for suburbanites are located overwhelmingly in the suburbs. The overhwleming majority of all new office space built in the nation in the last 10 years or so has been built in the suburbs. Exurbs are growing orders of magnitudes faster than moneyed urban areas - statistically, there's simply no such thing as "gentrification" in the US - it's a drop in a bucket.
The future of America is people living and working in the suburbs.
This is how corporate America fights traffic jams - by moving jobs to the suburbs, not returning people to the cities.
Funny thing about averages--half the folks making up that 25 minute average take more than 25 minutes getting to work. And overcrowded subway cars are not the only public transit option--for those who live in the city and work in the suburbs, or don't work 9 to 5, a "reverse commute" or off-hours commute on public transit is usually on far less crowded trains or buses. Just as every car commute isn't in a traffic jam, every public transit commute isn't in a crowded car.
Corporate America fights traffic jams by convincing government to subsidize freeways to cheap agricultural or woodland areas, builds a "power center" or corporate "campus." Taxpayers foot the bill for that solution, but corporate America calls it "free market."
The problem is that those new highways don't stay traffic-free, as their presence spurs more subsidized development along their length. Because the highway is the only way to get there, they rapidly fill up to capacity. Before long, traffic jams and the other things people sought to avoid by moving to "the country" appear. Eventually the "exurb" is part of the city, the same way that streetcar suburbs were overtaken a century ago, except instead of skyscrapers, the exurb is dominated by landscrapers. The only solution is to keep building outward.
Of course, that pattern can only be maintained as long as there is plenty of space, gobs of taxpayer money, and lots of cheap oil. Eventually the system breaks down, like all positive-feedback mechanisms do.
puerco - the average commute time in the United States is 25 minutes. The overwhelming majority of people would rather spend 25 minutes sitting in their cars than standing in an overcrowded subway car (want to conduct a poll? Heh). The majority of suburbanites work in the suburbs and thus do not have to deal with particularly bad traffic jams.
I'm not talking about commuting traffic. I'm talking about going about one's daily business traffic. I have never visited anyone in the suburbs (at a decent hour) when the traffic wasn't nightmarish. I can walk the 11 blocks to my grocery store and back a lot quicker than my suburban counterpart can drive, find parking & return home the similar 11 block distance.
It must be fairly unpleasant to go to the store every day.. Or haul back a dozen bags or so (milk? soda? er.. potting earth? heh) 11 blocks at a time. Let's not make stuff up - driving is a lot faster than walking and bringing back heavy items in a trunk is a lot easier than carrying them by hand. Dense neighborhoods have their advantages, but the ease of grocery shopping is not one of them.
wburg - highways are financed with gasoline taxes (which at one time were excessive enough to be siphoned off to subsidize public transportation). So don't pretend to be a martyr. It's the drivers who pay for the roads that they use, not non-car owning urbanites. Now, ALL government public transportation depends heavily on non-user subsidies in this country. That's what we're forced to subsidize.
It must be fairly unpleasant to go to the store every day.. Or haul back a dozen bags or so (milk? soda? er.. potting earth? heh) 11 blocks at a time. Let's not make stuff up - driving is a lot faster than walking and bringing back heavy items in a trunk is a lot easier than carrying them by hand. Dense neighborhoods have their advantages, but the ease of grocery shopping is not one of them.
wburg - highways are financed with gasoline taxes (which at one time were excessive enough to be siphoned off to subsidize public transportation). So don't pretend to be a martyr. It's the drivers who pay for the roads that they use, not non-car owning urbanites. Now, ALL government public transportation depends heavily on non-user subsidies in this country. That's what we're forced to subsidize.
I've read that gasoline taxes cover only about half the cost of the interstate highway system. At the state level it varies. Non-drivers in Ohio, for example, are really screwed.
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