Policy Study No. 251 February 1999 The Sprawling of America: By Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D. Executive Summary Urban sprawl has sparked a national debate over land-use policy. At least 19 states have established either state growth-management laws or task forces to protect farmland and open space. Dozens of cities and counties across the nation have adopted urban growth boundaries in order to contain development in existing areas and prevent the spread of suburbanization to outlying and rural areas. Despite widespread concern over sprawl, a clear definition remains illusive in public debate. The debate over sprawl is driven primarily by general concerns that low-density residential development threatens farmland and open space, increases public-service costs, encourages people and wealth to leave central cities, and degrades the environment. Evidence on suburbanization and low-density development suggests suburbanization does not significantly threaten the quality of life for most people, and land development can be managed more effectively through real-estate markets than comprehensive land-use planning. An analysis of land-use trends at the national and state levels reveals:
Once considered a benign outgrowth of higher incomes and the search for the American Dream—homeownership, a private lot, and a car—suburbanization, or sprawl, has become a lightening rod for government activism. Rather than adopt comprehensive land-use planning—which circumvents real-estate markets—or urban growth boundaries that put some land off limits to development, this study recommends an alternative, market-oriented approach grounded in the following principles:
The dangers of giving into antigrowth sentiment are significant since, by 2010, the U.S. economy is expected to grow by 11.5 percent, population by 11 percent, and employment by 15 percent. Current residents and citizens will expect their quality of life to increase with their incomes. These trends require accommodating rather than restricting growth. Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Suburbanization and Public Policy Part 3: The Many Faces of Urban Sprawl
B. Land Use in the United States C. Urban Development D. Historical Trends in Land Use Part 4: The State of the Nation’s Farmland
B. Farmland Loss and Urbanization C. Prime Farmland D. Farmland Loss and the Food Supply E. Farm Output, Land Prices, and the Real-Estate Market F. Conclusion Part 5: Suburbanization and the Cost of Government
B. Cost of Community Service Studies C. Agriculture and the Cost of Community Services D. Compact Development E. Conclusion Part 6: Flight from the Big Cities Part 7: Environmental Effects of Sprawl
B. Aesthetics and Open Space C. Open Space and Urban Growth Boundaries Part 8: Policy Implications Other Relevant Reason Public Policy Institute Studies
Appendix B: Land in Farms (thousands of acres) Appendix C: Change in Land in Farms by Decade Part 1 "Sprawl is a plague on the land." "Urban sprawl is like a cancer that doesn’t respect city and county boundaries." "People are looking at other ways to tame the monster called suburban sprawl." "Sprawl is having a devastating effect on our quality of life." "Sprawl is a disease eating away at the heart of America." These are just a few of the reactions to a phenomenon occurring in suburban and rural areas across the nation. Once considered a benign outgrowth of higher incomes and the search for the American Dream—homeownership, a private lot, and a car—suburbanization, or sprawl, has become a lightening rod for government activism. The media and other pundits on urban development use the term "sprawl" to conjure up disorder, chaos, and irrational decision making. In fact, some suggest that urbanization’s negative impact is beyond debate. "Evidence is mounting," notes one architect and planning commissioner, "that the sprawl patterns, with their innate geometric and density inefficiencies, have become unaffordable." Growth management has surged into the mainstream of public debate. The question now, for some, is how containing sprawl can be accomplished. This report challenges the emerging conventional wisdom on urban sprawl, suburbanization, and the need to regulate land development through top-down planning. Through an empirical assessment of land-use trends at the national, state, and local levels, we put the nation’s march toward suburbanization in a broader context. A dynamic view of cities and land development is crucial for understanding urban development and suburbanization. A dynamic view of cities and suburbanization requires a different role for public policy than is currently evident in the mainstream debate over urban sprawl, its consequences, how to preserve open spaces, and ensure that diverse urban communities thrive. While suburbanization may create nuisances, such as increased traffic congestion, noise, or loss of open space in formerly rural areas, these issues can be addressed directly through transportation policy, private open-space initiatives, or other policies directed at specific problems rather than through more general attempts to limit urbanization. Part 2 Suburbanization and Public Policy One indicator of an issue's importance is the degree to which state and local governments have taken formal action to address it. By this standard, land-use policy has emerged as a national issue. More and more states are addressing urban sprawl through legislation and task forces. Just three states—Hawaii, Vermont, and Oregon—had statewide growth-management plans in place in the 1970s (Table 1). By the 1980s, six more states had joined the list by either adopting statewide growth-management plans or initiating task forces to study farmland loss. In the 1990s, ten more states began addressing sprawl issues formally although not always through statewide growth-management laws. Half the states in the 1990s established task forces which most often recommended some form of "sprawl containment" to protect farmland and the local agricultural industry. California’s Central Valley, which includes Sacramento, convened a task force to "recommend policies to conserve and protect resources vital to the long-term economic health and productivity of agriculture in the Central Valley." The task force’s report, released in July 1998, called for the creation of mandatory "buffers" between urban and nonurban areas to protect agricultural land, new subsidies for research and agricultural production, and higher taxes to discourage the conversion of agricultural land. Indiana and Iowa initiated their farmland-preservation task forces in 1998. Thus, by 1998, 38 percent of the nation’s states had formally addressed land-use and open-space issues through task forces or growth-management plans. This list excludes local cities and regions that have initiated growth-management policies and actions in the absence of statewide initiatives. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, urban growth boundaries—prohibitions on land development beyond politically established lines—have been adopted in 19 cities to prevent the development of farmland. More than a dozen cities in the San Francisco Bay area have adopted growth boundaries since 1996. Nationwide, growth boundaries exist in more than 50 cities and counties. The trend toward more government regulation of land development is likely to increase as debates over suburbanization continue to shape policy discussions in states as wide-ranging as New Jersey, Utah, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and even Montana. A. Suburbanization and Real-Estate Markets Another side to this issue does not receive much attention in the media or public debate. While critics have focused on the visible effects of suburbanization—more houses and people, loss of farmland—urbanization represents the creation of new communities and the transformation of old ones. This transformation of community often translates into political tension and conflicts: the farming community gives way to the rural-residential community; the rural-residential community gives way to a full-fledged suburb; the suburb may even give way to a larger, economically and socially diverse city. These conflicts often overshadow suburban-ization’s benefits. Development results from the entrepreneurial use and re-use of basic economic resources—land, labor, and capital—to enhance the quality of life and standard of living of people. This process, even when it manifests itself in low-density housing, is not new. People have been suburbanizing at least since the 13th century when they fled disease and unsanitary conditions in the city. Suburbanization was, in a sense, the product of the first environmental movement: by moving out of large central cities, people moved to healthier living environments. In the United States, this decentralization manifested itself as low-density residential, commercial, and industrial development. What sets the modern era of suburbanization apart from the historical trend is how quickly this process has occurred. The automobile, cheap gasoline, and the interstate highway system ushered in an unprecedented period of personal mobility. Transportation costs plummeted, making it easier for people to live further away from an urban core. When these factors were combined with rising family incomes and cheap mortgage lending (another subsidy), the demand for suburban housing increased dramatically. The average working family could now afford, like managers and business owners before them, larger homes on separate lots further away from their jobs. This process also allowed people to move to smaller communities where government was closer to home. With the decentralization of jobs and the growth of suburban cities, an era of truly competitive local government was born. B. Public Policy and Urban Sprawl Despite the trend toward more control over land development, the appropriate policy response is still largely a matter of public debate. The record of other states shows a multitude of options. Oregon and Florida opted for top-down, regional planning where population densities and development patterns are supposedly guided by state goals or land-use regulation. Georgia implemented a statewide system of growth management that focuses efforts and decisionmaking at the local level, making state goals subordinate to local control. New Jersey adopted a system for directing new development into growth corridors and prioritizing infrastructure investment based on a hierarchy of urban "centers" in 1992. Maryland has revised its growth-management law to enact a "Smart Growth" plan that favors an incentive-based approach for guiding land development through state infrastructure spending guidelines and other programs. Which direction is most suitable for local and state governments? We address this question by assessing land-use trends in the United States, evaluating their consequences for residents and citizens, and developing policy recommendations for state and local public officials. Popular wisdom attributes to "sprawl," or low-density development, problems that often stem from other factors. Public policy, however, should be grounded in tangible impacts, not misperceptions and misunderstandings about the nature of land development. Part 3 The Many Faces of Urban Sprawl What is urban sprawl? The answer to this question will determine what kinds of issues should be addressed and what types of recommendations should be followed. Yet a clear definition has not emerged as part of the urban sprawl debate. Urban planners and other academic researchers have attempted to define urban sprawl, but few of the definitions have gained general acceptance. Planner Reid Ewing, one of the architects of Florida's statewide growth-management plan, believes that sprawl can be characterized by four factors:
This definition has received some popular support. In Arizona, Citizens for Growth Management attempted to get an initiative on the statewide ballot in 1998 that adopted this definition: Urban sprawl means urban development that occurs in a rural or fringe area, and that typically manifests itself in one or more of the following patterns: A) Leapfrog development, B) Ribbon or strip development, C) Development separated from continuous urban development by vacant, low density, or rural land, and D) Development that invades lands important to environmental and natural resource protection. Yet even this is an incomplete list and an unsatisfactory characterization of the development process. For example, objections to scattered or leapfrog development are often rooted in static concepts of urban development. Scattered sites are eventually connected through infill—usually commercial and higher-density residential development (see box). "Leap Frog" Development May be Efficient in a Dynamic Society Bellbrook, a community of 7,800 near Dayton, Ohio, offers a classic example of the modern suburb. Its recent history also demonstrates the importance of understanding cities in a dynamic context. The town began as a farming community with a few commercial businesses in its downtown core about 15 miles from a city of over 250,000 people. Over a period of four decades, people and businesses decentralized, and the land between the city and the town developed into an integrated economic and social region. Bellbrook experienced its first large-scale subdivision development in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The houses were small by contemporary standards: three-bedroom homes ranging from 1,200 to 1,800 square feet without basements. The homes were on half-acre lots and purchased, for the most part, by well-paid blue-collar workers. Most workers were traveling 45 minutes into the city to their jobs, usually along two-lane roads passing miles of cornfields and woods. As the suburbs closer to Dayton developed, and family incomes increased so they could afford more space in smaller communities, people moved out of the big city. By 1973, Bellbrook became a city in part to qualify for federal grants to finance a city water and sewer system (an important subsidy for new development). The city continued to grow throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, a beltway around Dayton was completed with an interchange just two miles from downtown Bellbrook. By this time, the southern suburbs were almost completely developed. Access to a four-lane limited-access highway, combined with the population growth of Bellbrook and other nearby suburbs, made land along major streets and roads viable for commercial uses. By the late 1990s, retail and commercial development lined major roads connecting downtown Bellbrook with the interstate highway and the city of Dayton. Bellbrook had evolved from a small rural community to an upscale white-collar community anchored around hundreds of relatively small "starter" homes. The evolution of Bellbrook is typical of the growth of new communities and exposes the basic problem with arguments criticizing "leap frog" or "scattered site" development as unorderly or haphazard. That two communities are economically and socially disconnected at one point in time does not mean that they will always be. In a dynamic, evolutionary society, some communities eventually become connected and socially integrated. This process is not disorderly, but the resulting urbanization may present visual and lifestyle changes that some people dislike. This pattern is often unpredictable. Bellbrook's growth depended on a myriad of other factors, including general development patterns favorable toward areas south of the City of Dayton, the construction of an interstate highway interchange, and its proximity to other growing suburbs. Its growth as a largely bedroom community was a result of a dynamic real-estate market that evolved as the region transformed itself from rural to suburban in character. Concerns over sprawl, writes Ewing, center on the impacts of land uses, not the specific characteristics of urban development. "It is the impacts of development that render development patterns undesirable," he says, "not the patterns themselves." So, the problem with suburbanization for many planners is not the mere existence of single-family houses on large lots. Rather, infrastructure costs, congestion, "imbalanced" economic development, and environmental impacts motivate concerns about continuous low-density development. Definitions of sprawl in the popular press and public debates have tended to take on more general meanings than those found in academic journals and research monographs. Many definitions are so general and value laden that their usefulness for policy discussions are limited. For example, the Pennsylvania 21st Century Environment Commission defined sprawl as "a spreading, low-density, automobile dependent development pattern of housing, shopping centers, and business parks that wastes land needlessly." The report does not discuss how "needless" or "wasteful" land development is identified. In other cases, definitions serve narrowly focused interests or concerns. When asked to define urban sprawl, a senior official in a state farm bureau in the Midwest said "fragmentation of farmland." Urban economist John F. McDonald captures the spirit of most popular definitions of urban sprawl when he characterizes it as:
Local Priorities Define How Suburbanization Policies Are Targeted Policy responses to suburbanization have generally tracked with local concerns about low-density development, segregation of uses, and automobile dependence. In areas where open space or farmland preservation have a higher priority, public policy has focused on "compact" development strategies. In Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado, for example, farmland preservation task forces have recommended programs to purchase and preserve farmland as open space while alternative transit issues have received less attention. In areas where urban revitalization is paramount, public policies have included incentives to live close to the work place. Maryland combined a "brownfield program" to encourage the redevelopment of inner-city land with financial incentives for people to move closer to their work. (Thirty-three states have adopted programs to encourage the redevelopment of inner-city land.) In some states, congestion is a significant issue, prompting local policymakers to consider limits on growth to reduce automobile use. Not surprisingly, rail transit is promoted as an alternative to automobile use in highly congested parts of the nation, including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, and big cities such as Philadelphia. Some states and localities, of course, give equal weight to each of these issues. The most-comprehensive example of this may be Portland, Oregon, where the regional planning authority, Metro, is attempting to redesign the metropolitan area for higher densities, mixed uses, and rail transit while preserving open space and farmland at the city perimeters. Many people think sprawl is synonymous with suburbanization: the process of moving out of congested central cities into outlying areas. Popular criticism of sprawl is often a reaction to the recent suburbanization and decentralization of people in metropolitan areas. People are leaving congested, dense cities for less-dense suburban locations, making suburban locations more crowded and congested. For this reason, sprawl is defined in this study as the continued suburbanization of a region's population. Another way of characterizing this process is thinking of sprawl as the "transitional period between rural and urban land use." Sprawl ends up as an "I know it when I see it" problem. This is problematic from the perspective of public policy. Without an understanding of what sprawl is or whether it is even "bad" per se, a clear policy response cannot be developed. Indeed, markets create order out of seemingly random decisions every day by matching consumer preferences with products and services supplied by entrepreneurs and producers. Given its vague and value-laden image in the public debate, sprawl (equated with suburbanization) is often mischaracterized as chaotic and disorderly. Richard Moe, president of the American Farmland Trust, a historic preservation interest group, has persistently criticized suburbanization as a seemingly random, unordered process that can only be avoided through comprehensive planning. Moe refers to low-density suburbanization as a product of the "random collision of economic forces" and calls for "rational" policies—comprehensive regional planning—to replace it. "Communities," he recently told a crowd in Fresno, California, "should be shaped by choice, not chance." On the East Coast, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman said in 1996 that without New Jersey's state plan to control development "we surrender our future to little more than the random will of those who stand to reap short-term benefits at the expense of New Jersey's long-term well-being." Others simply characterize sprawl as irrational. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening recently admonished his citizens to change their ways: Maryland's efforts to battle the sprawl monster date back nearly one-quarter of a century. The four governors before me—starting as far back as 24 years ago—also fought to tame suburban sprawl. . . . We can choose from among several different paths. The status quo, which Americans everywhere will tell you clearly is not working. Or, our new path, the path that will lead to sensible, smart growth and a healthy environment. But land development, even low-density suburban development, is not haphazard, random, careless, or even irregular. Real-estate markets coordinate thousands of consumer and producer decisions each day and signal important information about costs and revenues through real-estate prices. The logic of the market works this way: property owners, such as farmers, sell their land to developers. Developers buy the land because they believe it has value for alternative uses, such as homes, office buildings, or shopping malls. Developers improve the property or sell it to businesses and families who are willing to pay the price and develop the land themselves. This is a very rational process and is implicit in every economic market, from selling food in grocery stores to selling automobiles. Indeed, markets create order out of seemingly random decisions every day by matching consumer preferences with products and services supplied by entrepreneurs and producers. These decisions are coordinated through the price system, and substantial empirical evidence supports the role of markets in this function. "Rather than being determined by a process which indiscriminately consumes agricultural land," note authors of an early assessment of land development trends, "urban sizes are the result of an orderly market equilibrium where competing claims to the land are appropriately balanced." Thus markets transform land from one use to another using the price system to guide buyers and sellers. Of course, not everyone likes the outcomes generated through these decentralized, individual transactions. In market economies, the value people place on different goods, services, and resources are reflected in prices. These values are a product of the choices people and families make about what goods and services they want to buy given their income. This is a dynamic process. Decisions about what land to buy, what land to sell, and at what price are based on expectations. No one guarantees that these expectations will be met. Their reward for correctly assessing consumer needs will be a profit, provided they produce the goods and services efficiently. Entrepreneurs fail if they incorrectly assess the state of the market. Land developers face these constraints and potential rewards everyday just like other businesses. Land markets, of course, do not work in a complete free market. Public policies distort incentives in prices in many different ways. Tax incentive and abatement programs often encourage businesses to locate in some cities rather than others. Home-mortgage deductions encourage people to invest in new housing rather than renovate existing homes. Minimum lot-size zoning mandates densities lower than what markets would often provide on their own. Local governments often price the new public services and infrastructure well below the actual costs of providing them. In addition, land development sometimes creates nuisances and other unintended impacts on neighbors, also called "externalities," such as congestion, environmental degradation, or simple "ugliness." Nevertheless, even with these caveats, real-estate markets have generally matched people with communities and housing fairly well. More importantly, local planning systems can be modified to address specific concerns over nuisances and other neighborhood harms without circumventing the real-estate market. B. Land Use in the United States Nationally, 4.8 percent of the total land area is developed, inclusive of federally owned lands. The median—the mid-point when all states are ranked by their degree of development—is just 5.2 percent. The most developed states are in New England (Table 2). Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have developed about 25 percent or more of their land. New Jersey is the most urbanized state (based on land-use), with more than 30 percent of its land area developed. Thus, despite centuries of urbanization, no state in the United States has more than one-third its land developed for urban uses. More than three-quarters have more than 90 percent of their land in rural areas (see Figure 1). The national data confirm that the vast majority of states are largely rural in character. Defining Urban Uses The U.S. Bureau of the Census considers an area "urban" if it meets certain density and population criteria. For example, an urbanized area or "place" must have a population of at least 2,500 people and adjacent areas must have a population density of 1,000 people per square mile, or 1.56 people per acre. Thus, a family of four occupying a 2.5-acre parcel of land could be included in an urbanized area while a family of four on a five-acre parcel of land might not (depending on the proximity of other households and land uses). An alternative land-use classification system is used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NAAS). NAAS classifies land based on whether it is used as: 1) pasture, range or grasslands, 2) cropland, 3) forest, or 4) special uses and "other." Special uses and other represent catch-all classifications for any land not used as forest, pasture, grassland, or cropland. Special uses consist of roads, highways, airports, federal and state parks, wilderness areas, urban areas, wildlife refuges, national defense, and industrial uses. "Other" uses consist of industrial and commercial sites in rural areas, cemeteries, golf courses, mining areas, marshes, swamps, deserts, and other unclassified land. In 1992, these two residual categories of land use represented 15.1 percent of the land area in the lower 48 states (Alaska and Hawaii excluded), up from 14 percent in 1982 and 12.6 percent in 1974. Neither of these definitions classify land by its suitability for development. Land may not be developable for several reasons, including soil composition, elevation, slope, existence of open water, or because it is in environmentally sensitive areas. Some of these factors are economic more than topographical limits: development occurs on steep slopes in mountainous areas (e.g., Pittsburgh or coastal regions) and world cities such as Hong Kong have used in-fill to create developable area. Still, a measure of land economically available would be a better measure of the limits on future development and would provide a better measure of resource scarcity. What is even more striking is the degree to which state populations have urbanized. Even though 68 percent of New Jersey's land is undeveloped, almost nine out of ten people live in urban areas (Table 2). In Missouri, a state with 95 percent of its land undeveloped, almost 70 percent of its population lives in an urbanized area. Of the ten most urbanized states, all except North Carolina and Pennsylvania have 70 percent or more of their population living in urban areas. Of the ten least urbanized states—those with 97 percent or more of their land in rural areas—all have more than half their populations living in urbanized areas. Nevada, which is 99 percent rural, houses 88.3 percent of its population in urbanized areas.
Concerns about the rapid development of land—and widely reported decline in farmland—are directly tied to things people see every day. Residents observe the manifestation of suburbanization every time they drive to work or go shopping because most people live in a relatively concentrated part of the state. Three-quarters of the nation's population lives in urban areas that make up less than 3.5 percent of the nation's land area (see box). Urbanization and Land-use: The Case of Michigan Michigan, the nation's 11th most-urbanized state, contains 37.4 million acres of land and keeps unusually detailed track of local land-use patterns. The state's metropolitan areas include 10.4 million acres, or 26.8 percent of the total land area and house 82 percent of the state's population. Overall, 22.7 percent of Michigan's land is devoted to uses other than farmland, forest, and water such as urban uses, parks, golf courses, and roads. Most counties in Michigan have substantial tracts of open space, pasture, and farmland. Within these metropolitan areas, however, almost 60 percent of the land is rural or agricultural in character. Not surprisingly, central-city counties have the highest proportion of land in nonurban or nonagricultural uses. Even these counties devote just 44.3 percent of their land to nonagricultural uses on average, while suburban counties surrounding central cities dedicate 38.9 percent of their land to nonrural uses. High-density cities house most of a metropolitan area's population on very small portions of a region's land area. Ann Arbor, for example, houses 38.7 percent of Washtenaw County's population on just 3.6 percent of its land area. One-third of Washtenaw County's land use was devoted to cropland and 17.8 percent to forest in 1992. Kalamazoo houses 35.9 percent of its county's population on just 4.2 percent of its land area. More than half of Kalamazoo County's land area, 53.9 percent, was devoted to cropland and forest use in 1992. Thus, about 89 percent of Michigan's land area is devoted exclusively to rural uses or exists in rural counties. Counties closest to population and employment centers tend to experience the highest levels of land development. Thus, the transition from agricultural uses to suburban and urban uses is very visible and, as in all social transformations, becomes a source of conflict in local communities. As cities grow and more residents commute outside their city of residence to work, the rural atmosphere gives way to the concerns of family-oriented suburbanites. These increasing densities imply a diversification of the local economy as residential and commercial uses become more prevalent in the local real-estate market and economy. These shifts in population reveal another important aspect of the politics and economics of growth. Big cities are losing people, reducing their overall density. Not surprisingly, some observers have interpreted the growth of suburban areas as a "beggar-thy-neighbor" effect where suburban growth is a function of the central city's decline. But the problems of central cities are far more complex than this criticism of suburbanization suggests, as Part 6 will point out. Simply keeping people from moving away will not address the issues that are pushing them into the suburbs in the first place. Despite centuries of urbanization, no state in the United States has more than one-third its land developed for urban uses. Many people believe that suburbanization increased dramatically in the 1980s. To some degree, this is because proponents of growth control popularize slogans that distort long-term and actual trends. For example, state task forces on farmland preservation popularize terms such as "10 acres an hour" (Michigan and Colorado) or "5 acres an hour" (Ohio) as rallying cries for restricting land development. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, in promoting his state's Smart Growth initiatives, lamented the "loss of community" in suburbs and exaggerated the fragmentation of community: "People visiting with one another on front porches; neighbors helping neighbors; everyone keeping an eye on each others' children; this simply cannot happen on 5-acre lots where people live for years without ever knowing their neighbors." (The governor does not mention that the average lot size in Maryland is slightly larger than a half-acre.) Task force reports seldom note that the rate of farmland loss has moderated in most states since the 1970s and that urban land development may account for less than one-third of this decline. Indeed, historical loss rates are misleading because they do not account for moderating influences and the dynamics of land markets. For example, declining household sizes and the emergence of dual-income families are reducing the demand for housing in rural areas. While higher incomes are fueling the demand for larger houses, two-income families tend to locate in more urbanized areas as a mid-point between commutes and to facilitate family-related activities such as after-school athletics. In addition, full-cost pricing for infrastructure would affect the cost of housing on the urban fringe, requiring families to evaluate the trade-offs between buying an existing home versus building a new home. D. Historical Trends in Land Use Nationally, the most rapid rate of suburbanization occurred between 1920 and 1950. A study of more than three hundred fast-growth rural counties in the 1970s and 1980s—those on the fringe of development and most symbolic of sprawl—found land-use trends moderating. Population densities increased as communities matured. In the 1970s, for example, the average household used 0.87 acres of urban land. By the 1980s, consumption of land by the average household had declined to .71 acres "as growth occurred and developed densities increased." These moderating trends are likely to continue as national population growth rates decrease. "The net effect of changing household number, household characteristics, and economic constraints on demand for land," note economists Marlow Vesterby and Ralph Heimlich, "is likely to mean less conversion of land for urban uses in the future." Double-income households may also lead to higher-density living as families locate in established communities to ensure access to two jobs. A survey of 3,583 prospective homebuyers by the National Association of Home Builders found men were willing to travel 35 minutes and women 30 minutes from their home to their work. Research on suburban migration suggests that many families, particularly blue-collar families, prefer higher-density neighborhoods but move out of cities to take advantage of better housing and schools (see Part 6). One measure of how fast states are urbanizing is to calculate a "sprawl index." The sprawl index compares a state's population growth with its rate of urbanization. Though the index is a flawed indicator of urban sprawl (see box), it captures what many observers fear most about land development: the loss of open space as people and families use more and more land for housing. A sprawl index number greater than one indicates a state's land is being developed at a rate faster than its population is growing. From 1970 to 1992, the last year for which reliable national data on urban land-use trends are available, the national population grew by 26 percent. The number of developed acres, however, grew by 90 percent. The sprawl index for the nation would be 3.52. Thus, for every 1 percent increase in population, developed acreage increased by 3.5 percent. The nation would be considered "sprawling." In fact, all states had sprawl indexes greater than one during this period (see Appendix A). Breaking the data down by time period, however, reveals a different story. From 1970 to 1982, the median sprawl index for the nation was 5.03. By 1982 to 1992, the national median had fallen to 2.75. Individual states experienced substantial volatility from one period to the next. Of the ten most "sprawling" states for the 1970-82 era (based on the sprawl index), six were not in the top half of the nation for 1982 to 1992 (Table 3). Pennsylvania was the second fastest developing from 1970 to 1982 but fell to eleventh fastest from 1982 to 1992. This moderating trend is also clear when national trends in major land uses since 1945 are compared (Figure 2). The dominant land uses remain grassland, pasture and range, forest, and cropland. Despite widely cited reports on the pace of urbanization, urban land remains a very small part of overall land use. Indeed, the rapid rate of urbanization is largely a function of its small statistical base: an increase from 3 percent to 6 percent in urban land represents a 100 percent growth rate. Rural parks and wildlife areas have increased as dramatically as urbanized land. By 1992, 86.9 million acres were in protected rural areas and wildlife areas while 57.9 million acres were urbanized.
Source: See Appendix A. Is the Sprawl Index an Adequate Measure of Sprawl? One of the difficulties surrounding the debate over urban sprawl is developing an accurate way to measure it and its effects. Some analysts have used a "sprawl index" to measure how quickly land is being developed for urban purposes. In a nutshell, the index compares population growth with urbanization. Urbanization is measured by the amount of land devoted to urban uses. If urbanization outstrips a state's population growth, its sprawl index will be greater than one. If, on the other hand, a state's population growth outstrips urbanization, the index will be less than one. If a state's population growth matches its rate of urbanization, the index will equal one. Generally, an index greater than one suggests sprawl exists. A complete list of states ranked by their sprawl index is contained in Appendix A. Whether this index is, in fact, a relevant measure of sprawl is both an empirical and a subjective question. A sprawl index was calculated by the author for each state to determine whether it was statistically related to a few key land-use and growth indicators:
An index at the metropolitan area level would be a more appropriate measure of this relationship. Unfortunately, consistent and reliable data on changes in open space, farmland, urbanized area, and output are not available at the metropolitan area. Thus, state level data were used to test for the relationship between the sprawl index and these measures of open space and economic development. The results are disappointing for those hoping the index is useful as a measure of the negative aspects of sprawl. The only variable the index correlates with consistently is population growth. The index appears to track well with the pace of urbanization during the period 1982 to 1992, but is not significantly correlated with reductions in farmland or pasture in any period. Thus, the index appears to capture development pressures, but not whether sprawl erodes open space or consistently influences the pace of urbanization. Other factors must explain changes in farmland, land urbanization, and population growth.
The national and statewide data, then, suggest that suburbanization and low-density development have not seriously jeopardized the rural character of most states. Moreover, state trends in urban land use suggest that the pace of urbanization in rural areas is slowing. Over time, the pace of urbanization in any single location appears to constantly adjust, with high-growth areas becoming low-growth areas and vice versa. Nevertheless, concerns about the impact of suburbanization on the state's open space and agricultural sector have persisted, particularly since some analysts have claimed that new development displaces some of the nation's most productive farmland. Concerns about urban sprawl are driven by local concerns about open space and the loss of rural character. Other important issues concern the impacts on government costs and efficiency as well as the effects of public policy when it distorts market signals and subsidizes development patterns such as low-density residential development. The next sections evaluate these concerns more fully. Part 4 The State of the Nation’s Farmland Concerns about the loss of farmland drive much of the sprawl debate. Issues range from a general fear of less open space to concerns about the state of the nation’s food supply. At least seven states have initiated task forces to find ways to preserve farmland and protect their agricultural industry. Most statewide growth-management laws include farmland preservation goals. Often, urbanization is cited as the chief cause of farmland loss in the states. These fears have become part of general perceptions on land use. Suburbanization, observed Vice President Al Gore, can’t help pushing local farmers out of business, since family farms can’t pay the rising property taxes. Orchards and dairy farms go under; the commute gets even longer; and nobody wins, least of all our children. America . . . could become the largest net importer of food, instead of the world’s largest exporter by the next century. As part of an Earth Day event in Utah, members of a local Future Farmers of America submitted essays on open space and farmland. Despite the fact 99 percent of Utah’s land area is undeveloped, a newspaper noted the "common theme was a fear there will be no land for them to farm in the future." A. Historical Trends in Farmland For many, the loss of farmland is best illustrated by the loss of farms. Most states have experienced a persistent drop. Nationally, the number of farms fell from 6.4 million in 1910 to 2.0 million in 1997, a 67.8 percent drop. The largest decline occurred during the 1950s when 1.6 million farms disappeared. The dramatic decline in the number of farms is misleading, however, because the average farm size has increased. Many farms disappeared through consolidation within the industry. Land in farms, potentially a more direct indicator of open-space loss, fell from 1.2 billion acres in 1950 to 968 million acres in 1997 (Figure 3). At first glance, this decline might seem startling: farmers are growing food on about 20 percent less land. A more detailed analysis of farmland-loss trends is less alarming.
The most significant losses occurred during the 1960s. The nation lost 7.3 million acres of farmland annually that decade (Figure 4). After the 1970s, farmland loss moderated. The nation lost about 6.3 million acres per year in the 1970s and 5.2 million acres in the 1980s. Annual farmland loss was cut almost in half during the 1990s, averaging 2.6 million acres lost each year.
Thus, projections of future farmland losses based on historical patterns are unreliable. Take the case of Michigan. Michigan had 12.7 million acres in farmland in 1970. During the 1960s, the state lost 2.7 million acres of farmland. If this acreage loss had been sustained, Michigan would have run out of farmland within 50 years. Farmland losses moderated to 1.3 million acres during the 1970s. At that pace, Michigan would have run out of farmland within 100 years. Now, at 1990s acreage loss rates, Michigan has more than two centuries of farmland left. Of course, even characterizing trends in this way is not meaningful. Rates of decline may continue to slow, or even reverse. Ironically, farmland loss was moderating while newspaper headlines in Michigan were highlighting the effects of urban sprawl and a governor’s task force recommended legislative action to protect farmland from land development. Similar trends are evident nationally. While farmland loss is highly variable, a general trend toward moderation is evident (Table 4). Nationally, the amount of land in farms fell by 6.2 percent during the 1960s, then moderated to 5.8 percent in the 1970s, 5.0 percent in the 1980s, and to 2.7 percent in the 1990s.
Farmland loss varies significantly by individual state. Farmland loss increased through the 1980s for California and then dropped to 3.7 percent in the 1990s. In Minnesota, land in farms fell by almost 5 percent in the 1960s, but declined by just 1 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Ohio seems to be an outlier: farmland disappeared at about 8 percent per decade during the 1960s and 1970s, moderated to below 4 percent during the 1980s, and then increased in the 1990s. The current rate, however, is still almost half the loss rate of earlier decades. The continued moderation in farmland loss is important. If farmland loss is moderating, predictions about future losses will be biased if they assume no change in current trends. This is clear when a simple mathematical extension of previous loss rates is projected into the future. Farmland loss rates were projected for eleven states based on the decline in the number of acres in farms during each decade (Table 5). These acreage losses were then projected into the future using 1990 as the base year. In Minnesota, farm acreage losses experienced in the 1960s would have resulted in the complete disappearance of all farmland in 200 years (Table 5). With loss rates similar to the 1990s, Minnesota has 1,500 years left. In California, loss rates equivalent to the 1960s would eliminate all farmland (using 1990 as base year) in 140 years. Losses equivalent to those in the more moderate 1990s extend the year of "zero farmland" to almost 400 years. In Colorado, farm acreage losses were dramatic in the 1970s and 1980s, but moderating losses in the 1990s push the year of "zero farmland" to more than 550 years. Thus, historical patterns of farmland loss are not reliable predictors of future farmland loss.
B. Farmland Loss and Urbanization While conventional wisdom claims urbanization is the primary culprit in farmland loss, the reality may be quite different. Urbanized land area increased by 8.3 million acres in the United States from 1982 to 1992, a 17.4 percent increase. Total cropland, grasslands, and pasture declined by 14.4 million acres during the same period. Even if all land converted from farmland went to urban uses (not parks, forests, or other recreational uses), urbanization would account for a little more than half (57.8 percent) of the nation’s farmland loss. If the national decline in harvested forests is included as another "victim" of urbanization—adding 8.5 million acres to the total lost rural space—urbanization could account for 36.2 percent of the loss in rural space. An analysis of cropland trends from 1949 to 1992 by Ohio State University economist Luther Tweeten found that 26 percent of the decline in cropland could be explained by urbanization. Changes in the economic fortunes of the agricultural industry accounted for 74 percent of the decline. The remaining farmland and forest loss must be related to non-urban causes such as conversion to open space, parks, wildlife reserves, or other recreational uses. Suggestions that urbanization is the primary "threat" to farmland preservation are not clearly supported by land-use trends at the national or state level. This simplistic characterization of land uses often obscures more than it reveals. From 1949 to 1992, for example, land in urban uses increased by 39.7 million acres to 57.9 million. Land in rural parks and wildlife areas increased by 59.2 million acres to 86.9 million during the same period. Thus, on a national level, the nation protected one-third more land than it developed. Suggestions that urbanization is the primary "threat" to farmland preservation are not clearly supported by land-use trends at the national or state level. Similar trends are evident when acreage loss rates are compared among states. In some cases (e.g., California and Colorado), land devoted to cropland and pasture increased while land simultaneously was converted to urban uses (Table 6). In states where farmland declined, urbanization accounted for a relatively small part of the loss. In Indiana, for example, farm-related land uses fell by 645,000 acres while urbanization used 139,000 acres (about 22 percent). In New Jersey and Maryland, urbanization outpaced the drop in farm-related uses. Yet, once changes in forest land are considered, the statistical picture is murkier. While in New Jersey, urbanization appears to just offset the decline in forest and farm-related uses, Maryland added 54,000 acres of forest. While urbanization consumed another 188,000 acres, forest uses became even more widespread. Land in farm-related uses declined by less than half (45 percent) of the increase in urbanization and forest use.
State-level data on farmland loss do not capture the local effects of the loss of farmland and open space. Many people are less interested in the fate of farms on the other side of the state than the farm in their own backyard. Even if a state is not facing significant farmland loss overall, in urbanizing areas the losses can be severe. The case of Washtenaw County, Michigan is instructive. Washtenaw County has been urbanizing at rapid rates for more than two decades, a consequence in part of economic growth spun off from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and continuing out-migration from nearby Detroit. As more and more people moved to the Ann Arbor area, land was developed for residential and commercial uses. As farmland was converted to urbanized forms of development, county commissioners responded to grassroots citizen concerns about preserving open space by placing on a countywide ballot an initiative to purchase the development rights of farmland by increasing the local sales | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
