ON THE OPEN RANGE: A COLUMN FROM GEORGE WUERTHNER
A Few Rambles On The Virtues Of Living In Town
By George Wuerthner, 2-24-07
I just got back from the store where I picked up a newspaper and some fresh fruit. Along the way I made a quick stop at the bank where I retrieved some money from the ATM. Since I was just across from the post office, I picked up my mail. And on the way home, I stopped at the café to get a cup of coffee and visit with a friend.
The “trip” to town was a nice break from sitting in front of a computer and gave me a chance to even socialize a bit. It was possible for me to do all these things without once getting in my vehicle because I live in town. In fact, all the places I visited are within a few blocks of my home.
Though I sometimes use my vehicle when the weather is particularly nasty or time is limited, I can usually do many of my activities by walking or riding a bike if I choose. And living in the shadow of Peak Oil, I’ve come to appreciate the benefits of being in a village, town or city where I can reduce my reliance upon the automobile.
Because I live in town, both of my kids have a freedom that most children lack these days—they can walk to school, to friends, to soccer games, and other events. My daughter tells me that out of 90 kids in her 7th grade, only 4 of them regularly walk to school. The rest ride a bus or are driven by parents. Their lives are highly regulated by the availability of their parents as chaffers or school bus transport. Given how few kids walk to school or any place else any more, it’s no wonder that childhood obesity is such a problem.
The majority of people in my community live out on their one to five acre tracts scattered along the rural roads away from the central village. They believe they are living the American dream or from my perspective the American nightmare. Their homes fragment wildlife habitat and chew up open space. Their septic tanks leach pollution into the local waterways. Worse of all they spend a lot of their free time driving.
Driving the kids to school.
Driving to the grocery store.
Driving to work.
Driving to play.
Driving just to be driving.
Where I live today is such a contrast from where I thought I would wind up when I was in my twenties. Then it was my dream to live in a remote cabin somewhere in Alaska, and I did so for short periods of time as well as other remote locations around the Rockies. But I always came back to town—either because I needed to work or go to school. After a while I realized that I was tied to town whether I liked it or not.
Over time I actually came to understand that I liked living in town but the real epiphany for me occurred because of an old girlfriend. I was back in Montana going to the University of Montana (I was a perennial student on and off for years). My girlfriend at the time rented a cabin down on the flanks of the Bitterroot Range south of Stevensville. It was a romantic location—you could sit on the front porch of the cabin and take in a good sweep of the valley all the way to the Sapphire Range. It was quiet. There were elk and deer nearby. And, of course, you could ski or hike out the door—as my girlfriend always liked to tell people when she would brag about where she was living.
But she rarely had time to go hiking or skiing. She, like me, was a student which meant that she had to come into town every day to attend class. It would take an hour to get from the cabin to the classroom—assuming the car would start when it was 20 below and the snow wasn’t too deep, and the roads weren’t too slick with ice or snow. She spent about two hours a day commuting from her lovely cabin in the woods to the university and back again. By the time the weekend would roll around and I would ask her to go hiking or skiing, she would often decline. She had to do the laundry, clean the cabin, chop wood, buy the groceries, and sometimes just catch up on the sleep she didn’t get during the week. She didn’t have time to enjoy the woods in her backyard because she spent too much time sitting in a car driving into town and back.
I, on the other hand, lived about four blocks from the campus and could roll out of bed fifteen or twenty minutes before a class, and ride my bike to the campus with time to spare. Since I lived so close to the school, it was easy to use the library, go home for lunch or whatever, and I almost always got most of my studying done during the week so my weekends were often free to explore the Montana countryside.
Since that time, I have always chosen to live in town. And now that I have kids, I’m even more convinced that living in town is the right place to be—because it gives them as well as me, more freedom. In town I can take advantage of all the things that towns can provide kids from the public library to the public swimming pool. There are many other reasons to encourage people to live in town. Studies have shown that it’s far more costly to provide services to people who live outside of communities than those in town. There’s also a loss of community civil life. Plus people who are constantly driving here and there have less time to devote to community endeavors and less time to know their neighbors. And in many parts of the West if you live out of town, you are almost surely on some former big game winter range or in the potential path of a wildfire. If you have to live someplace—think about living in town and/or at least on its edge—both the wildlife and other taxpayers will thank you.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
As a photographer, George Wuerthner has amassed over 250,000 images of wildlands and wildlife on the continent, most of them in the American West, Canada and Alaska. His pictures have appeared in dozens of books and in the most popular nature magazines in the country. See his pictures at George Wuerthner Photography.
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But if you can cite one or two, that would make for interesting reading, and I'd appreciate it.
"There's always the hope that maybe someday it'll work," said Samuel Western, author of "Pushed off the Mountain, Sold down the River: Wyoming's Search for its Soul," and a prominent critic of the Wyoming economy.
County commissioners are always hoping that rural residential developments will pay for themselves, he said, even though they never have and really can't while counties have "bargain basement rates of taxation."
Research conducted by University of Wyoming professors demonstrates that on average and across Wyoming, conversion of 35 acres of agricultural land to a residence creates $1.13 in county government and school expenses for every dollar in revenue generated.
Researchers Roger Coupal, David Taylor and Don MacLeod, of the department of agricultural and applied economics, found a net loss for counties throughout the state. For every $1 in revenue generated by rural residential development, counties saw expenses range from a low of $1.03 in Weston County to a high of $1.45 in Hot Springs County. (Teton County, with its high wealth and income, could not be estimated because it skewed model results, said the researchers.)
Coupal said he and his associates wanted to take a closer look at what happens when rural agricultural lands are converted to residential use. He noted that in 2001, the American Farmland Trust did a national study that compared county expenses to revenues for three general types of land use: agricultural, commercial/industrial, and residential.
The group studied 83 counties and found that residential use cost counties an average of $1.15 in community services for each $1 in revenue created by that use. Yet working lands, such as farm and forest uses, cost only 36 cents for every $1 in revenue, while commercial/industrial land use cost 27 cents for every $1 in revenue.
The UW researchers concluded that county land use and planning policy should encourage ag land protection in order to both capture fiscal savings, as well as public goods associated with non-fragmented lands, such as wildlife habitat, water quality and viewshed.
Carl Mailler, an economic planner with American Farmland Trust, said data developed by his group, UW and other economists can help county officials find a balance between land use decisions. While it is true commercial/industrial land uses generate high tax revenues and place low demands on public services, Mailler said, communities can't simply focus entirely on commercial/industrial development.
"You get in a cycle," Mailler said, "if you invest solely in commercial/industrial development, after a while, you have new people coming to work in those businesses and they need housing. You can never build your way out of taxes for more services, because people want those services."
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In my experience, county commissioners are loath to impose ANY limits on rural development, given their often conservative/libertarian political values. At the same time, developers have political influence with commissioners and planning offices out of all proportion to their real value and contribution to county economics.
This is a classic case where a political/economic belief system continues to operate despite consistent real-world evidence to the contrary.
But there is another factor at play here -- individuals who want their cabin/home in the woods because they want birdsong, wildlife in the yard, the charms of isolation -- disregarding the time- and energy-consuming costs of living out in the boonies. I speak from experience because I've lived in town/city and out in the country. There are emotional memories of how good and great it was to live out in the country, but there are also memories of fighting ice, snow, mud, costs and never enough time. Living out in the country is a young person's game.
I've even worked on such a study, but in NO case have I read a study that is able to prove the opposite is the case for urban infill or other urban development.
In EVERY case, the discrepancy is as you cite, regardless of location, for residential development. A person in town who has two kids in the school system at $7000 a year isn't contributing $14,000 a year in property or other taxes any more than a person in a rural property is.
When you take schools out of the equation, the difference between bare land and residences is not very large. Land still requires police protection, adjudication, roads, weed control, many of the traditional county government services. Schools make up the largest part of the discrepancy, and it's the same regardless of location.
Then the argument becomes one against allowing people with school children to move into an area. But one of the crucial measures of vitality for an area is the vitality of it's elementary schools as a measure of it's relative youth. (read the center for the rocky mountain west's presentations)
There are plenty of towns and counties in rural Montana that don't have growth, don't have vital elementary schools or local economies or commercial industrial growth, and those towns are dying.
I mention this not to be nosy or judgmental (you certainly know the west well from earlier in your life) but because I have paid attention to where writers about the west actually live for clues about finding good places, often with good balance. And I have learned in doesnt have to be limited to the west. You can love the west and visit the west as often as possible and not reside in the west at a stage in life. But it is a different choice. That can affect how you view things or how others view your views and perhaps could be acknowledged in an article like this, in a publication like this.
Also, the taxes derived from ag land have been reduced in the last few years as more personal property is exempted, and as ag land is exempt from certain levies. I don't think that's wrong; almost any incentive to remain in ag is ok with me. I guess that's obvious to those who know I co chaired a campaign for local open space bonds to buy development rights from farmers and ranchers using public funds.
However, when you combine the reduction of rate of contribution from ag to the county tax base, and increased cost to provide fire, emergency, weed, road, bridge, sheriff, and judicial services, you'll find the rate between contibution and cost of services is getting smaller yet (always eliminating the school issue, which is identical for either city or rural residences).
I live in Bozeman Montana, Daniel, and have, off and on, as you say, during the different stages of life, since I first drove into town in 1975.
A couple of other comments on George. Hey, if you live within a few blocks of the kind of commercial and government amenities you describe, great! But some of the most expensive real estate in Bozeman is within those blocks of downtown. As a result, it becomes necessary to "hamletize" if you want to offer that to a larger group other than just the "noble" rich. Other quasi "downtowns" have to be built surrounded by rather dense residential, helped in that quest if these quasi downtowns also contain a school and a post office and a little library outpost. It really helps if such quasi downtowns have significant employers.
But they all fail to get people out of cars without significant employers. In a town like Bozeman, with relatively monolithic employers like a hospital or Montana State University, the level of commuting to those cannot be reduced unless a level of residential density above the level of political will is required. What George describes, commuting five days a week, overwhelms any gains we might get walking to the neighborhood convenience store.
George has fairly balanced those issues. For me, translating them into public policy is an interesting problem.
Political mergers will only work in regions with a strong sense of togetherness and strong leaders. Merged city and county will still have controversy and made mistakes and please and disappoint but I think it will be worse if they remain split. If full merger is impossible then merger of select functions or really strong coordination at staff and public official level is to be encouraged.
If someone knowledgeable a new urban development on the periphery of a city that is living up to potential I would appreaciate hearing more. I've heard about a number that havent lived up on expectations or were essentially just another flavor of sprawl rather than a significant breakthru.
Theoretically they seem like an important part of how to properly build into the future. In many places what starts out as urban village in rural context will transition into neighborhood clearly attached to and surrounded by the metro, but hopefully with a sense of self, completeness with parks and as much accomodation of the rest of the natural world as we as stewards can muster.
The coming years might see even more of a renaissance for places like Laramie, Las Cruces, Pocatello, Billings, Flagstaff, Walla Walla, etc.
That being said, lack of growth, stagnation and the exodus of young people from otherwise attractive small towns, sets up a death spiral for those communities. The signs are predictable: more old folks, fewer young families, shuttered businesses on Main Street, consolidated school districts, closed schools and ultimately dead towns.
If a small town newspaper regularly prints more obituaries than birth announcements, that town is in trouble. Go explore the U.S. Census site and you can find plenty of small towns that don't have scenic/recreational amenities like mountains and ski areas, and they're fading away -- just like they did during the Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties.
That's quite a different subject than "does residential growth pay it's way?"
Business vs residential tax split affects interstate competition for economic development but it is just one piece along with good schools, infrastructure, quality of life, etc.
Increasing concentration of population and economic activity in major metros linked by interstates and airplanes seems to be continuing. Is that the direction most folks actually want or just accept? There are virtues to living n town, but what kind of town?
In town and out of town, business and residential, rich and poor. Development and community are a complicated puzzle.
So now we have the policy wonks rushing to the battlefront, each offering their own studies, data, and solutions. Here in the Front Range of Colorado, we have the same scenarios. One "solution" is the collectivization of settlement via so-called "New Urbanism," which is funded by taxpayers via tax incremental financing plans. When 100 brand new attached townhomes next to a lite-rail stop are built to replace the 25 single family homes that used to be there, I have to question the long range net effect of these people-clusters on the future of both urban and exurban areas.
The real question is, who is going to tell us where we can and cannot live? Or is that just another birthright that is being given up in the name of environmentalism and political expediency?
This looks like a good report.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf
2010 census should help understand whether past trends continue or any new directions are beginning to be blazed.
checking growth rates between 2000-2010 of metros over 5 million, between 1-5 million and 250,000 and 1 million seems like a decent place to look and find a story. It may the future of the economy is more and more people in the biggest metros and the biggest metros with more and more exurbs and some additional infill. But if anything changed in that current trend and the next census showed the market and people starting to downshift in city size that would be newsworthy.
As soon as we figure out the game, they change the rules.
The big picture is a few extra rambles away from the the personal choice of where to live but it all connects together. Sort of.
A whole lot of second generation minorities are going to have to get wealthy to continue the deal. That will be difficult for many. Education is not a part of their thing at this time, and education is the capital of economic success now, more than any time in the past.
The demographics of this country are not capable of growth at some time in the near future, except by means of immigration. We are not Northern Herd Yellowstone elk, yet, but Germany is, as is most of Europe. The python gets skinny after this generation. China's under 20 population, due to cultural family planning by sex determination and abortion, has 90 million more males than females. What do you do with 90 million extra males? Their purpose in life is to support aging parents. After that, who supports them?
Japan closes 2000 schools a year. No kids. No need for teachers above a declining replacement level. A huge approaching need for elder care personnel. There has been no growth in Japan in more than a decade. Their python died.
Before we get hell bent on solving a problem, we ought to closely examine our demographics to see if growth will be a problem. We do, you know, have solutions seeking problems more often than not. It must be hard being a planner, knowing there are not kids enough being born to support your old age.
http://newruralism.pbwiki.com/
http://www.progressivefarmer.com/farmer/family/article/0,24672,1113551,00.html
Yours,
Way
Jeff: re: "where are these studies that have shown that it’s far more costly to provide services to people who live outside of communities than those in town"? In fact, many "spatially dynamic" fiscal impact analyses (that is, they compare infrastructure and service costs based upon growth patterns) have been completed in the past few years. These studies generally show that sprawl costs local governments 30% to 40% more than do more compact growth patterns.
The Denver Regional Council of Governments studied future development scenarios in the their Metro Vision 2020 plan and found that sprawling development would cost Denver-area governments $4.3 billion more in infrastructure costs than compact smart growth through 2020.
In Gunnison County CO, the low density future scenario was projected to cost $2.3 million more annually for O&M;, and $17 million in capital improvements through 2025, than would a compact growth pattern.
In Beaverhead County MT, a sprawling "status quo" future growth scenario is projected to cost over $300,000 more annually in O&M;, and $5.5 more in capital improvements through 2025, than a pattern in which more future growth was located in and near existing towns and villages.
And right here in Gallatin County, a new study projects that the County government would save over $15 million dollars in O&M;and capital improvements through 2015 if they enact their recent growth management proposal. This proposal would direct more future growth to existing developed areas through a package of incentives and regulations.
These results are intuitive: the lion's share of county government infrastructure and service costs are in road and bridge departments. More sprawl means more vehicle miles traveled (VMT). More VMT means higher costs to build and maintain roads, as well as provide emergency services and law enforcement (and more VMTs mean more CO2 emissions, but that's a different issue). We're not talking small change here: to Beaverhead County, for instance, $300,000 is a sizeable portion of their annual budget.
Daniel: it seems to me that you're building a straw man when you describe the choice as one between "high density compact metro" and rural living. When I think of compact growth, I think traditional growth patterns, in which most people lived in towns in compact neighborhoods and the rest (primarily farmers and ranchers) lived in rural areas. We can and ARE building traditional -not high density urban - neighborhoods right here right now. These neighborhoods, annexed to town, offer smaller lots, more green space, trails, and the opportunity for kids to walk to school. Check out Valley West in Bozeman. But you're spot on when you call for more regional cooperation. Got any ideas?
Re: a "ramping down" of population growth. This nation is going to get to 400 million sometime around 2040. We're by far the fastest growing industrialized country in the world. And at the local level, the real place to look for growth is in-migration numbers - the people moving here from other parts of the country. We have some of the fastest growing in-migration rates in the country. Right here in Gallatin County, at recent annual growth rates, we can expect our population to almost double in the next 20 years.
One more note about sprawl: be careful when making the argument that planning for more smarter growth is social engineering. Spawl is financed by the federal, state, and local governments - we wouldn't have the sprawl we do were it not for government subsidization of roads, gasoline, land, infrastructure, and McMansions.
Finally, re: choosing to live in a rural pastoral setting as opposed to just driving through it: let's set aside the fiscal, ecological, and agricultural impacts of sprawl and just imagine what these valleys are going to look like. Does anyone really believe that if we keep growing at this rate and this pattern we're going to leave our children and grandchildren anything resembling a rural pastoral landscape? What do you think Gallatin Valley is going to look like in 20 years, in 50 years? Talk about ramped-down expectations.
"With political systems almost everywhere split into cities and counties, you predictably often get clashing, inefficient politics that miss the opportunities to link sensibly or blend to get the best possible mixed outcome for a communitiy with varying tastes. Voting bases with contrasting land development (and social) interests select politicans who often focus more on home cooking and avoiding local voter backlash than regional we're in this together wisdom. You can't remove localized self-interest and rural voters will often fear and resist merger out of concern they will simply be outvoted. I dont know much about new england townships but they seemed at least designed to achieve some urban /.rural balance of power Counties often provided that too but large autonomus cities changed that dynamic.
Political mergers will only work in regions with a strong sense of togetherness and strong leaders. Merged city and county will still have controversy and made mistakes and please and disappoint but I think it will be worse if they remain split. If full merger is impossible then merger of select functions or really strong coordination at staff and public official level is to be encouraged."
Political mergers or mergers of functions seems necessary to me to get beyond ad-hoc, difficult, fragile inter-governmental conversation and coordination that has generally proven insufficient for the challenge.
Would giving local government more responsibility for transportation funding and allocation help or hurt? Planning professionals and others around the development scene full-time would know better than I; but more local responsibility and project selection power might be useful for communities to guide growth and help it break even or achieve other goals like natural resource conservation.
I had some exposure to the road planning process a long time ago and it seemed quite hierarchial and remote.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5520302