ON THE OPEN RANGE: A COLUMN FROM GEORGE WUERTHNER
A Few Rambles On The Virtues Of Living In Town
By Contributing Writer, 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.
While I agree that real environmentalists live in town, I have yet to see a study that says " it’s far more costly to provide services to people who live outside of communities than those in town"
But if you can cite one or two, that would make for interesting reading, and I'd appreciate it.
I'm sure there are more current studies, but the 1998 Sierra Club sprawl report (http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/report98/report.asp) is a good place to start. And the University of Wyoming has done some good research along these lines (my 2003 article for the Casper Star Tribune):
"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."
---------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Those studies do NOT speak to the point. The point made by George is that "it’s far more costly to provide services to people who live outside of communities than those in town."
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.
Folks vary in their urban/rural preference and for different stages of their lives. Are you still living in a town of about 1000 people 10 miles outside the major city in a rural northeast state? Your "in town" may be "in town " but it may be different than how others use it. And what others want for themselves at the current stage of their life.
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.
I forgot to thank Brodie for steppin up and at least offering some studies. THANKS! We are trying to cooperate, I think, when we deal with issues.
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.
States like New Hampshire and Vermont are well-known and regarded for mature, liveable pockets of practical but mild urban within a rural context, and many within viable reach of a big city. There a few such examples out West but the general lay is high concentration urban trailing off quickly into near total rural. Should the west develop more urban villages 10-30 miles outside its attractive cities with libraries, etc. (some in town and in the country are hotly against this) or increase metro area density significantly or turn second, third, fourth tier already established cities into higher tier, denser cities, notably different from what they have been, that many want them to remain? Each metro area and state will answer differently. Political actions will affect the mix but so will the economic forces and personal choices. Looking carefully at what other areas have down is wise. Sorting it out will lead to plenty of debate. You can either try to provide and preserve a range of options or you can decisively choose one identity and watch the others fade away, further to the periphery or to other regions. Some choose a high density compact metro as the model and the goal. I dont think that fits every western metro area or many western residents. in general. I prefer a regional perspective and attempting to achieve the healthiest possible mix within it. And would urge idealistically city-county merger and multi-county mergers to fit political units to those real world connected communities.
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07Jeff is right that job location fortells future or at least limits options and requires aggressive, successful plans to overcome the default outcome of the market that way it works today favoring a few metros. If states want viable second and third tier cities and towns the leaders need to target more of the economic development dollars to help make that happen and they could do far more to move more workable parts of state operations and paychecks out of the big city or capitol to those areas- far beyond just prisons and road maintenance crews. Moving 100+ state jobs into an office park could be very important seed for making a smaller city or town succeed or anchoring a new urban village.
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07With 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.
Good stuff Daniel.
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07Thanks Jeff. George's article is a good starting point for an important conversation. The dialogue you started with Brodie brought more details to the table. I think this debate is especially resonating for the baby boom generation and the one right after it. What was / is the place ideal, and what is the best working option for me, my family and all my needs and interests. The simplicity of the country retreat is overstated and the personal, societal and ecological consequences of that do need to be carefully examined. George was addressed this in recent books from several angles. But I think some type of rural life will remain in this country, especially in the west and at least in this half century. Rural life is part of the American heritage and the good parts of it can be an important legacy, making a continuing positive contribution into the overall American fabric if we draw upon its virtues as well face its tragic flaws.
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.
It is working for George where he is (near enough to the forest) and could work for a lot of people with mixed tastes (if the jobs issues is successfully handled, with at least a good % of local jobs so it isnt just commuter). I think a lot of folks are hoping for enhancement or creation of more places like this in the west. Between dense metro and country/simple small town. Maybe Livingston and Belgrade/Manhattan/Three Forks can be leaders for communities their size and location.
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07(Jeff my first post referred to George. But the issues are broadly applicable. His article was indeed written with that in mind. After touching on his specific in town situation to better establish context at least for myself and use that to bring in some other ideas, I moved back out to a broader context too. )
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07On a larger scale, what happened with Rio Rancho NM is worth learning more about. What's happening with Meridan / Eagle Idaho now is part of this story.What is planned for Toole County Utah is too. And with an eye towards the smaller communities around them as well. New West helps share information from these examples.
Comment By Daniel, 2-24-07A number of mid-size communities like Boulder, Fort Collins, Missoula, Bozeman, Bend, Eugene, Provo etc. get highly rated in surveys like Places Rated because of the mix of economic, cultural and natural. Most of their growth probably ought to be kept compact to the existing urban zone. But the outer ring of urban villages and satellite cities and rural neighborhoods should be the best you can make them because a lot of folks will opt for it. They should pay fairly for their choice in taxes and service fees though.
The coming years might see even more of a renaissance for places like Laramie, Las Cruces, Pocatello, Billings, Flagstaff, Walla Walla, etc.
A key question with development is who really pays for it? Developers scream bloody murder when told to pay the real costs of development, which is why the bill is more often than not paid by those who are already there -- the oldies, rather than the newbies. Unfortunately, the oldies are easily suckered into subsidizing development -- that old siren song of prosperity and jobs. Inevitably, with enough growth, the newbies demand more and more services and have the political clout to get it. And that keeps taxes moving ever upward.
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.
An argument against sprawl, and an economic argument in favor of land trusts.
Comment By jeff, 2-25-07George, and Brodie, my original question remains; 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"??!!
That's quite a different subject than "does residential growth pay it's way?"
I am sure it varies but commercial land can be the cash cow for cities, especially commercial developments with larger market reach. Many cities on the front range of Colorado are chasing big box stores for the tax revenue to offset the often losing proposition of residential or at least new outlying residential. (You could say in broad terms consumers indirectly cover these taxes in the prices they pay but some falls on nonlocals to the tax district or tourists.) Industrial in most states is probably positive for taxes received to direct services rendered. Most public officials just try to get tax / expenditure balance overall and don't really want to tinker much with underlying tax fairness unless the taxbase rises up to demand it. Many of the attempts at major tax reform for fairness don't get very far if labelled that, drawing attention to it and mobilizing the opposition. Slow low key change for fairness can be engineered by concerned public officials with enough power and tact but seems like slow change often favors an elite interest.
Comment By Daniel, 2-25-07Idaho's debate on property taxes has exposed a lot of information about relative burdens. And almost everyone wants to pay less.
Comment By Daniel, 2-25-07Correction: Many parties want to pay less themselves, but many advocates of education and other state programs are concerned about cutting ability to fund vital services. Communities have to decide how much they want to support.
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?
Property tax for schools has been a fundamental building block in the social contract. Idaho's cut of property tax and replacing it with sales tax has class impacts.
In town and out of town, business and residential, rich and poor. Development and community are a complicated puzzle.
A person's choice to live where he or she wants to live is part of the American ethic. Unfortunately, we now have this town & country dichotomy, where the former argues for a more efficient distribution of population that is incidentally better for local ecosystems, and the latter supports the promise of quiet solitude and the ability to actually live in the great outdoors instead of just driving through it.
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?
Looking at a few census figures I see that more than half the country's population is connected to one of the 50 top metro areas and more than 80% live within a city / census zone of more than 50,000. Clearly the bulk of the country lives in town. Problems with folks in the country are related to sensitive areas or a function of the pressure from the growing size of total population, not generally the country's % share though some communities have high rates of rural sprawl. I also see that the 80% in metro areas nationally is split about 30% in central city core and 50% suburbs. And has stayed that way since 1930. New urbanism may hope to raise the percent in central city to 35-40% someday but that remains to be tested. It might happen in select markets.I was surprised to learn that the % of national population in cities 250,000 to 1 million had dropped during period from 1950 to 2000. in many ways I would have thought they are the "right size" but apparently jobs and people are choosing the the bigger metros but then again the metros are getting bigger and running together so it may not be that much of an actual shift away from mid-size locations.
This looks like a good report.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf
The report of on demographic trends in 20th century. I'll mention a few I found in the first 50 pages: The west is or will shortly become the 2nd most populous of the country's 4 regions. Its % of population in metro areas is about as high as any. Non-metro population nationally has fallen more than 25% since World War 2, is about 55 million and still creeping downward but very slowly now.The density of central cities has decline about 60% over last 50 years. Suburban density has risen slightly.
2010 census should help understand whether past trends continue or any new directions are beginning to be blazed.
If we had a crystal ball and could somehow know now the results of the 2010 Census, we would know the results of the trends that are only now manifesting themselves. Unfortunately, any census (like the most recent one) looks backwards by seeing only the results of other trends that started years ago. If we wait for the federal government to tell us what's going on, the world is going to pass us all by. In a free society, people vote with their feet long before they're counted.
Comment By jeff, 2-25-07Sounds like Schecter. Economics is ahead of perception which is ahead of public action.
Comment By Daniel, 2-25-07density of central cities probably declined to a large extent by expansion of land area, but if 2010 showed any increase in central city density that would seem noteworthy in relation to new urbanism talk. but I agree it is still looking backwards. better to count moving trucks and new construction actual and in the pipeline.
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.
New West story is a lot about upwardly mobile metro areas- greater Denver on long push to 5 million league , SLC to add another1 million, Albuquerque and Boise looking to step in rank / stature, etc.
Comment By Paul Hill, 2-25-07Jeff...Daniel: Right on. But the art of looking forward is itself subject to unpredictable intervening variables that shoot trend lines all to hell. Let's say Denver or some other big metro is hit by a major terrorist attack in 2008 (or a devastating bird flu pandemic). There goes New Urbanism and any desire by most folks to want to move to clustered living in cities. In fact a major out-migration to the hinterlands would begin as folks started to look for good hiding places.
As soon as we figure out the game, they change the rules.
If the very biggest metros dominate, a bit more of the growth may stick to Dallas instead of going to north or west. More might stick to Seattle instead of going to Boise. SLC may get more of the action relative to Boise. Bend might not jump up as many more steps as it currently seems. Who knows.
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.
I agree Paul the ability to choose where to live is pretty important. I am definitely for good planning, fair assignment of costs and risks but would also uphold personal choice as a high value.
Comment By bearbait, 2-26-07This is a story about upper middle class and above housing behaviors. It will not last. Those people don't have children enough to replace themselves. Liberals think they are in control, but the demographics say it will be short lived. 85 million abortions the last 30 years has an effect. College loans, low paying jobs, hyper expensive housing and people don't have children. The pig going through the python is the baby boomers and there is little coming behind them from their ethnic, education, and income brackets. My California Ob/Gyn brother doesn't see liberal mothers. He sees apolitical ethnic mothers. Most are not voter qualified. They are stay at home baby makers. That is not an American middle class and above goal in America today.
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.
Immigration is indeed a big part of the national story. Looking around the west I can see some variation in immigrant location patterns, urban/rural, separate/more integrated. Choice of where to live may be tougher, different but a lot of the same issues. At one level it is an upper class type discussion but everyone deals with it. As for growth, a census reports I saw had the US headed toward 420 million by 2050 with immmigration fueling a good part of that. Plenty of challenges ahead.
Comment By bearbait, 2-26-07I wonder how national policy will drive what happens in the West. One, the Feds own over half the land. Two, only they can control immigration, legal or illegal. Three, tax incentives and child subsidies are not enough to encourage educated people to have children in an upward mobility driven secular society. Children are the forte' of those who can least afford them, and a few conservative religious groups. We have no national policy on much these days, outside of political handwringing, group whining, and back bench legislative obfuscation. Our birthrate is not going to replace the current generation, even with some ethnic and religious groups doing yeoman's work. It would seem to me that long term, our planning should address problems with a population ramping down.
Comment By Daniel, 2-26-07An international report said that basically flat or declining population is the general rule of industrialized countries with the US the main exception at least for 50 years, maybe more. Even non-minority US population is expected to creep up about 20 million by 2050.That might get to flat or declining in second half of century. Overall I've heard predictions US is head towards at least 500 million before it levels out based on how things are now but change in immigration policy could obviously push the line significantly up or down.
Comment By bearbait, 2-26-07Immigration and population in the US have to be national issues, with national solutions, national goals. Partisanship will drive that process. The "Big Tent" in search of voting blocks, Big Money in search of cheap labor, will steamroll local ability to plan and prepare. This is supposed to be the "melting pot", and having only one ethnic group driving immigration, illegally, does not lend itself to diversity. For now, it seems to me that we have to first address growth issues nationally, in order that they might be addressed locally. Perhaps this is the most pressing populist issue we face.
Comment By Daniel, 2-26-07My first reply post had the wrong tone. Still a new england style town is often the archtype of a livable town. The town square, a grid of tree-lined streets, a little of everything necessary and a few nicities. By contrast there is the "new ruralism". Much of it is spin from large new developers to win government approvals and market the property with premium price tags but there also appears to be some serious talks about organizing community within that context. A few voices from local food movements and sustainable rural communities have attempted to connect their goals to this buzzword. I'll have to read up on it.
Comment By Daniel, 2-26-07Berkeley is holding a conference on some of the related topics in April
http://newruralism.pbwiki.com/
This article in Progressive Farmer gives the warm & fuzzy noncorporate spin on a move to the country
http://www.progressivefarmer.com/farmer/family/article/0,24672,1113551,00.html
Love it! This is 'the mindful life,' encapsulated. Living a good life that also happens to be good for others, and our world, is the only way to go!
Yours,
Way
George: right on.
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.
Randy I made some dense urban vs true rural contrasts as the original article did but many people want something in between and I acknowledged that. A lot of folks can find and afford somewhere in the suburbs. Some go for established satellites cities. May may opt for new urban style villages in a rural context for the time being as I mentioned.(better if suported by rail or good bus service) or corporate newruralism or a green version of it. Every place will get a different mix depending on what choices government and business create and buyers request/can afford/choose. It isnt a 2 horse race.
Comment By Daniel, 3-18-07Amidst my heavy posting this was my contribution regarding regional cooperation:
"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.
The interstate highway system was mainly intended for facilitating national defense and the economy but it played a major role in the subrub boom.
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.
Or maybe there would be even more special interest influenced and serving roads. The three level of government system of transportation has some checks & balances but also seems to place road issues in hands of small groups with sometimes frustrating little community influence.
Comment By Daniel, 3-18-07If small and medium sized cities decide they want more of their share of transportation dollars to go to internal needs and linking up better amongst themselves perhaps instead of additional lanes and the heavy maintenance of interstate to the big cities can they effectively do so or has the size of the pots already been pre-determined pretty rigidly? I assume the pre-determination is high and for the adjustments at the margin they at largely at the whim of their Senators, Governors and state transportation commissioner or board.
I had some exposure to the road planning process a long time ago and it seemed quite hierarchial and remote.
Look forward to reading George's next article.
Comment By Daniel, 3-26-07An example where merger is being considered
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5520302