Sprawl

I've read a number of articles in a couple of my classes about the
decentralization of metropolitan regions since World War II. That is
to say, cities are emptying, suburbs are growing, and metro areas are
expanding. Let me very briefly tell you why this is bad and what the
government has done to not only allow it but catalyze it.

Why this is bad:

1. Cities are older, and while older isn't always better (and
sometimes its worse), older areas deteriorating and even dying is a
bad thing because you lose something you can't ever get back: history,
culture, tradition, etc.

2. Sprawlier metro areas mean longer commutes, which means more
car-caused pollution, more gas consumption, and more road repairs,
which ultimately means worse health, less natural resources, and
higher tax bills.

3. Sprawlier metro areas also cost more to provide infrastructure for,
since things like roads and sewer lines and water treatment tend to
get more expensive when you have to build them further and further
out.

4. Developing further and further away from core cities eats into open
space, farm land, and other rural areas that are important for
environmental, agricultural, and aesthetic reasons.

What the government has done to not only allow it but catalyze it:

1. People blame the car for making it easier for residences and
businesses to locate wherever, rather than in a central city or near a
train line. But the car would have never become the dominant mode of
transportation in this country without the federal government's
massive investment in an interstate highway system and its ongoing
subsidization of roads (relative to mass transit).

2. Others say people just like having open space, and to be sure
cities in the first half of the 20th century where dense to the point
of unlivable at times. But federal and state policies have tended to
facilitate this flow to more open spaces by their (relative)
subsidization of infrastructure in newer suburban areas and their
(relative) disregard for redevelopment of older urban areas.

3. Related to the point above, people like an unattached home with a
picket fence and a front lawn. All well and good, but they wouldn't
have been able to afford it unless the federal government, through the
Home Owners Loan Corporation, began to guarantee mortgages. Before
that, you had to pay cash or settle for an unguaranteed loan that you
had to pay back in five years of less. Since no houses were built
during the Great Depression or World War II, there was a huge demand
for affording housing after the war. The federal government decided
to get involved, guaranteeing mortgages and making it easier for banks
to offer the kinds of term lengths that are now commonplace: 10, 15,
20, 25, even 30 years. But to do this, they had to get really
scientific in their risk management. So they assigned ratings to
every area in the country, from 1 to 4 (1 being low risk and thus
attractive for mortgages, and 4 being high risk and thus unattractive
for mortgages). 4 was usually defined by some combination of the
following: dense, old, poor, minority. Combine this with the fact
that homeowners could deduct the interest on their tax returns, and
you had a huge rush to suburban homes, now affordable and attainable
thanks to the federal government.

4. On the commercial side, manufacturing went from being vertically
integrated and low value-added to being horizontally integrated and
high value-added, as a result of industry shifts and global
competition. The truck replaced the train as the dominant carrier of
raw materials. As a result, where before you used to see compact
multi-story factories in big cities, now you saw sprawling one-story
factories in suburban areas, where land was cheap and access to the
interstates was easier. With the increasing automation and
sophistication of manufacturing in the US, you also went from having a
lot of low-skilled, decently-paid workers walking to the factory
downtown to factories that employed less people and a higher
percentage of high-skilled workers that commuted to work using a car
or truck. Again, these were market forces at work, but facilitated by
the existence of new highways and catalyzed by government subsidies
for infrastructure in suburban areas.

So what are we to make of this? I'm not suggesting that it was wrong
for the government to build highways, guarantee mortgages, or support
development. I'm not hardly trying to make a value judgment at all.
I'm not trying to be anti-development, anti-suburbs, anti-car,
anti-anything. All I'm asking for is that people understand that
those things created an unleveled playing field where suburbs won and
cities lost. And as that continues several decades later, it has
consequences for our tax bill, our environment, and our quality of
life.

Normally, as a Republican, I'm hesitant for government to get involved
in terms of incentives and fees, because such actions can tend to warp
the market's ability to arrive at the most efficient equilibrium. But
here is a case when, absent government intervention, the market is
warped. There is insufficient financial motivation to reclaim
distressed urban areas, and insufficient financial deterrent to build
out suburban areas. There is a very real financial loss that happens
when cities are left to decay, and very real financial cost that
happens when suburbs are built out further and further. Let's put
those financial impacts back into the equation, and see if the market
– with appropriate government intervention – can't arrive at a new
equilibrium that works for city folk and suburbanites, in terms of tax
bills, clean air, natural resources, and quality of life.