Tag Archives: urban sprawl

Wetland Mitigation: That Swamp Land Is Worth Something

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | 5 Comments

A wetland is classified as any low-lying land that is flooded for at least a portion of a calendar year.  Swamps, bogs, marshes and fens all fall into this category.   An acre of wetland can store up to 1 to 1.5 million gallons of water.  Enviro Girl thinks that’s astonishing–if we would just leave wetlands alone, we’d have no need for retention ponds in most cases.  Wetlands also filter and purify water flowing into streams, lakes, rivers and oceans and they provide habitat for an amazing array of creature and plant life–everything from reptiles to insects, fungi to ferns.  Without wetlands, water sources would be more polluted and flooding becomes a problem.  In short, wetlands provide many services and resources, but they’re under-appreciated. Continue reading →

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Stop the Sprawl, Y’all!

Posted on October 13, 2010 by | 3 Comments

If you live out in the country, outside the city limits, you take your chances.  This point was tragically illustrated recently when a Tennessee house burned to the ground because the owners hadn’t paid their firefighting fee.

Enviro Girl is familiar with paying extra to live out of town.  It costs money to expand a city’s infrastructure–and that infrastructure includes a lot of things that make living more comfortable and safe.  Consider what municipal tax dollars cover:

  • fire protection/emergency services
  • police protection/emergency services
  • ambulance services
  • garbage/waste/recycling pick up
  • sewer service
  • road maintenance, including snow removal
  • water
  • streetlights
  • storm water management
  • parks and recreation centers
  • public transit
  • public libraries
  • schools
  • hospitals
  • animal control

Enviro Girl has been told by local animal control that because she lives “outside city limits,” they cannot help her with a stray dog on her property.  She’s on her own to take care of that problem.  Conversely, when her town decided to put in a water system, they claimed her as part of the sanitary district and assessed her household a hefty fee to hook up to city water…or else.  Before building on their rural lot, Enviro Girl’s family lived in town and enjoyed all manner of conveniences, including the ability to walk instead of drive to places like city parks and a public library.  Now they’re preserving 60 acres of native habitat to benefit wildlife, water quality and air quality.  They live in tax-and-service limbo because her family’s property is adjacent to a rural community, not in it, nor miles away from the town limits.  In fact, their house is so close to the town limits that in a school district busing most of the students to school, Enviro Girl’s kids walk across their field to the elementary school–less than half a city block away from their house!  Enviro Girl and her husband felt they were being responsible by purchasing acreage adjacent to the town limits because then any services they needed wouldn’t place a huge burden on the community and they wouldn’t contribute to urban sprawl.  Zoning laws being what they are, their property falls into random categories for water service, sheriff’s department, postal service and garbage pick up.  She’s not complaining, however, because wherever a person lives they enjoy benefits and inconveniences.

One of the selling points of rural developments is the pristine countryside and the quiet.  But what the developers don’t tell buyers is the inconvenience and added cost of building houses far out of town.   Roads don’t get plowed, people sit snowbound until county crews can get through.  Basements flood because storm water management doesn’t reach beyond city storm sewers.   Garbage doesn’t get picked up if you live too far out of reach, you have to privately contract for those services.

Yet it’s not fair to ask city-dwelling taxpayers to foot the bill for urban sprawl.  The cost of busing children to and from school, the cost of police and fire calls, the cost of road maintenance all increase the further people move away from town.  Yet the tax structure is usually set up to distribute the cost equally among taxpayers.  The people living farthest away from school pay no more for their children’s transportation than the people living a few blocks away because the cost is equally divided among everyone.

From a strictly economic viewpoint, it makes more financial sense to require people to live within a city’s limits to receive a city’s services.  According to the Clean Water Action Council, one master plan for infill or  higher density growth in New Jersey would result in a savings of $1.18 billion in roads, water and sanitary sewer construction (or more than $12,000 per new home) and $400 million in direct annual savings to local governments.  Over 15 years, it amounts to $7.8 billion.   That’s a lot of money!  One way to make this happen is to create stricter zoning ordinances, restricting where people can build and develop.   Another way is to hold the line on taxes and services rendered, refusing to tax or extend services to people living outside the city limits.

From a strictly environmental viewpoint, urban sprawl into rural subdivisions and housing developments plows under valuable farmland and destroys natural habitats like wetlands and prairies and forests.  It takes decades to grow a forest, years to establish a prairie, a few weeks to survey and grade the land for a housing development.  We’re allowing development to continue in the name of growing our tax base, but it’s costing us more than we’ll ever receive in return.  As we sprawl beyond the city limits, we pave over thousands of acres of land, creating impermeable surfaces for rainwater which contributes to water pollution and flash flooding.  We’re allowing for more air pollution as more cars drive farther to get home at night.  Urban sprawl contributes to traffic congestion, increased use of energy and other resources, air and water pollution, and light pollution.  The price of cleaning up the effects of urban sprawl is currently incalculable.

Bottom line:  it makes both economic and environmental sense for everybody to put a stop to urban sprawl.

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Reassess, Reduce Sprawl

Posted on January 6, 2010 by | 3 Comments

It’s a great irony that in America undeveloped land has almost no value — farm acres sell for less than $5,000 per acre.  Meanwhile, developed city lots sell upwards of $50,000 per acre.  Is it any surprise that when people build new buildings, they opt for undeveloped land over land that is already built upon?  Few incentives exist in most areas to lure developers to choose previously developed property.  One result of this economic structure is urban sprawl–development pushes outward from city centers, new buildings go up, constantly pushing the boundary lines of cities outward.  While the boundaries are pushed, the problem of urban blight continues to grow as developed properties in city neighborhoods sit empty.

Urban sprawl doesn’t make any economic sense in the long-term, either.  Every time property is developed, it goes on the tax rolls and gets assessed differently — and developed property (that, is property with buildings on it) earns more in taxes than farmlands, wetlands or woodlands.  There seems to be great financial incentive for a region to develop as much property as possible.  But!  Every time the boundaries are pushed and new development is built, the city/county governments must fund infrastructure to serve that new development.  Roads, sewers, water lines, electrical and other utilities, and services (fire, emergency medical, police) get extended to developed properties.  Whether in use or not, developed property is a continuous burden on local governments — once a road is built, it must be maintained (potholes filled, snow plowed, traffic signs and lights kept in good order).  Once a sewer line goes it, it must be maintained (flushed and repaired).  What new developments reap in tax dollars, they continue to spend, for, well, forever.  Meanwhile, abandoned or empty buildings already within city boundaries still cost cities/counties because services and maintenance must still be provided to those properties.  But whilst empty, they don’t create revenue from tax collectors.

See the problem?  Undeveloped property is cheap, so developers have more incentive to build more and build new on empty swaths of land.  City/county officials encourage this short-term growth at their expense in the long run, because the actual cost of development isn’t fully considered when rezoning — developers sell their plans with the promise of increased tax revenue.  But the revenue doesn’t outweigh the cost of services provided to developed properties.

It makes more sense to encourage, through tax breaks or other incentives, development or re-development on properties already within city boundaries, properties already developed.  It makes more sense financially to stop sprawl by encouraging creative land use within boundaries.  Until we recalculate the cost of development and sprawl, expect to see farmlands and wetlands paved over for strip malls, big box stores and subdivisions ultimately at the expense of taxpayers for the short-term gain of officeholders and property developers.

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From Sprawl to Small

Posted on July 13, 2009 by | 3 Comments

enviro girlOn a recent trip from Wisconsin to Salt Lake City, Utah, Enviro-Girl was aghast to find that from the highway one city did not look terribly different from the other.  Lining the road were familiar signs and buildings:  ShopKo, WalMart, Cost Cutters, Subway, McDonald’s, Home Depot…without the mountain range in the distance, Enviro-Girl could have been ANYWHERE.  The thought depressed her.

The sell out of America’s character and regional charm to franchises is another issue entirely, what really must be addressed before consumers choose between eating at Applebee’s or Verna and Mort’s Supper Club by the Bay is the issue of sprawl.  Our cities are spreading thin — thinner — and in many of these cities the population and infrastructure is falling and failing.

Consider Flint, Michigan.  The population has dropped by half of its heyday number of 200,000.  More than 1/3 of the houses in Flint have been abandoned.  A shrinking city is not unique to Michigan–cities across America are growing smaller as the economy changes.  The big question is: What is the answer?

Enviro-Girl has long maintained that active policy against urban sprawl, keeping resources and infrastructure closely positioned, allowing growth in places and ways that make sense and banning subdivisions and business parks located far beyond the scope of the city limits makes environmental and economic sense.  Smaller cities are cheaper to run, use less resources, allow for easier and more efficient transportation (especially important for an aging population — Yo! She’s talking to YOU, Baby Boomers!), and preserve green space.   Smaller cities are safer, healthier and provide more connections for their residents.

But how does one mandate against urban sprawl and irresponsible growth?  In a country where property rights are held sacred, how does the government tell a landowner that they may not develop their property into a strip mall on the outskirts of town?

Easy, says Enviro-Girl.  The government doesn’t have to deny people the right to develop.  But it has the right to deny people access to resources if they choose to develop.  “Want to build a strip mall 5 miles away from the city center?  Fine, but you’re on your own for fire and police protection, road maintenance, water, sewer, electric, garbage pick up and anything else we’re providing to taxpayers living and working and building within the district.”  Ditto for people building houses — live where you choose, but your choice does NOT have to be subsidized by your neighbors living within the boundary lines drawn up by governing bodies.

This puts the onus on the property owner and NOT on taxpayers and economics is a strong force.  Why should landowners develop property for profit at the expense of the citizens providing these services?  They shouldn’t.  Period.  And it’s time local governments started standing their ground on behalf of the taxpayers and on behalf of the environment.

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Losing It All To Sprawl

Posted on September 23, 2008 by | 2 Comments

Wisconsin is a state that promotes Smart Growth — a mandate to plan communities and efficiently grow them in a way that reduces urban sprawl. It’s a great idea — allocate a percent of land to agriculture, to recreation trails, to housing, to commerce, to green space, to industry.  In a time when gas prices have people looking at moving “back to town,” perhaps the tide of people pushing the boundaries of city limits will cease on its own without legislation.  But the damage has already been done — look anywhere and you’ll see how highways and strip malls, housing developments and parking lots have eroded the landscape.  The swamps and wetlands that protected New Orleans from storm surges were paved over and developed to the detriment of people and the environment.  Acres of fertile cropland in the Midwest has been permanently lost to residential subdivisions — everyone wants their acre of country living, but they don’t want to be inconvenienced by life in the country so the city comes closer to homes as the Applebee’s restaurants, Shell stations, and Walmarts pop up on the fringes of each subdivision. Once 2-lane country roads get expanded into 4-lane highways to accommodate drivers who do NOT want to slow down for a farmer pulling freshly cut hay.  No sir, the actual sights and smells of country living are offensive to suburban dwellers, and they’d prefer their fresh country air to smell like a Bath and Body Works candle, not like freshly spread manure.

In fact, Walmart is notorious for building its stores on the farthest reaches of suburbia — pulling the development further down the highway.  And with urban sprawl comes air pollution, traffic congestion, light pollution, noise pollution, fuel consumption, water pollution, and a sort of isolation when we keep driving past each other in our cars — our days eaten away by the long drive from home to work to errands and back. Expensive and empty, McMansions line silent streets in suburbia, the owners busy working to pay for the dream, their neighbors doing the same.  The children play in acre yards on weekends only, they play in day care playgrounds after school while waiting for their parents to bring them home at 6:00 each week night.

The American Dream of a house in the country or suburbs doesn’t work to our advantage for so many reasons — the loss of greenspace and natural habitat among them.  Ironic that the beauty of the country draws us in  and once there, we can’t suppress the urge to make that country look exactly like town.

One of the latest and most compelling books on the topic of urban sprawl is by Bill Belleville.  Losing It All to Sprawl describes the history of Florida, the history of a place filled with flowers and fish, and farmers.  Belleville documents how urban sprawl came to be and the damage it brought.  A frightening and sad book, this is a must read.  You’ll never look at your neighborhood or the landscape the same way after reading it.  Imagine Aldo Leopold or Henry David Thoreau writing today and you have a good idea of what to expect when you crack open Losing It All to Sprawl. It’s a story of such loss, and even though you know the ending, you read on, ever hopeful that Belleville will spin you a fairy-tale finish.  A great book on an issue still relevant no matter where you live in America.

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