Putting a Stop to Sprawl: State Intervention as a Tool for Growth Management
2009; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0042-2533
Autores Tópico(s)Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
ResumoI. INTRODUCTION is America's most lethal disease.1 Although such a statement appears exaggerated upon first consideration, both scope of urban sprawl and its attendant consequences support suggestion that sprawl threatens vitality of United States. For example, California, sprawl has reached such a dangerous level that one of nation's largest banks publicly warned of potential devastation: has created enormous costs that California can no longer afford. Ironically, unchecked sprawl has shifted from an engine of California's growth to a force that now threatens to inhibit growth and degrade quality of our life.2 The costs California faces - including damage to environment, depletion of fiscal resources, and deterioration of inner cities - are not unique but rather similarly jeopardize future of states throughout nation. Sprawl, defined as the process [sic] which spread of development across landscape far outpaces population growth,3 is generally identified by an I-know-it-when-I-see approach.4 As a result, it is helpful to consider what sprawl is not order to understand what sprawl is. Specifically, sprawl is not traditional American neighborhood, best characterized by mixed-use communities which residents can walk to satisfy their daily needs.5 Rather, sprawl consists of developments that rapidly consume available land beyond outermost boundaries of established cities - developments which citizens cannot walk to work or to grocery store but are required to drive almost everywhere.6 Such developments typically evoke images of large housing subdivisions and freestanding cookiecutter homes, strip malls, big box stores such as Target or Walmart, parking lots, and six-lane highways. Sprawl effectively has five distinct components, none of which overlaps with any other: housing subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, civic institutions, and roadways.7 Ultimately, sprawl's characteristic leapfrog growth pattern almost always results low-density, single-use developments on fringes of established cities.8 Sprawl affects metropolitan areas throughout United States, characterizing growth of cities from Atlanta all way to Phoenix.9 Even Montana, known its wide open spaces, has not escaped effects of sprawling metropolitan areas.10 Over past sixty years, states have witnessed a migration away from cities as Americans have relocated to suburban communities. Fifteen percent of U.S. population lived suburbs 1940, but by 2000 that number had increased to sixty percent.11 While fifty-five million Americans resided suburbs 1950, 141 million resided suburbs 2000. 12 Most alarmingly, this trend has accelerated recent years as illustrated by 17.7 percent increase suburban population 1990s, compared with eight percent growth central cities during that same time period.13 As source of most zoning and land use regulation, local governments have been criticized proliferation of sprawl. In 1926, U.S. Department of Commerce issued Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA), which provides a common statutory basis zoning.14 Most states have based their own zoning legislation upon SZEA, under which state governments delegate their police power to local governments.15 Local governments then enact zoning regulations for purpose of promoting health, safety, morals, or general welfare of community, ostensibly in accordance with a comprehensive plan.16 Traditionally, local governments subscribed to theory that intermingling of land uses would affect health and safety of citizens negatively.17 Thus, most local regulations required strict segregation of residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural land uses.18 Such exclusive zoning by district and separation of land uses within city led to development patterns characteristic of sprawl. …
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