Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked

By Robert W. Burchell, Anthony Downs, Barbara McCann, and Sahan Mukherji

Development Island Press, 2005, 197 pp., paperback $24.95.

The newest authoritative study of the costs of sprawl is quite circumspect.

There are no fireworks in Sprawl Costs by Robert Burchell of Rutgers University, Anthony Downs of Brookings Institution, Sahan Mukherji of the Center for Urban Policy Research, and transportation and land-use policy writer Barbara McCann. “The majority of the American public is not unhappy with the current pattern of development in metropolitan areas — it simply can no longer afford it,” say the four authors, who have boiled down the findings of a massive research document published by the National Research Council in 2002.

As might be expected of any book that Downs has a hand in, Sprawl Costs refrains from overblown predictions about how easy it would be to shift the US to compact development or how much money or commuting time might be saved. The restraint and fair-mindedness of this volume place it in sharp contrast to the one-sided Sprawl: A Compact History by Robert Bruegmann (reviewed on the previous page).

The foursome acknowledges that a famous 1974 study — The Costs of Sprawl — may have overestimated the savings that would be achieved by building in a tighter urban pattern. “Shifting most future growth from continued sprawl to much higher density and more compact forms — however desirable that may be for many reasons — is not likely to notably reduce future levels of peak-hour traffic congestion,” they say. “[W]hile more compact growth can undoubtedly reduce automotive travel,” the authors say, “it may not be able to substantially reduce traffic congestion.” Benefits of restraining low-density edge development

Nonetheless, they set out significant benefits that would result from restraining low-density edge development and from encouraging development on extensively connected street networks, closer to existing centers:

• Over 25 years, spending on water, sewer, and road projects would decline by 11 percent, to $18,750 from $21,000 per development unit. “The savings [$126 billion nationally] could allow local government to spend more on infrastructure system preservation, which is in dire need of this funding,” they point out.

• Real estate development costs over 25 years would be cut by $420 billion. “Compact settlements would broaden the range of available choices in housing styles and prices,” they say.

• The total local cost of providing public services to new residents and workers would be reduced by $4 billion a year. This would help governments below the federal level cope with a large “annual fiscal deficit” confronting local, county, and state authorities.

• Land would be saved, and air would be cleaner. “Land in the United States is being consumed at triple the rate of household formation, automobile use is growing twice as fast as the population, and prime agricultural land, forests, and fragile lands encompassing natural habitats are decreasing at comparable reciprocal rates,” they say. Twenty-five more years of sprawling development would cause the US to lose 7 million acres of farmland and 7 million acres of environmentally fragile land to real estate development.

It’s estimated, according to the authors, that “automobiles produce as much as 30 percent of the total US production of carbon dioxide responsible for global warming.” They argue that in “very high growth areas,” sprawl cannot be controlled adequately by urban growth boundaries. Nonetheless, when they contrast travel statistics from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s for the Portland, Oregon, area (which has a growth boundary and regional government) and the Atlanta area (which does not), they see strong evidence for “the potential of pursuing smart growth strategies.”

The Portland area’s population rose by 26 percent, the Atlanta region by 32 percent, yet “while Atlanta was able to keep its commute times almost steady — growing just 1 percent —Portland’s commute times dropped by 9 percent.” Sprawl Costs is a judicious, careful appraisal. What the book lacks in passion, it makes up for in precision. — Philip Langdon