Article and Cartoon
By Fred Baerkircher
My mother gasped, shocked at what
we saw as our car crested a hill near the junction of I–76 and I–71. She hadn’t made the drive
to her hometown of Medina in nearly a decade, and was wholly unprepared for the sea of strip malls that welcomed
us. Things didn’t improve as we came nearer town. An ugly collage of tract housing and traffic jams had
replaced the fields in which she and her brother once rode horses and the ponds in which they once floated
homemade rafts.
The changes have been driven largely by the sprawling growth patterns of nearby
Cuyahoga County, explained Jay Lee, chair of Kent State’s geography department. "The way it’s
developing, it’s pushing people to move to the suburbs," Lee said.
He said that while
Medina County has seen the worst of the sprawl over the past two decades, it is far from alone. Geauga and
Summit Counties have also seen significant growth, as has Portage County, though to a lesser extent.
David Beach, executive director of EcoCity Cleveland, a non–profit organization working to promote
environmentally friendly urban design, said that while growth in Northeast Ohio seems small when compared
to some areas, like Atlanta, the nature of our homegrown sprawl is disconcerting.
"It’s
particularly wasteful here," Beach said, "because we’re sprawling without much
growth."
Lee agreed that only a small portion of this area’s growth is driven by
population increases. Most of it is instead generated by the local population simply moving around. Sprawl
is on the rise as more and more people purchase a home in search of their own piece of the American dream.
Houses have become cheaper, and low–cost mortgages are easier to come by now than in the past. Also,
as the area’s network of roads becomes ever more advanced, commuting becomes easier, offsetting a major
drawback to moving away from urban centers.
"The problem is, these newly built residential
units are all low density," Lee said. "This is really a waste of land as a resource."
Beach
is more blunt about the environmental impact of people moving from their homes near the city to outlying
areas: "It’s like we’re playing a shell game with our resources," he said.
One
of the driving factors behind sprawl is that there are, of course, differing views of growth. Many communities
welcome development and fear that they must either grow or stagnate. Some communities see growth as an
opportunity to deepen their coffers through tax revenue — though Lee is quick to point out that the
costs to infrastructure typically outweigh such gains, at least in the short term. While a handful of
communities have taken steps to combat sprawl, the opportunistic nature of the free market is such that
developers build anywhere they are able. This has resulted in an insidious, leapfrogging pattern of
development.
Old MacDonald sold his farm
It’s the kind of
thing that really shouldn’t be funny. Wealthy families from the city move out to the country in
search of idyllic peace, like Thoreau but with satellite television. What they quickly discover, however,
is something the glossy magazine pictures never truly convey: Living next to a farm can be noisy and
smelly.
Of course, no one can stop a farmer from selling land to developers while nearby farms
go on about their business, Lee noted, but neighborhood tensions that result from such mixed use are a very
real problem. Mixed use is just one of a host of problems that accompany sprawl.
"Land use is
becoming the biggest water–quality program," Beach said. He explained that as more land is paved
over for housing developments, the accompanying roads, and the strip malls that inevitably follow, water flow
patterns are disrupted. The result is that water is unable to filter naturally through the ground, leading to
increased contamination in waterways.
Sprawl also contributes tremendously to air pollution, Beach
said. "The way we keep spreading out of our urban area forces us to drive more and more," he explained.
While cars have become much more efficient over the years, that benefit has been more than offset by the increased
miles people drive.
Loss of the land itself is another problem. We’re losing our natural
areas and their biological diversity at an alarming rate, Beach said. He said even such simple mechanisms as
the way bees pollinate crops are jeopardized. "We need to figure out how to share this planet with lots of
other plants and animals," he said.
There’s an impact on people as well. Lee said sprawl
can lead to alienation. Indeed, we’ve all seen developments in which each house looks just like the next,
and where residents drive home from work and pull directly into their garage without having to speak to a single
neighbor.
With obesity on the rise in America, many are pointing fingers at sprawl as one
culprit. "We’re not walking as much as we used to," Beach said.
Beach pointed to
recent reports citing Cleveland as having the highest poverty rate of any American city as an indication of
the social ramifications of sprawl. That poverty, he said, is largely a function of regional growth patterns.
He said it’s not a result of people simply becoming poorer.
"It’s a result of the
middle class moving out into the suburbs," Beach said. "It’s a huge issue for social
justice."
Beach noted that typically minorities and the poor are left behind in the urban
centers, forced to make do with what’s left of a crumbling infrastructure and fleeing job market.
Meanwhile, he added, the shiny new communities in the suburbs take great pains to preserve property values,
many going so far as to prohibit the construction of affordable housing.
"By design in our
land–use planning the poor are excluded in new communities," Beach said. "That’s just
patently unfair."
Tightening the outerbelt
While sprawl is a
complex issue with no easy solution, there are things that can be done to minimize its effects. Lee said
individual communities are already tinkering with their own solutions to the problem. Hudson, for example,
in an attempt to preserve its small–town feel, has placed severe limitations on new construction.
Lee noted, however, that this approach has resulted in a huge increase in demand for new homes in Hudson
as more and more people open their eyes to the ugly side of sprawl. While the growth has slowed, the pressure
to grow is greater than ever.
There are other approaches as well, such as the preservation of
open space around communities, the designation of growth zones, and the strict preservation of prime farm
lands and critical nature areas.
Lee and several of his graduate students in the geography
department have developed a computer simulation, accessible at www.empact.gog.kent.edu, that shows the
effect any of these solutions can have on a community’s growth. Users can see a growth projection
for any county in Northeast Ohio. They plug in growth estimates along with a growth strategy, and the
simulator generates maps of what the area would look like as well as how the environment would be affected
under the scenario. It’s part of a larger project on sprawl funded by the EPA.
Individuals
can get involved by urging their communities to focus on redeveloping existing areas, Beach said. He said
people can begin by educating themselves about the issue and about new trends in architecture and design,
such as "new urbanism," which touts the benefits of living in a central location.
Beach
said that Ohio lags behind many other states in terms of addressing sprawl at the state level. He noted
that many of Ohio’s policies on taxation and infrastructure still encourage sprawl. There is a
citizens’ network, however, Greaterohio.org, that is dedicated to effecting change in state policy.
Beach said Ohio has shown some signs of improvement on the issue lately. He cited the Lake Erie Balanced
Growth Initiative, through which the state has sought to provide incentives to areas redeveloping urban
areas on the lake rather than building anew. That initiative, Beach said, indicates that there is some
hope Ohio will recognize the threat posed by sprawl.
"It’s still in the early
stages," Beach said. "We’ll see what happens."