The factors that cause urban sprawl

There is a wide variety of potential causes of sprawl, both direct and indirect, and it can be challenging to identify all of the factors that drive the phenomenon. Such factors generally revolve around choices made by home buyers, businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises, and local, regional, and state governments.

Although all of these constituents believe they are making smart choices in the short term, ones that are beneficial (financially or otherwise) to their respective parties, all of these choices can inevitably lead to community disadvantage in the long term, via the consequence of sprawl.

Choices made by Home Buyers

Households looking to purchase new homes often seek to find packages or bundles of features that accompany their prospective new home. These packages represent benefits or amenities that do not merely relate to the interior or exterior of their new home. Such benefits and amenities include:

• Proximity to public parks, playgrounds, walking/biking trails, or other natural environments
• Proximity to a better or more reputable school district, if children are in the household
• Friendlier neighborhoods and communities, with less crime
• Lower property taxes
• More property acreage, and less cost per acre
• Newer homes with more modern appliances, conveniences and interior styles
• Newer homes that have implemented more modern construction techniques, therefore requiring less maintenance and upkeep
• Larger houses, with more bedrooms & bathrooms per house
• More distance between neighbors
• Distance from crowded urban centers
• Distance from pollution
• A more natural environment
• Easy access to highways, easy commuter routes
• Proximity to bus routes for school-age children
• Waterfront property
• Private water supply

While one can see how many or all of these features are understandably valuable to prospective home buyers, one can also see how the demand for these same features by an increasing number of people would cause home builders to supply homes and residential developments in more rural regions, thus contributing to sprawl.

examples of urban sprawl in Melbourne，ustralia

Choices of Businesses and Developers

Whether businesses are large or small, all business owners will naturally seek to minimize costs, maximize profits, and find the best and most convenient ways of selling their products or services. With this in mind, businesses often make shrewd short-term decisions based on these continuing trends in the U.S.:

• Manufacturing has decreased, and the economy has moved to a more service-oriented and technology-related culture. This enables storefronts and businesses to be in less centralized locations, and provide their goods and services in more suburban and rural settings.
• It is often far more expensive—and sometimes cost-prohibitive—for businesses to redevelop unused or dilapidated urban business locations. In other words, it is often to expensive to a) purchase land that was formerly used for manufacturing or production (which, being in urban areas, will have higher property taxes), b) demolish pre-existing buildings and structures, (often contending with challenging demolition logistics if the property is in an urban and high-traffic area), and c) build new structures in its place (again contending with traffic patterns during construction).
• It is generally much less expensive and less complex to build new construction on virgin land—forests or former farms that have no former construction.
• As the agricultural industry continues to struggle in rural areas, more farmers are selling their land and consolidating their work on less and less acreage. Therefore farmland is inexpensive.
• Smaller towns and villages are eager to invite businesses into their regions in order to spark economic growth. These municipalities often provide tax incentives to businesses that are willing to enter, and accommodate such infusions of commercial expansion in whatever ways they can.
• Federal and state financial support for the maintenance and care of urban infrastructures such as water and sewer systems has declined. This requires businesses that are redeveloping urban spaces to invest more capital in fixing such problems themselves.
• Conversely, private septic systems and wells have decreased in price and increased in quality/efficiency, therefore making it less expensive for businesses to establish and operate water and septic systems in more rural and decentralized regions, and equally less expensive for developers to build residential communities outside of city limits.
• Greater demand among home buyers for larger homes and more distance between homes continues to inspire developers to build more houses, apartment complexes, condominiums and other residential communities in suburban, rural and previously undeveloped regions.

While one can see how these factors lead businesses to make the decisions that are wisest from their own perspective, it is also quite recognizable that this leads to extensive sprawl on a larger scale.

Choices made by Local, Regional, and State Governments

Zoning and tax policies at the town, village, county or state level can play a large part in either suppressing or inspiring sprawl. These are the factors:

• Smaller towns and villages are often eager to grant tax incentives to incoming businesses, as an attempt to bolster their own regional economy. The tax breaks therefore are often attached to larger formerly unspoiled rural land.
• Metropolitan areas that are comprised of multiple local governing bodies tend to encourage sprawl, because the local regions are competing against each other for the influx of both commerce and new homeowners. They therefore compete for businesses and home buyers via lower property taxes.
• Areas that rely on property taxes for their revenue are often the ones to sprawl the most. Conversely, areas where revenue is raised through fees and charges reduce the incentives for bigger businesses to set up camp in rural locations, thus reducing the tendency toward sprawl. [(Pendall, 1999; Carruthers & Ulfarsson, 2003; Fischel, 2001)]
• Municipalities that establish zoning regulations with large-lot principles and with single-use restrictions also inspire sprawl, because they discourage businesses from developing in previously developed areas. These businesses are zoned out of the more centralized regions, and shift their search for property that is farther away.
• Regions that do not regulate or mitigate the impacts of new growth on municipal infrastructure (water, sewer, roads, traffic, commuter services) are soon forced to raise property taxes on all property owners (rather than on the businesses and developers most responsible for the strain on public services).
• Towns and villages that inspire so much commercial growth, to the extent that the environment itself is degraded, will find that property values will decrease, causing a greater strain on the tax base, and a greater challenge in providing standard municipal services.
• Some local governments have begun to use federal or state subsidies to construct new suburban schools as conditions in urban schools decline. This inspires more sprawl as well as a greater strain on roads and traffic patterns leading to outlying areas. [(Ferguson et al, 2004)]
• Similarly, some local governments use federal or state dollars for the purpose of extending fire and/or police services, and water & sewer lines to further outlying areas. [(Ferguson et al, 2004)]

Changes in these policies and standards at local, regional, or state levels could reduce the perpetuation of sprawl.

REFERENCES: Cornell University, Department of Development Sociology