Urban
sprawl, loosely defined, refers to lower city densities over an expanding urban
footprint. The rise of sprawl in the US during the 20th century stemmed
from a number of reasons, including higher incomes and cheaper fuel and
transportation costs that enabled the average family to afford residential
homes outside urban centers. The immediate outcome of such a migration out of
Gotham to Levittown created opportunities for significantly higher levels of
housing and land consumption for most households. The costs for such
suburbanization are still being dealt with today, namely: unproductive
congestion on roads, high levels of pollution from exhaust, loss of open space
amenities, and unequal provision of public goods and services across sprawling
suburbs that give rise to residential segregation and poverty. With this as a
backdrop, the following is a storyline that predicts a second stage of urban
sprawl that carries out to the middle of the 21st century. This will
be a new type of sprawl, one that is divorced from a central city, and is
coupled with a failure to utilize undeveloped land as cropland, rendering the
Northeast devoid of a strong agricultural sector.
Loss of the public
commons and abandonment of farms
As
population and unemployment continue to rise, the average citizen in the
Northeast will be limited to medial to low paying jobs that require traveling
large distances, or working within a low-density suburban community. Commuting
may be common, but not necessarily to a large urban center. Due to a moral
malaise brought on by limited sources of income, there will not be incentives
to develop or maintain cropland. Most produce will be distributed from another
part of the country, or from international agricultural sectors. The number of
agricultural producers will continue to decline as farmers become swamped with
debt and are forced of their land. Such unemployment of farmers will be due to
a number of economic risks: volatility of energy prices, domestic competition,
offshore production, a weakened economy and the eminence of the global market
[1]. With undeveloped land and cropland left open to market forces, huge
portions of real estate will be sold to large conglomerates, or leased to
developers, ultimately fueling the spread of low-density sprawl. The price of
undeveloped land will remain cheap, though competition driven by the demands of
the energy market may drive prices up. Price increases may only come in the
form of short-term speculative bubbles, but will not benefit the average
citizen, as development of lands for natural gas exploration in the form of
hydro-fracking operations will increase the risk of pollution and catastrophic
environmental degradation to rural areas, which only serves to further lower
prices.
The market
will trend towards “noncropland.” Open space owned by the federal or state
government will be auctioned off and become restricted areas, as private
entities come into possession of undeveloped land [2]. Sprawl, once anchored by
a central city, will become more fragmented. The new form of sprawl will resemble
a patchwork of low-density urban sectors separated by strips of undeveloped or
abandoned land. There may be small factions of land that are salvaged for local
farms, possibly due to the demand for local produce. CSAs and producers of organic
local food will remain uncommon, and largely absent despise small enclaves,
usually centered within college towns. Small cities may also grow around
universities, yet this specific type of growth will be hindered if the suburbs
become ghettoized.
The ghettoization of
the suburbs
An increase
in suburban poverty, begun during the recession era of the late 2000s, will
result from the continual rise of debt, either from credit cards or failure to
pay mortgages, alongside decreasing median household incomes. The recent
decadal trend of larger increases in suburban poor relative to urban poor will
continue [3]. Population of urban centers will remain high, and grow to attract
higher-paying tech jobs and employment catering towards specialization. In the
suburban sprawl away from the large tech-based cities, small businesses will be
created, supporting some parts of the population. Such job creation, however,
will not encourage the growth of cities, nor progressive-minded jobs (green
jobs). Green jobs may be created only if new sprawl offers variety to the
population [4], but since rate of poverty will be increasing, this kind of
equity seems unlikely.
A
combination of factors including overall population growth, job
decentralization, aging housing left to neglect, general economic decline, the
collapse of the housing market, and policies to promote mobility of low-income
households will lead increasing to poor inhabiting suburbs [3]. People will no
longer be able to afford to live within local jurisdictions based on their
preference for local amenities such as good schools and low crime rates. A
“flight from blight” will occur within older suburban regions that will further
segregate communities into poor, impoverished neighborhoods as households that
are financially stable move away. The rise of low-income, low-density sprawl
will reinforce the lack of planned cropland. Continual decreases in education
standards that mirror the lack of strong outside investments in such areas will
generate a situation where residential areas are abandoned, increasing urban
decay and decreasing moral fortitude for constructive change. Crime will
increase as people become more and more desperate. These factors, bolstered by strong market
forces that impede development of a strong agricultural sector and efficient
long-term urban development, will move the Northeast to become an impoverished part
of the country outside the thriving high-density urban centers.
[1] Brumfield, Robin G. (2010) Strategies Producers in the
Northeastern United States are Using to Reduce Costs and Increase Profits in
Tough Economic Times, HortTechnology,
20, 836-43.
[2] Anderson et al. (1999) How and why to privatize federal
lands, Cato Policy Analysis No. 363,
December 9, 1999.
[3]Berube, Alan (2011) Parsing U.S. Poverty at the
Metropolitan Level, Up Front Blog – Brookings Institute, September 22, 2011.
[4] Nechyba, Thomas J. and Randall P. Walsh. (2004) Urban
Sprawl, Journal of Economic Perspectives,
18, 177-200.
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