We’ve been hearing a lot lately about a potential federal stimulus package that will rival President Eisenhower’s massive investments in highway infrastructure during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System (read an interesting viewpoint on the highway system here) from that era launched America into living model that is economically and environmentally unsustainable; we’re finally finding that out now. During the 50s and 60s, middle class Americans fled urban centers and flocked to rural farmland areas to live in single family homes accessible only by automobile.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a similar trend occurred. This time, Americans were moving away from the inner suburbs and out into the exurbs, sometimes an hour to two hours from the existing urban core. Walmarts sprung up, McMansions grew from orange groves, cornfields, and apple orchards. Americans had lost community centered around small towns and quaint downtowns. During that time, the average urban population declined slightly and the exurbs expanded outward nearly 25% or more. Today, we are seeing a reversal trend; more young people are looking to live in the urban core, and American’s are yearning for a sense of community. David Brooks, an Op-Ed columnist from the New York Times, recently described the faults in this kind of population dispersal in his article “This Old House.”
Brooks argues that if President Obama and his economic team attempt to pump large amounts of money into federal highway infrastructure as a way stimulate the ailing economy, he would have simply stuck a cork in a gaping hole. The article describes how a booming economy and financial stability can be more easily brought about and sustained by investing in mass transit, high-speed rail, and in development of vibrant town centers. If we continue to invest in sprawling suburbia, our long-term energy needs will never be met, and our overall economic and environmental sustainability will continue to deteriorate, especially as oil becomes more and more scarce.
Another article recently published in the Times called “New York City Grew, but Traffic Didn’t” describes how during New York’s recent booming years (2003-2007), the population of the city grew but overall traffic tended to decrease or remained flat-lined. The extra population and increased movement of people was absorbed entirely by the mass transit system, where air pollution and the amount of traffic actually decrease; the example shows how a sustainable living model can coexist with a booming economy and can actually keep the economy booming for a longer period of time as less money is wasted in traffic and on energy.
Interestingly enough, there is a blog dedicated to enlightening Mr. Obama on the evils of urban sprawl. The Blog is rightly called the End Sprawl Blog, and it is hosted by the official Barack Obama website. The author of the blog believes that Barack Obama has the chance to reverse urban sprawl by encouraging federal investment in Smart Growth and New Urbanist practices, as well as more investments in sustainable transportation like passenger railroads.
On another note, Tad Fettig, the Director of PBS’s acclaimed series Design ‘e2,’ recently sat down with an interviewer from wired.com to discuss the downfall of the American dream and suburb.
He said, “I think it is dead, and very worrisome. So many families have bought into it without factoring in rising fuel cost. The city is the future. Possibly, many smaller cities and large towns will help with smartly built mass transit, but I don’t think there are enough jobs to allow for a home/work life. I’m not sure. The computer age suggested a growing ability to work from home, but did not factor in the outsourcing and rising education of the rest of the developing world.”
Of course, Mr. Obama has been tauting investments in renewable energy as the key to our future economic upswing – but, what good are renewables if America’s virgin/green land is overrun with asphalt and strip malls and our overall energy bill continues to skyrocket because of this wasteful sprawl development?
