Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sprawl? So What?
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 8:05 AM
[In this week's Memphis Flyer, I wrote about Memphis' new outer loop, I-269. This is the last in a series of maps and graphics that I think help illuminate that story.]
So we're sprawly ... Who cares, right?
People are allowed to live wherever they want, if they have the means, and who are we to say otherwise? I agree, to a certain point, but in many ways, this is a situation where some people are subsidizing the choices of others.
Even if that wasn't the case, however, living close to schools, shops, work, each other seems -- in general -- to be a good thing.
In 2000, people who lived in the section of downtown near the I-40 bridge drove an average 0 - 17 minutes to get to work.
In 2009, people who live in that area drove an average 34 - 38 minutes to get to work.
Most everybody else's commute times increased, too, altho not quite as significantly.
What strikes me is exactly how spread out we are, especially in comparison to other cities. L.A., for instance, is almost synonymous with sprawl, yet when Memphis is annexed out, it will include roughly the same area with a fraction of the population.
Here is how Memphis' I-69 loop would look on other cities. Just for comparison's sake.
Okay, keep Houston (above) in mind for a second. Rice University did this really great -- and kind of pretty -- ring road graphic recently. Memphis is not on it, but I think -- if you look at the Houston graphic and this -- you can see just about where Memphis falls.
Comments (21)
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whoever came up with this S.T.U.P.I.D. idea of doing a 269 loop. It is a suicide for Memphis Area. Memphis already has problem with retaining people. This will make it worse. Memphis is the heart of this region - its economic engine. Who feels good with a weak heart? It is not good for Memphis, and it is not good for the surrounding areas. Is there no body who can stop it?
This is a classic example of seeing what happens when a few people are left in charge of making decisions that affect a lot of people.
SmartCity Memphis blog has a great discussion on this. I-269 will provide the infrastructure to fuel the next racially-driven suburban development. "If you build it they will flee."
If the city focuses on the basics of good schools, safety and quality of life issues it will be fine as it continues to draw in progressive creative talent and creates a powerful and tolerant core for the city. Sadly the focus is not there due to infighting and a toxic " we win you lose" mentality so this infilling is slow.
Well, when Memphis decides to quit incorporating the county, and decided to not be the 2nd most dangerous city in the country, then people will quit running away from it.
Memphis is a cancer, and people are running away from it. I go into the city of Memphis maybe a couple times a month and have never thought "hmm, i'd really like to move back here".
decided to not be the 2nd most dangerous city in the country, then people will quit running away from it.
Funny, that's a major reason as to why Memphis is dangerous.
I've lived in Memphis for 20 years in several different areas. My house has been broken into, my cars have been broken into several times, two bullets flew into an apartment I was living in, I've had a gun stuck in my back and robbed in a shopping center parking lot. I was walking to my car one night from Beale Street and was almost beaten to death with an metal bar. Almost every one I know has been a victim of crime in Memphis. I now live just outside of Memphis and let me tell you how nice it is not to always worry about locking your doors. I still like Memphis. Memphis has so many great things. Shelby Farms, The Zoo, Childrens Museum, Auto Zone Park, Mud Island, The Orpheum, Pink Palace, St. Jude, New and improved Galloway Golf Course. What a great job they did with that. The great festivals. The list goes on and on. If you can't have a good time in Memphis it's your own fault. The criminals are whats keeping people out of Memphis, not some Expressway. Quit only slapping them on the wrist and make the punishment fit the crime. Have a better monitoring program for the criminals being released from jail. Most criminals are repeat offenders. You fix crime, you fix sprawl.
We are lagging dangerously, so far behind that we had a ring road gap. The existance of a ring road gap would enbolden our enamies to make all our bases theirs.
Seriously, the nice color maps don't exclusively demonstrate the impact of sprawl, they also demonstrate the impact of density. Time taken to travel depends on the distance traveled, thats true, but also the speed traveled. As roads become crowded speeds drop and travel times go up. Much of the increase in commute time for the downtown folks likely came from, tada, the increase in the number of folks downtown (not to mention that mathmatically its almost a certainty that because the increase in the population of folks downtown exceeded the rate of growth of jobs downtown, that the subsample known as people who lived in the section of downtown near the I-40 bridge would see their commute times rise toward the population average.) The maps are sooo pretty.
Do you have a prefered metro? Somewhere that has dealt with these issues in a means you like?
Part of the equation for crime is forgotten and neglected neighborhoods. This came about due to a lack of planning on development. Instead of putting a well thought out growth plan in place, the city simply annexed more area. A plan that sets boundaries and encourages constant redevelopment in the core would have helped to prevent a great deal of this. The other problem brought about by the annexation craze is that you have to cover more square miles with same number of cops. They're just spread too thin. This affects all city services as well. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Something the city (along with other county and local civic) leaders need to take to heart.
Frank I hear ya, and this is a difficult problem for many cities. Sure some have done better than others. I tend to think that Memphis' planners are towards the bottom of the list though. In another post I cited Portland, OR and Calgary, AB as two examples of cities that have dealt relatively well with growth.
Aside from the obvious problems of over zealous annexation, lack of investing in the urban core, and no growth plan, Memphis' leaders have all shunned public transportation. Central station was refurbished, and quite nicely I might add, but serves better as the farmers market than a train station. Why didn't the city look at running passenger trains to Tunica and back? Why not work with other government bodies and push for an east-west Amtrak route from say Dallas to Knoxville? Instead of a downtown curiosity, why not invest in a commuter rail system when the freight trains left the tracks? We've built miles of new roads and widen still more over the past 40 years, yet there are almost no bike lanes. Sidewalks and most roads are not pedestrian friendly (not many Memphians make use crosswalks and sidewalks anyway, but I digress). These are the types of things that require well thought out planning and, more importantly, cooperation with other government bodies. Memphis has a poor track record of doing either of these. And through the actions of our leaders, past and present, other government bodies have turned their noses up at the city. Rightly so in some cases.
Stating that crime is the primary driving force behind sprawl in Memphis shows the narrow field of vision and general lack of experience that many locals seem to possess. Major cities with much lower crime rates have experienced sprawl on an even greater scale over the past several decades. Based on the national experience, a low crime rate will have little to no impact on the sprawl here. It would be logical to assume that those on this board as well as those heard making the same statements in the Commercial Appeal will move back into the city if crime is reduced and the schools operate at an acceptable level. For some reason I seriously doubt this scenario would play out. The most effective way to curb sprawl is limit access to the rural areas surrounding a central city. BY not widening roads and resisting the temptation to build new freeways commute times will increase to an unacceptable level and development will be restrained to areas determined by the market to be within an acceptable commuting distance by residents.
Don't blame this on Memphis' professional planners. The outer loop has been on the Major Road Plan since the mid 1960s. It was approved time and time again by all the politicians of the metropolitan area (including DeSoto and Fayette Counties). It was fueled by major development interests and the Major Road Committee of the Regional Chamber.
We city planners (other than the in the pocket transportation planners) recommended against sprawl at every turn. It is our local legislators and elected executives (State, County and municipal) that allowed this to happen.
Now, thanks to some crafty development interests, the local City/County planning agency has been decimated and taken over by non-planners who have not a clue as to what comprehensive planning means to our region and are as close to political hacks as we have ever had in a governmental agency.
memphis planner is correct--these were all political decisions, not planning ones.
First of all, let's address sprawl for what it really is - a combination of natural population growth and white flight. Good city planning can handle natural population growth, but it can't account for white flight.
Not all white flight is racially motivated, though most of it certainly was, beginning with desegregation. The key component here is schools. Originally it was because white parents didn't want their kids going to school with black kids. That is still true today, though hopefully not as much. Racially motivated white flight was the trigger to the nuclear meltdown of the Memphis City Schools.
People move to areas where there are good schools. This is the number one motivating factor - not crime, not taxes, not commute time. They will move there even though it costs them more money and time and inconvenience. This is the reason Desoto County has grown so much, because they have put in the effort to build and maintain a first class public school system geared toward children, not overpaid administrators and their overinflated egos. They have done so even though it has meant raising taxes, because residents are willing to pay higher taxes if they can see the results. They see results in Desoto County. In Memphis all they see are higher taxes.
A perfect example within Memphis is the White Station school district. White Station High School, and its surround elementary schools, are known to be good public schools. I would never have moved out of Memphis had I been able to afford a house in that school district. Because the school district is so good, property values are high, demand for housing is high, and supply is low. The area has also undergone a significant amount of redevelopment and gentrification, with newer, larger houses replacing smaller older ones. The primary motivating factor to the success of this district in attracting and retaining residents is the school.
Getting the public school system straightened out is the only way this city can recover. If the schools in Memphis were as good as the schools in Desoto County, people would move back to Memphis to take advantage of shorter commutes. Sprawl will continue as long where you live determines where your children go to school. Poor schools leads to sprawl and poverty which leads to crime which leads to more sprawl and more poverty and more poor schools. But the key lies in the school system. Fix that and you make the city a desirable place to live again. Ignore it, or maintain the status quo, and nothing will ever change.
Yes, they were political decisions, but they didn't happen in a vacuum. The people moved out first, then demanded the roads from their representatives. The new roads merely facillitated the sprawl that was already occuring. There weren't any roads to nowhere built, as far as I know.
In reply to Jeff-
I agree schools are a major motivating factor and desegregation contributed to the first wave of migration outward toward suburbia.
However, I disagree concerning the roads. At present I-269 is essentially a road to nowhere. The Church Road interchange was an interchange to nowhere when it was built. The conversation should not center just on so called roads to nowhere. Another major issue is just what you stated. Our officials’ inability to deny road improvements in areas where the initial patterns of suburbanization take place. While we all have the freedom to move wherever we like, the community should not be forced to widen the roads into newly developed areas. Instead of widening many of the county roads into 4, 5 and 7 lane runways, we should allow congestion to serve as the primary deterrent to additional exurban development. Widening roads such as Houston Levee, Macon, Walnut Grove and Goodman Road (which was widened long before traffic counts suggested it needed it) to provide congestion relief is like providing an open bar at an AA meeting. We recognize we have a problem, but instead of dealing with the consequences we simply make the root of the problem more accessible (without consequence) and in fact encourage others to join the party.
But their inability is based on the fact that we have representative government. The people who live there demanded the roads from their representatives.
In any case, roads to nowhere would remain roads to nowhere if people actually wanted to live in the city. Forcing them to live here by building virtual walls of two lane country roads is not the solution. Not only will they move out, they will move away completely, or never move here in the first place.
Number one issue for me is schools. I suspect it's the number one issue for a lot of people. In Shelby County, whether my children go to a good school is based on where they live and/or my ability to get them into an optional school. (Why is a good education only optional in Memphis, anyway?) In Desoto County, it doesn't matter where you live because all the schools are good.
I agree with the schools comment to a point. In Last Harvest, written by Witold Rybczynski, he describes a situation in Pennsylvania where buyers are very aware of school districts and the lengths to which they will go to obtain housing in "good districts". However, in that section of the country, there has developed a strong anti-development mentality by local populations which has significantly slowed the pace and degree of sprawl. We may eventually see the local population shift in that direction if the local citizenry realizes the correlation between new development and rising taxes.
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