Michael Lewyn is a professor at Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, in Long Island. His scholarship can be found at http://works.bepress.com/lewyn.
The false hope of comprehensive planning
<p> </p> <p style="line-height: 17px; margin: 0px" class="ecxMsoNormal"> It is conventional wisdom in some circles that “comprehensive planning” and sprawl are polar opposites- that planning is the enemy of sprawl. </p> <p style="line-height: 17px; margin: 0px" class="ecxMsoNormal"> But in fact, a comprehensive plan is almost as likely as a zoning code to be pro-sprawl.<span style="line-height: 17px"> </span>Many of the land use policies that make suburbs automobile-dependent (such as wide roads, long blocks, low density, single-use zoning, etc.) can just as easily be found in a comprehensive plan. </p>
Cheap transport and cheap housing: is there a tradeoff?
<p> A few months ago, I updated a city rating system (available at http://lewyn.tripod.com/livable09) that evaluated cities' "livability" by rating crime rates, transit-friendliness, and cost of housing. </p> <p> Plenty of cities did very well on the first two criteria. For example, New York is now safer than most big cities, and of course is by far the best city in the U.S. for public transit. But its housing costs are dreadfully high. The same was true of Boston and San Francisco (which, if only crime and transit were considered, would rank second and third for livability). </p>
Cleanliness from a car
<p> A few months ago, I was talking to a faculty colleague who lives in a part of Jacksonville even more sprawl-bound where I live, an area about a mile or so from the nearest bus stop and with a single-digit Walkscore. He said Jacksonville was "safe and clean." I was a little surprised: "clean" is one word I would never* use to describe Jacksonville. When I walk down the sidewalks of San Jose Boulevard, I notice litter aplenty - and from what I know of Beach Boulevard (the grim commercial strip near my colleague's house) I doubt that it is much better. </p>
On defining "Sprawl"
<p> Last week, I was busy trying to turn my paper on sprawl in Canada (available at http://works.bepress.com/lewyn/65/) into a speech. In my paper, I define sprawl in two ways: where we grow (measured by growth or decline of central cities, controlling for municipal annexations) and how we grow (measured by modal shares for cars and transit). As I was proofing, I asked myself: why these particular measurements? What presuppositions underlie defining sprawl based on, say, modal share as opposed to the growth of a urban area's land mass? </p>
The City/Suburb Income Gap- Bigger or Smaller?
<p> The Brookings Institution's "State of Metropolitan America" database (at <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/metro/StateOfMetroAmerica/Map.aspx#/?subject=7&ind=70&dist=0&data=Number&year=2009&geo=metro&zoom=0&x=0&y=0">http://www.brookings.edu/metro/StateOfMetroAmerica/Map.aspx#/?subject=7&ind=70&dist=0&data=Number&year=2009&geo=metro&zoom=0&x=0&y=0</a> ) contains a wealth of information both on central cities and their metropolitan areas. One issue I was curious about was the economic gap (or lack thereof) between cities and their suburbs.