Urban Growth and Suburban Sprawl

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Urban Growth and Suburban Sprawl

• Real Estate 310
• Principles of Real Estate
• Dr. Longhofer

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Urban Planning

• Urban growth and development involves extensive
  interaction with local governmental organizations
• Zoning and subdivision approval
• Building code compliance and inspections
• Public infrastructure (roads, water, sewer)
• Urban planning is an essential function to ensure
  that required public services are available for
  urban growth as it occurs

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Metropolitan Area Planning Department

• The job of planning for urban growth falls to the
  Metropolitan Area Planning Department
• The mission of the Metropolitan Area Planning
  Department (MAPD) is to provide timely, accurate
  and complete information, along with professional
  advice, on the orderly, efficient, and attractive
  development and redevelopment of land in Wichita
  and Sedgwick County. The MAPD also addresses
  future needs for transportation and community
  facilities.
• http//www.wichita.gov/CityOffices/Planning/Missio
  nStatementandGoals.htm

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The Comprehensive Plan

• One function of the Planning Department is to
  oversee development of the Comprehensive Plan
• The comprehensive plan is a long-term general
  guide to a communitys future growth and
  development
• The comprehensive plan usually outlines the
  following basic elements
• Population and employment
• Land use requirements
• Housing needs
• Community facilities and utilities
• Transportation needs

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The Comprehensive Plan

• The comprehensive plan is used as a guide for
  making specific land-use and other urban policy
  decisions
• At the broadest level, the comprehensive plan
  presents a vision for what the community will
  look like in coming decades
• This vision is laid out through a series of
  goals, objectives, and strategies
• Goal Encourage orderly growth in order to meet
  future demand while considering cost to
  taxpayers, developers, the environment and the
  community as a whole.

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The Comprehensive Plan

• Objective Encourage future growth and
  development to areas that are served by existing
  public facilities and services, or which can be
  served economically and promote compact and
  contiguous development.
• Strategy Continue to require annexation or
  agreements to annexation before Wichita utilities
  or services will be provided to private
  properties in unincorporated areas outside the
  City of Wichita.
• Strategy Use the location guidelines which were
  utilized to develop the Wichita Land Use Guide
  to assess the appropriateness of future
  development proposals.

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Wichita Comprehensive Plan
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How Should Our City Grow?

• Because it is used to guide future growth, the
  comprehensive plan should reflect how our
  community should grow in the future

Current, low density development/growth
patterns on the edges of Wichita are desirable,
are justified by marketplace factors, and should
be encouraged into the future.

• Many would call this development pattern sprawl

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What is Sprawl?

• Growth of urban areas into previously rural land
• Sprawl is the spreading out of a city and its
  suburbs over more and more rural land at the
  periphery of an urban area. This involves the
  conversion of open space (rural land) into
  built-up, developed land over time.

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What is Sprawl?

• Scattered, non-contiguous urban development
• Sprawl is scattered development that increases
  traffic, saps local resources and destroys open
  space
• Sprawl is dispersed, auto-dependent development
  outside of compact urban and village centers
  along highways and in rural countryside.

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What is Sprawl?

• Low density development
• Sprawl is the continual use of more land than
  is necessary to accomplish a given development
  goal. Sprawl is the consumption of resources and
  land in excess of what is needed to create a
  comfortable, livable and functional city.

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What is Sprawl?

• Segregated land uses

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What is Sprawl?

• Ugly, undesirable development patterns

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What is Sprawl?

• A recent study sponsored by Smart Growth America
  provides a working definition of sprawl
• The landscape sprawl creates has four
  dimensions
• A population that is widely dispersed in low
  density development
• Rigidly separated homes, shops, and workplaces
• A network of roads marked by huge blocks and poor
  access and
• A lack of well-defined, thriving activity
  centers, such as downtowns and town centers. ?

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The Costs of Sprawl

• Many observers cite a variety of costs to
  sprawling growth
• Increased traffic congestion and commute times
• Air and water pollution
• Increased flood damage
• Loss of parks, farms and open space
• Increased costs for public infrastructure
  (schools, roads, water and sewer lines, etc.)

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Alternatives to SprawlSmart Growth

• Smart growth is usually defined by advocates as
  the antithesis of sprawl
• Smart growth is growth that helps to achieve
  these six goals
• Neighborhood livability
• Better access, less traffic
• Thriving cities, suburbs and towns
• Shared benefits
• Lower costs, lower taxes
• Keeping open space open

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Alternatives to SprawlNew Urbanism

• New Urbanism promotes the creation and
  restoration of diverse, walkable, compact,
  vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the
  same components as conventional development, but
  assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the
  form of complete communities.
• Congress for the New Urbanism

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Principles of New Urbanism

• Walkability
• Connectivity
• Mixed-use diversity
• Mixed housing
• Quality architecture urban design

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Principles of New Urbanism

• Traditional neighborhood structure
• Increased density
• Smart transportation
• Sustainability
• Quality of life

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Other Policies to Reduce Sprawl

• Preserving open space
• Clustered development
• Conservation easements
• Transferable development rights

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Other Policies to Reduce Sprawl

• Concentrating development
• Urban growth boundaries
• Controlling extensions to water and sewer lines
• Promoting infill development
• Regional coordination
• Planning and zoning changes

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Why Does Development Happen on the Fringes?

• If people really dont want sprawl, why does
  development happen on the fringes of urban areas?
  
• Cost and ease of acquiring land
• Environmental concerns
• Fewer impediments to development
• New development is cheaper than redevelopment
• If we really want to promote redevelopment of
  urban areas, we have to address these problems

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Is Sprawl Always Bad?

• How does sprawl affect traffic?
• What about air and water pollution?
• Is flooding worsened by sprawl?
• What is the value of open space?
• Does development pay its way?
• How does sprawl affect the cost of living?
• When is it OK to limit private property rights?

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What Do Home Buyers Want?

• Is sprawl simply a reflection of what most people
  want in their communities?
• Surveys suggest that home buyers desire
• Single-family detached homes on large lots
• Suburban areas are preferred to urban communities
• Low density development
• Question Do these surveys really reflect the
  publics preferences?

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What Do We Want forOur Community?