I live about 70 miles west of Detroit in the heart of that mega city.
Posted on 07/26/2011 9:30:43 AM PDT by MichCapCon
From the mid-1990s to early 2000s, pundits blamed “urban sprawl” for soaring infrastructure costs, environmental degradation, increased CO2 emissions, shrinking farmland and even obesity. Today, in Michigan and across the country, this issue has largely disappeared. Strangely, this disappearance is attributable to the government, albeit more by accident than by design. If sprawl is to remain in the rearview mirror, politicians must address their own contributions to its rise.
In the 1990s, the number of people moving out of cities and inner-ring suburbs into surrounding areas increased, turning more Michigan farms and open spaces into housing developments and suburbs. In 1994, Gov. John Engler’s task force on sprawl reported that farmland was disappearing at the rate of 10 acres an hour.
The apprehension over sprawl in Michigan and around the country led to many hypotheses about its cause: rising personal wealth, more people owning cars, and a general desire to live in less crowded, lower-tax areas. According to this telling, owning a house and raising a family on a nice piece of property — in essence, pursuing the American Dream — was responsible for threatening our land.
As urban sprawl garnered attention, pressure mounted on politicians to do something about it, and Michigan policymakers formulated plans to arrest the pace of development. At the state level, Public Act 116 was amended, providing tax credits to farmers who agreed not to convert their farms into housing developments. Several local municipalities passed programs allowing government to purchase property development rights, thus restricting future building in some areas. The costs of these programs were justified on the basis of protecting valuable natural resources from overeager consumers.
In 2006, however, the real estate bubble began to deflate, and by the end of 2008, housing prices were devastated. Foreclosures soared, and many Americans shuttered their homes. As the causes of the housing bubble began to emerge, it became apparent that government was at least partly to blame for sprawl. The Department of Housing and Urban Development had used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to extend riskier mortgages to many Americans. By bundling these mortgages into mortgage-backed securities and backing them with implicit taxpayer guarantees, the government had subsidized homeownership.
The extent to which mortgage subsidization caused sprawl is open to debate. Other factors, such as urban zoning policies, rising wealth and market forces likely played a significant role. Still, government’s response to its market distortions over the last decade was to increase its market involvement through land preservation programs, rather than reforming mortgage or zoning policies.
Interestingly, less-regulated housing markets, such as Houston, Texas, appear to have weathered the housing crisis better than cities with more zoning rules. Houston housing prices neither rose drastically during the housing boom nor declined precipitously during the bust phase. Less government involvement from the beginning may give cities the best chance to avoid dramatic changes in the housing sector.
By contrast, Michiganders find themselves stuck with numerous government policies that distort land and real estate markets, even though the state’s population and house-building have plummeted and sprawl has slowed. When sprawl was prevalent, government was subsidizing it with one hand while trying to stymie it with the other. Today, absent the pressures of sprawl, farmers are still able to enjoy tax credits and government compensation in Michigan.
Now that the hysteria over sprawl has subsided, government should reduce its influence by ending mortgage subsidization and deregulating city planning. Instead of attempting to alleviate sprawl with more government, politicians should see what happens with less.
Giving the boot to millions of illegals and slowing drastically the legal immigration numbers would go a long ways to slowing the sprawl. These people tend to settle in urban areas and keep pushing others out of the cities and suburbs and into outlying suburbs and small towns. And not just because of their sheer numbers, but all the negatives they bring with them.
Think about it.
If there are 30 million illegals in America, that’s enough to fill more than 50 congressional districts with nothing but illegals.
Frightening isn’t it?
Pretty much everything from San Antonio up I-35 to the Oklahoma border is becoming one vast megatropolis.
Given a choice, I’ll still take a suburban home (even of modest size) on a reasonable sized lot over a concrete jungle any day of the week, I don’t care if I do have to drive an hour to work.
Words can’t describe the disdain I have for the dirty, crowded, leftist hellholes that comprise most cities.
If I were 22 and single, urban living would have some benefits, but as a 30-something husband and father of 2, it just doesn’t appeal to me.
We have a townhome in a semi-suburban area now and it’s too urban for me.
Those Leftist pundits never seem to mind government sprawl do they?
And you touch on an important point, namely, that people will make different choices of where to live. Some people like the city and the urban jungle, being near nightclubs, and excitement and all of that. Some, as you are saying, prefer a suburban home, with part of the trade off being that you are farther from work.
Considering they are discussing Michigan here, I can understand why many have moved far away from Detroit into more rural areas.
I’m always amazed that the liberals are “pro-choice” on abortion, yet in other areas of life, they really are against people making their own choices of how to live. Instead they want to lecture us all on where to live, what to eat, what vehicle to drive, etc.
How wide is it? I-75 from south of Cincinnati to north of Dayton is becoming one large urban area, but go a few miles east or west and you are in farmland again.
More than 80% of the population of the United States already lives in urban areas. This is projected to be about 95% by 2030.
This is all by design.
The government wants you to rely on THEM for ...
. water
. food
. medicine
. transportation
. education
. retirement
. power
. heat
. cooling
. defense
. air
. your very life itself
Our government on all levels, federal, state, and municipal, has been overrun with meddling busybodies and collectivist-statists.
This is all for our own good, of course.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
~ C.S. Lewis
Well from Fort Worth to Dallas, which is probably a good 60-70 miles West to East is pretty packed.....time was there was a good stretch of undeveloped areas between Dallas and Fort Worth, those days are pretty much long gone.
Sprawl naturally follows highways. Go 10 mi NW of Cincy in Crosby Township and it’s farmland and wooded hills galore.
> If there are 30 million illegals in America, that’s enough
> to fill more than 50 congressional districts with nothing
> but illegals.
Virtually *ALL* of which vote for the DemonRAT party.
> Frightening isn’t it?
Indeed.
Appalling, disgraceful, disgusting, and illegal, too. But law is only a tool for DemonRATS to be used when it suits them, to be ignored when it does not.
Suburban sprawl in the Detroit area was caused by the Detroit Race Riots of 1967. Once it started, it was hard to stop.
I prefer the “inner suburbs”. I get the best of both worlds. I have a 4.3 mile commute that I actually bike in good weather and live in a safe, convenient neighborhood with a lot bigger than most of the cookie cuter developments that have been popping up in the sticks. Granted my house is older and isn’t much in the way of square footage, but I will take my quality of life over the cookie cutter’s any day. If I am going to live in the sticks, I want land and quiet, not suburbs and chain stores/restaurants.
It is far easier and therefore cheaper to move onto a corn field instead of an old factory in a city
who wants to raise a family in filth, gangs and corruption?
first thing I noticed was the marked increase in "Se Renta" signs in my neighborhood. Then that sort of eased off, as so many people were foreclosing that they were able to rent those places out.
Next I noticed that a lot of the crappy shops that catered to the barrio population started closing up. Strip clubs, cheap phone stores, check-cashing places, crummy food markets, dollar stores. Good riddance.
Then I noticed office buildings and lower-end strip malls going vacant. Places like cheap furniture stores going out of business. But the nicer malls and suburban shops seemed to be doing okay. The lower-end fitness gyms also were closing up (Bally's, Pure Fitness).
This weekend I was driving around the Coronado area. Entire blocks of shops built in the 60s-70s are boarded up along Mc Dowell. I noticed this a while back... But the thing that is new is that they are now starting to tear buildings down. I am really curious about this and would like to know who is doing the demolition and why. Most places that have been ripped down are just being turned into gravel lots. Why?
Overall, I would have to agree with you...mostly the people moving into my neighborhood have been middle-class yups, students, young families, even some retirees. A lot of them are people who work and have always wanted to live closer so they don't have to spend 2 hours a day commuting to Chandler. It's been for the best.
I also think that if we can get rid of the communists in power, there is going to be a major boom in building and retail development. They are clearing all this space now...just imagine what a great area this would become in the right hands.
Bipartisan, socialist politicos can and will have their plans shoved up their “open spaces” and their desires for depopulation before long (to the Renaissance number of about 18 million worldwide, their preference being tights on men and the like). Bring on the default. Send ‘em all home, and repudiate the debts for their socialist pensions.
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