Sprawl and Sustainability

This post is dedicated to the ideology behind a favorite blog of mine called, A Green Earth. In this post I will talk about Urban Sprawl and environmental sustainability, it will be connected with Informationalism by its focus upon teachers. Most everyone is aware of the critical role that teachers play in the realm of information. Here I will show how helping them advances informationalism, improves urban life, and helps the environment.

It has been incorporated into common knowledge for quite some time that a large pool of labor is critical to a wealthy society. It provides the basis for competitive industry and is the powerhouse behind a market economy. City, State, and National governments recognize this in the United States and claim to make the welfare of the labor force a primary concern. At the same time on the city level, where most city planning takes place, the planners vow to fight sprawl and some pledge to advance the concept of sustainable planning.

However, it appears at all levels the externalities of these workers’ wages are not taken into account. Failing to pay a wage that makes it viable to live comfortably in the city has many negative consequences. If the wages are extremely low, the workers must live in slums with high crime rates and health issues. Also, if the wages are raised but not adequately enough for all, then there is greater incentive for the workers to reside outside the city. This situation contributes to sprawl, which results in a longer commute and greater energy consumption. Also, if the residence is outside the city or county, revenue paid out to the workers is lost on the local economy. So, despite the universal acknowledgement of the value of workers, their low wages make fighting sprawl more difficult and detract from the local economy. Yet it does not seem to be a factor in planning.

Many city planners in the 21^st century have come to regard the idea of sustainability as essentially good. As always, since humans are so fond of dualisms, the “good” of sustainability finds its antithesis in sprawl. Both of these are fairly loaded terms, and so it is essential to provide a clear and concise definition of the two in order to avoid conceptual ambiguity and understand the nature of the labor paradox.

Sprawl can best be understood as the result of the expansion of an urban area into the less developed countryside having little or no controlled land use policy. Inadequate pay for workers contributes to sprawl by creating car dependent communities due to distance from any industrial or business zone, low-density housing communities, as well as the presence of many strip mall areas. Sprawl causes inefficiency in resource allocation in the urban area and makes city more difficult for planners or organize once the pattern has been set. Sprawl not only leads to inefficiency, but over time the marginal cost of living in the area so exceeds the marginal benefit that the city runs a high risk of having market failure due to an exodus from the area, thus putting these workers out of the job.

Sustainability, on the other side of the duality, is the product of careful planning. However, the concept itself is separated by schools such as new urbanism, which also seeks to fight sprawl, by its incorporation of ecological systems in the planning calculations. Sustainable planning seeks to take into account the amount of human population an area can hold while maintaining adequate resources for the planned future. This means not only reversing the tendencies of sprawl, but also managing resource allocations of goods such as: water, petroleum, electricity, food, and land. The goal of sustainability is to ensure that the resources are allocated efficiently enough in the present so they are not completely consumed or unequally diminished for future generations.

From these definitions it is clear that not addressing the issue of the labor force is contradictory to good planning and to sustainability, as it promotes sprawl and inefficient utilization of natural resources. For example, in one of the areas known for the worst sprawl, Charlotte North Carolina, a first year teacher with a bachelor degree is paid $28,510 by the state (Salary, 2007). It is difficult for the teachers, since it takes an average of $35,000 dollars to meet the basic needs of a family of four (Glasmeier, 2008). Common sense would lead one to deduce that the teacher would not locate themselves in a city with a higher cost of living.

The negative affects of this policy are also supported in a paper published by Rèmy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee where they defined the efficiency of cities based upon labor productivity. In their study of 23 French cities they found that the success of the city was defined by the relative size of its labor market, which was determined by, “…the size of the city; the average potential job-home distance (sprawl); and the average speed at which journey to work takes place” (Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee, 1998 ). These last two are specifically the problems that face the city as a result of their inadequate payment of the labor force. The paper concludes specifically that, the city’s productivity is determined by the aforementioned factors, and that this labor pool is determined by, “…its sprawl and of the speed at which trips to the cities are made”, (Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee, 1998 ).

It should also be noted that the increased distance from the job denotes a greater reliability on automobiles. These automobiles add further crowding to the already busy city streets and have spiraling negative consequences for the city system. Thus, it is clear that it is not possible to confront sprawl or sustainable planning without addressing the wages of workers. The wages must be raised to a level that makes it possible and then beneficial for workers to live in areas relatively close to their schools. The economic loss incurred by keeping the wages of the labor force low ultimately outweighs the state funds saved in the process.

References

Glasmeier, Amy K (2006), An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003, Routledge, 2006.

Beatly; Manning (1997), The Ecology of Place, Washington DC: Island Press, 1997.

“Charlotte-Mecklenburgh Schools 2006-2007 Salary Schedule for Teachers” (2006), http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/departments/HR/compensation.asp, accessed February 2, 2007.

Rèmy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee (1998), “Sprawl, Speed, and the Efficiency of Cities”, Paris, France: Obervatoire de l’Economic et des Institution Locals.