A first ring suburb is an encircled city that has little or no expansion potential.
Every acre within every city/suburb produces revenue that
sustains the whole. Every acre also has an average operating and maintenance
expense that is a function of activity and age. This is critical to an
encircled suburb with no land to annex. If it doesn’t understand the
implications of its land use allocation it can’t plan for the future and learn
to live within the limits imposed.
Think of it this way. Each land use category is a field. A
crop has a yield per acre of field allocation. Income is a function of field area,
crop yield in bushels per acre, and the value per bushel. In city planning, field
area is land use allocation. Crop yield is the square feet of building area
constructed per acre. Income is revenue potential per square foot of building
area constructed.
Gross building area per acre of land consumed is development
capacity. Development capacity and revenue potential can be measured at
existing locations to understand the economic implications of a land use
allocation pattern.
At the present time many cities have not done the homework
and cannot forecast development capacity options. They know past income and
expense but this is balance sheet accounting. It is not city planning. It means
that a city may know its revenue and expense per acre but have no ability to
forecast the adjustments required.
In these cases a fringe suburb will pursue the annexation of
land to add new revenue, but it won’t know if the revenue will be adequate to
meet its expense over time. It only knows that new revenue is needed to meet
old expense and that new construction has little maintenance cost. The city’s
economic future is wishful thinking at best under these circumstances and an
unintended Ponzi scheme at worst. The result can be sprawl that consumes
the environment or the decline of an encircled city.
There is a bigger picture that I should also mention. Our
cities combine to form a Built Domain. The capacity, context, composition, and
intensity of land use allocation and shelter construction within the Built
Domain affects our quality of life, but sprawl threatens to consume our source
of life – the Natural Domain. From this perspective we live in one world,
threaten another, and must learn to live within limits to protect the gift we
have been given.
First ring suburbs are being forced to live within limits. They
have no annexation options and this has enormous implications. At the present
time many slowly decay from within because they have not recognized that a city
is a farm; but a farmer can change next year’s crop to improve his income. A city
does not have this luxury, and any change is fraught with negative terms such
as urban renewal, redevelopment, eminent domain, confiscation, and so on.
A new highway has an easier time because the objective is
clear. The purpose of redevelopment is often debatable because the homework has
not been done to build credibility. The immediate assumption is that redevelopment
has nothing to do with public benefit and everything to do with private gain. This
may be true for an individual project based on criminal intent, but in general
the assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth in a free market economy. Revenue
is needed to support public benefit shared by all. Suspicion concerns the justification of expense until the deficit becomes visual blight.
There is also an underlying political issue that prevents
progress. A city’s budget problems become exacerbated when redevelopment is not
an option and annexation is not a possibility. This raises the specter of
property devaluation. Devaluation in its present form is a slow, gradual process
that allows many to escape before the threshold of blight is visually obvious. This
is a future that no one wishes to acknowledge before they leave, and a problem
that city planning rarely has the power to address.
As if this weren’t enough, many school systems believe they
protect property value with the quality of education provided. This can distract
attention from the real problem. If a city’s streets are potholed; its curbs
crumbling; its basements flooding; its safety compromised; its services
inadequate; and its buildings in disrepair; its property value will decline. In
other words, the quality of city services protects property value. A school
system protects its rate of appreciation. Confusing the two benefits can
distort priorities and place a city’s future at risk.
First ring suburbs represent ideal laboratories if they have
the courage to undertake the relational database research and information
required. Populations have the capacity to meet adversity when they recognize a
challenge. A city that is able to define the challenge will inspire confidence.
It is the unknown we all fear, and the reasons for sprawl and blight are a
mystery surrounded by suspicion within a vacuum of knowledge.
First Ring suburbs can lead the way by helping us all learn
how to live within limits without threatening our quality and source of life.
