A Heritage of obfuscation
Via a Transport Blog sidebar link, I found a link to this Heritage Foundation report on the costs of "sprawl." Never a group to bite the hand that feeds it, the conclusion isn't too surprising, but the lenghths to which the writers were willing to ignore inconveinent facts is staggering. I have neither the time nor the patience to refute every point, so I'd just like to highlight this study's two main problems.
"Current Urban Planning Assumptions"
[...]
"Lower spending per capita will be associated with older municipalities. It is assumed, for example, that the existing infrastructure of older municipalities has latent capacity, can be expanded, or can be used more intensively for less than the costs of building infrastructure in newer, more sprawling municipalities (which are virtually always suburban). At least partially as a result of this belief, current urban planning theory places a priority on construction within highly developed areas (referred to as "infill" development) instead of in undeveloped areas (referred to as "greenfield" development)."
One way to make your argument look good is to put words in the mouths of your opposition. This is what is called a "straw man" argument, one that is very easy to knock down. Of course infill development is more expensive. Even not counting land costs, the cost of ripping something out and replacing it with something new is higher than the cost of just putting in something new. The question is not whether, under current tax law, incentive structures and the like, it's cheaper to put up a house in an empty field than it is to put up that same house in a city center, but whether the incentives that make it cheaper are worth it. Entire books are dedicated to how the mortgage interest deduction favors new construction over renovation.
"Based upon an econometric analysis of data from the year 2000 for more than 700 municipalities, we conclude that none of the Current Urban Planning Assumptions is associated with any practically significant variation in local government expenditures per capita. In addition, the econometric analysis is able to account for less than 30 percent of the variation in local government expenditures per capita. This indicates that other factors, not accounted for in the econometric formula, are more important." (Emphasis mine)
A ha! Could it be that there are a wealth of services subsidized by the federal government that make sprawl cheaper and don't show up in municipal spending? Let's brainstorm:
Water. Actually, water and sewer costs were the one service the Heritage report found cities had an advangage in. But what they neglect to mention is the extent to which the federal government has subsidized overuse of water, especially in the West. Over the last century, the Bureau of Reclamation has poured billions of dollars into water diversion, dams and other projects that provide water to farmers and cities at fees below cost, shifting the burden to urban eastern taxpayers who don't benefit from their relatively water-thrifty ways. That's why we have green lawns in the middle of the Arizona desert that cost billions to make possible but don't show up as a drain on municipal coffers. For an in-depth history of water waste in the West (but without the illiteration), read Marc Reisner's Caddillac Desert
Highways: Does the gasoline tax go through municipal government? No. Do cities and counties manage transit? Yes, most of the time. Roads, in their ever-increasing size and scope, make exurbs unworkable without state and federal help (help that I assume doesn't show up as "federal aid" in the Heritage calculations). The Hertiage report pays very little attention to roads. I wonder why.
Construction: Did you know that, a recent three-year break aside, the government subsidizes construction by building roads into forests so logging companies can get at wood they can use to build new homes in places like Loudoun County? Shouldn't that count as a subsidy, or at least a cost of new construction? Not to Heritage.
I'm sure that there's more, but I have to get back to work.
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rj3 | 1:07 PM |
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