When City and Country Collide: Managing Growth In The Metropolitan Fringe

By Tom Daniels

Strips of urban and suburban "fabric" have extended into the countryside, creating a ragged settlement pattern that blurs the distinction between rural, urban, and suburban. As traditional rural industries like farming, forestry, and mining rapidly give way to residential and commercial development, the land at the edges of developed areas -- the rural-urban fringe -- is becoming the middle landscape between city and countryside that the suburbs once were.

When City and Country Collide examines the fringe phenomenon and presents a workable approach to fostering more compact development and better, more sustainable communities in those areas. It provides viable alternatives to traditional land use and development practices, and offers a solid framework and rational perspective for wider adoption of growth management techniques.

The author:

• reviews growth management techniques and obstacles to growth management
• examines the impact of federal spending programs and regulations on growth management
• presents a comprehensive planning process for communities and counties
• discusses state-level spending programs and regulations
• illustrates design principles for new development
• looks at regional planning efforts and regional governments
• discusses ways to protect farmland, forestland, and natural areas to help control sprawl

The book also features a series of case studies -- including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Larimer County, Colorado; Chittenden County, Vermont; and others -- that evaluate the success of efforts to control both the size of the fringe and growth within the fringe. It ends with a discussion of possible futures for fringe areas.

When City and Country Collide is an important guide for planners and students of planning, policymakers, elected officials, and citizens working to minimize sprawl.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781610913478

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About Island Press

Island Press is the only nonprofit organization in the United States whose principal purpose is the publication of books on environmental issues and natural resource management. We provide solutions-oriented information to professionals, public officials, business and community leaders, and concerned citizens who are shaping responses to environmental problems.

In 1999, Island Press celebrates its fifteenth anniversary as the leading provider of timely and practical books that take a multidisciplinary approach to critical environmental concerns. Our growing list of titles reflects our commitment to bringing the best of an expanding body of literature to the environmental community throughout North America and the world.

Support for Island Press is provided by The Jenifer Altman Foundation, The Bullitt Foundation, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Vira I. Heinz Endowment, The W. Alton Jones Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The National Science Foundation, The New-Land Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Surdna Foundation, The Winslow Foundation, and individual donors.

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Copyright © 1999 by Island Press

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of The Center for Resources Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daniels, Tom.

When city and country collide: managing growth in the metropolitan fringe / Tom Daniels.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9781610913478

1. Metropolitan areas—United States—Planning. 2. Regional planning—United States. 3. Land use—United States—Planning. I. Title.

HT334.U5D35 1999

98-42236

307.1’216’0973—dc21

CIP

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper e9781610913478_i0002.jpg

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

To those who work to keep America a good place to live, now and for future generations.

Table of Contents

About Island Press

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgment

CHAPTER 1 - The Metropolitan Fringe: America’s Premier Land-Use Battleground

CHAPTER 2 - How, the Fringe Came to Be

CHAPTER 3 - Obstacles to Managing Growth in the Fringe

CHAPTER 4 - Growth Management Strategies and the Law of the Fringe

CHAPTER 5 - Designing the Fringe: Joining Appearance and Performance

CHAPTER 6 - Changing Federal Programs That Promote Sprawl in the Fringe

CHAPTER 7 - Divided We Sprawl: The Role of State and Local Governments

CHAPTER 8 - Blending Regulations and Incentives to Manage Fringe Growth

CHAPTER 9 - Regional Planning: Making the City, Suburb, and Fringe Connection

CHAPTER 10 - Managing Growth in the Fringe Countryside

CHAPTER 11 - Growth Management Case Studies: Common Problems, Different Solutions

CHAPTER 12 - The Promised Land: The Future of the Fringe

APPENDIX 1 - A Warning About Living in the Rural-Urban Fringe

APPENDIX 2 - Sample On-Lot Septic System Ordinance

APPINDIX 3 - Telecommunications Tower and Antenna Ordinance

APPENDIX 4 - Model County or Municipal Steep-Slope Overlay Zone

APPINDIX 5 - Model Intergovernmental Agreement Between a County and a City or Village

APPENDIX 6 - Model Transfer-of -Development-Rights Ordinance

Contacts

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

Island Press Board of Directors

Table of Figures

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3A

Figure 1.3B

Figure 1.4

Figure 2.1

Figure 3.1

Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2

Figure 9.1

Figure 9.2

Figure 11.1

Figure 11.2

Figure 11.3

Figure 11.4

Figure 11.5

Preface

Between the open countryside and the built-up cities and suburbs is a huge area where the landscape is growing and changing. To date, this area—which I call the metropolitan fringe or the rural-urban fringe—has been largely ignored in national policy debates. But population and economic growth pressures are vigorously pushing outward from the suburbs, causing the haphazard development of rural lands and drawing vitality from the inner cities. No longer can America afford to consider land use just a local town, city, or county issue. Rather, it is time to examine regional approaches to land use and growth management that reflect the interaction of the several counties, the core city, the many suburbs, the edge cities, and the expanding fringe that make up a metropolitan area. The implications for accommodating population and economic growth, as well as issues of environmental quality and competitiveness in the global economy, are profound.

The fringe is where America’s struggles over population growth and the development of open space are most visible and bitter. New or improved growth management programs are needed to avoid development that wastes land, is expensive to service, and diverts private investment and public funds from existing cities and towns. Also, many federal, state, and local spending, taxation, and regulatory programs that encourage sprawling development need to be reformed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, local and national media were largely silent about the fringe. But in the 1990s, sprawling suburban housing subdivisions and shopping malls eating up remaining open space caught the attention of local media and led to some national coverage. Yet, while the media may lament the construction of houses on fields that had been farmed for centuries, there is usually a progress is inevitable spin to the stories.

The media, along with concerned citizens and several land-use experts, have ably described the painful consequences of sprawl: the conversion of farmland, the parceling of timberlands, soaring infrastructure and transportation costs, loss of wildlife habitat, increased air pollution from more vehicles traveling more miles, and water pollution from the widespread use of on-site septic systems. But formulating and implementing solutions to sprawl and managing growth in the fringe have seemed elusive. As the nation’s population and economy expand, the challenges of managing growth in the fringe will become more heated and complex.

One purpose of this book is to illustrate and evaluate the nationwide struggles to manage such growth and development. Another purpose is to provide a wake-up call to schools of planning. Planning schools have traditionally focused on urban areas, even though for the past three decades most of the inner cities of the United States have been losing population, economic strength, and political clout to the suburbs. Planning jobs in the fringe will be a growth industry. The zoning counter in the big cities will not.

A third purpose of the book is to alert national policy makers in Washington, D.C., to the fact that federal spending programs are encouraging the development of the fringe to the detriment of older suburbs and inner cities. The outcome is expensive new roads, schools, and sewer and water facilities being built in fringe areas, while older infrastructure deteriorates.

Fourth, the book aims to show city dwellers and those who live in the fringe that they have a common interest in managing the growth of the fringe. If the cities continue to decline, more people will flood the fringe. And if the fringe simply opens the gates, which has been pretty much the case, then cities will be harder pressed to compete for state and federal grants for education, transportation, and sewer and water plants.

The rural-urban fringe is America’s land-use battleground. Here, developers, long-term landowners, quick-buck land speculators, politicians, and realtors are matched against other long-term landowners, politicians, environmentalists, and newcomers who want to keep their new communities attractive and fiscally manageable. These different interests must learn to work together rather than fight pitched, and often protracted, battles over what land gets built on and with how many stores, offices, or homes. The current contentious system of land development versus land conservation serves neither end. Much of the development that is built relies on public subsidies for infrastructure; and many conservation projects are too small and isolated to protect a sustainable amount of wildlife, watersheds, farmland, and forestlands.

Growth management means striking a balance between economic and population growth on the one hand and land development and environmental quality on the other. In recent years, rising affluence and continued urban problems have made the rural-urban fringe more attractive. As a result, the challenge of growth management in the fringe has become more intense. Traditional farm and timber landowners are having greater difficulty making a living off the land, and communities are struggling to accommodate increasing populations and the houses, businesses, and industry that result.

Inhabitants of dozens of fringe communities across the United States have recognized the threats of uncontrolled residential and commercial sprawl. In response, politicians with public support have implemented land-use and spending programs to manage growth. In a few cases, state governments have stepped in to require local governments to plan for both growth and the conservation of land and natural resources. This is not just an intellectual exercise. Business owners and managers have come to recognize that workers want a safe, attractive, affordable, and healthy place to live and work. Like businesses, people want communities where they can put down roots and invest with confidence. To make these desires a reality requires changes at the state, federal, and local levels of government. Tom Hylton, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, believes that ultimately it will take a change in personal values: More people must be willing to live in the inner cities and older suburbs and forge good communities, rather than move to the fringe in search of the American Dream of a single-family, detached home with a large lawn and a big garage.

As the nation’s population increases each year, the availability of sustainable places to live and work, with high environmental quality, will emerge as a national priority. This book describes and illustrates several ways to achieve more sustainable communities in the rural-urban fringe. The efforts must be long-term, vigorous, openly debated, publicly supported, carefully planned, and implemented by willing, committed politicians. A key ingredient to sustainable communities in the fringe will be to maintain rural industries that provide the open space and rural character that fringe residents cherish.

Chapter 1 describes the land-use struggles caused by the growth of the fringe, defines how the fringe differs from traditional suburbs, and explains the need for managing the growth of the fringe.

Chapter 2 explores the origins of the rural-urban fringe, what forces made the fringe happen and will continue to affect both the geographic growth of the fringe and the type and location of development within the fringe.

Chapter 3 takes a hard look at the obstacles to growth management in the fringe.

Chapter 4 presents the comprehensive planning process for fringe communities and counties as a way to decide where future growth should or shouldn’t go. Communities then have a choice of pursuing a pro-growth strategy, balanced growth, or a no-growth or slow-growth future.

Chapter 5 illustrates several design principles for new development in the fringe and describes how new development can fit in with what is already there. Design standards can augment the effectiveness of the comprehensive plan by promoting attractive development that is sensitive to its surroundings. On a larger scale, the design of the entire community helps in the visioning element of a comprehensive plan when citizens can respond to the question, What do you want your community to look like?

Chapter 6 examines the impact of federal spending programs and regulations on the growth and development of the fringe. Many of these programs have subsidized development. On the other hand, environmental regulations have included standards to protect air and water quality, which are important ingredients in the overall quality of life in the fringe. This chapter suggests changes to federal spending and regulations that would improve the fairness and effectiveness of growth management in the fringe.

Day-to-day decisions affecting growth management are mainly under the control of state and local governments. Chapter 7 discusses state-level spending programs and regulations that affect the growth of the fringe.

Chapter 8 reviews the many growth management techniques that have been used in fringe areas.

Chapter 9 looks at regional planning efforts, including urban and village growth boundaries and regional governments.

Chapter 10 discusses ways to protect farmland, forestland, and natural areas to help control sprawl.

Counties and municipalities have applied a variety of programs to control both the size of the fringe and growth within the fringe. Chapter 11 evaluates the success of these efforts in a series of case studies.

Chapter 12 summarizes the search for managing growth in the fringe and discusses possible futures for fringe areas.

Citizens, elected officials, planners, landowners, and the development community should understand the issues behind growth management in the fringe and make informed choices about the future. The fringe is a finite area; successfully accommodating growth requires specific techniques and programs, and careful spending of public and private dollars. With this book, I hope to help communities form strategies to manage their growth and implement those strategies to achieve satisfying long-term results.

Tom Daniels

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank John Keller for many good suggestions and long-standing support. My wife, Katherine Daniels, read parts of the manuscript and corrected several errors. My father, Robert V. Daniels, fed me an endless stream of newspaper articles on sprawl and growth in the fringe. Deborah Bowers read an early draft and made several good suggestions. David Schuyler gave me valuable and generous advice. Mark Lapping supported my original proposal. In addition, my thanks go out to people with whom I discussed the book: John Bernstein, June Mengel, Kathleen Bridgehouse, Linda Conley, Jay Parrish, Amy Collett, Scott Standish, Jim Erkel, Lee Ronning, Phil Rainey, Jr., and my editor at Island Press, Heather Boyer.

CHAPTER 1

The Metropolitan Fringe: America’s Premier Land-Use Battleground

It’s a war. How else would you describe it?

—Til Hazel, Virginia developer

Short-term gains have been defining the character of the battlefield. The short-term gain of a few at the expense of the many—not to mention the inefficient, non-sustainable use of the land—is not right.

—Councilperson, Lorain County, Ohio

One Man’s Struggle: A Cautionary Tale

Next to Clay Peterson’s cattle farm, a developer has proposed building thirty-four houses on a 173-acre tract. Peterson’s rolling farmland is about four miles from Interstate 83 and thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, Maryland. Peterson has owned his property for nearly twenty years, and in 1987 he sold his development rights to restrict the land to farmland and open space. He is worried that dozens of neighbors may threaten his livelihood and his way of life. Thirty-four homes could draw groundwater from the same aquifer, possibly lowering the water table and threatening his own water supply. Peterson expects to hear complaints about the smell of his cattle and is afraid his insurance rates could soar because of neighbors wandering onto his farm and possibly hurting themselves.

Clay Peterson has decided to fight the development in court, hoping either to reduce the number of houses or to force the developer to put them farther from his property line. It’s too late to change the zoning next door, which allowed the houses to be clustered on one-acre lots as in a suburban subdivision. Sooner or later houses will be built next to Clay Peterson’s farm.

In two years, I’ll see fifteen houses right out my front door, predicts Allen Moore, a neighbor to Peterson, adding, this whole issue of development is a very heated one. ¹

Once the Peterson case is settled, Baltimore County planners have vowed to change the zoning to avoid future conflicts between farmers and nonfarm neighbors.

Clay Peterson’s predicament encapsulates the political, legal, social, economic, and environmental struggles that are erupting all across America in the fringe countryside just beyond the suburbs. Politicians want to promote economic growth, yet they have to be sensitive to the wishes of the voters to control taxes, protect the environment, and maintain a good quality of life. Politicians, planners, and developers are trying to decide how much development should be put within cities and towns and how much in the countryside. Local governments are sensitive about imposing land-use controls that may stir up property-rights advocates or be ruled a taking of private property by the courts. For landowners, developers, and concerned citizens not satisfied with the planning process, the courts have become the forum of last resort.

Newcomers from the cities and suburbs can bring pronounced and rapid changes, and long-term rural residents, like Clay Peterson, can feel invaded. Newcomers alter the social mix, reduce the amount of open space in the landscape, and change the local political priorities. As the number of newcomers increases, owners of farmland, timberland, and open ground face rising property taxes to pay for more public services, especially schools. And lucrative offers from developers tempt rural landowners to sell.

Some observers may see the changes to the countryside as a form of creative destruction, a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the process of economic growth. Silicon Valley, for example, emerged in the Santa Clara Valley on top of what was once highly productive orchard land. The contribution to economic growth made by the computer industry has far exceeded the value of growing fruit. Others, however, may claim the countryside is worth retaining as a haven from urban life or as a place to produce food and fiber.

Differing opinions about the countryside beyond the suburbs point to the fact that it has become a tremendous economic asset. The strong economy of the 1990s, along with the communications revolution of computers, modems, faxes, and e-mail, has meant that Americans have a greater choice about where to live. The highly concentrated heavy manufacturing economy of the first half of the twentieth century has given way to a global economy dominated by services and high-tech manufacturing. The owners, managers, and employees of these businesses want to live in quality environments. Christopher Leinberger, managing director of Robert Charles Lesser and Company, the nation’s largest independent real estate consulting firm, explains, In the new knowledge economy, an area’s quality of life translates into economic growth. Yet the places with the highest quality of life are always at risk of being ‘loved to death.’²

Economists Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson point out that most job growth, regardless of economic sector, is in the outer suburbs far away from downtowns and transit stations, even in the more transit-oriented metropolitan areas.³

A home in the country is often perceived as a better investment than one in the city or suburbs. And the rural environment may be more pleasant. There is less traffic and crime and more open space, fresh air, and privacy. But as more people move to the countryside, these amenities begin to disappear.

Much of the new housing and commercial developments in the countryside comes in one of two forms: ( 1 ) a wave of urban or suburban expansion that sweeps into the countryside; or (2) scattered housing, offices, and stores outside of established cities and towns. Both of these forms of development are called sprawl, and sprawl presents a complex and serious challenge to local, county and regional governments seeking to manage their growth.

Growth Management

Growth management describes how people and their governments deal with change. The purpose of growth management is to provide greater certainty and predictability about where, when, and how much development will occur in a community, region, or entire state; how it will be serviced, and the type and style of development. Lack of predictability about the future growth and development of a community leads to costly struggles that may pit governments, developers, and concerned citizens against each other.

Growth management features:

government land-use regulations, such as zoning;

public infrastructure spending programs, such as for sewer and water facilities;

tax policies, such as use-value taxation for farmland;

incentives, such as a density bonus to allow a developer to build more houses on a site in return for a compact, pedestrianoriented design.

Together these growth management techniques influence the location, amount, type, timing, appearance, quality, and cost of new private development. Growth management must encourage attractive, well-sited, and cost-effective development as much as discourage sprawling, rapid development that can be unsettling and costly to residents. The challenge to local governments is how to accommodate economic and population growth without sacrificing manageable local finances and a sense of place. The search for solutions to growth problems takes time, thoughtful debate, trial and error, and a long-term commitment of both public and private money and personnel.

Community, county, and regional land-use planning is essential for effective growth management. Planning involves the careful study and analysis of current land-use needs and the anticipation of future needs based on population projections. A comprehensive plan provides a sense of direction and goals and objectives to work toward. Planning helps create more predictable, efficient, and sustainable patterns of development.

But the more planned and predictable development becomes, the clearer it is that not every landowner is going to be able to cash in big from selling land for development. Also, some developers may want to build in the wrong place, and some communities within a region may have to accept more development than they want to.

Successful growth management programs have produced community consensus, political strength, creative development, manageable public finances, and effective land protection. Managing growth can soften the collision between urban and rural people and how they use the land. Moreover, protecting the environment while carefully placing new development is emerging as a wise and sustainable economic development strategy.

America: A Metropolitan Nation

Nearly four out of five Americans live within 273 metropolitan regions (see figure 1.1). These regions include a central city of at least fifty thousand people, suburbs around the central city, suburbs that have grown into edge cities, and a fringe of countryside (see figure 1.2).

In the fringe, a vast war zone has erupted. The outer reaches of the metropolitan landscape still display much of the traditional pattern of small towns set amid woods, streams, mountains, and working farms or ranches. But new single-family homes, office complexes, and shopping malls are changing the rural and small town landscape to a patchwork of city, suburb, and open space. Housing subdivisions and commercial strips are sprouting along highways, at the edge of reluctant towns, and far from existing settlements in farm fields and forests.

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Figure 1.1 Metropolitan Counties of the United States, 1990.

In 1993, the United States Office of Budget and Management classified more than one-quarter of the nation’s 3,041 counties (and similar government units) as belonging to metropolitan areas.⁴ Counties included in metropolitan areas are eligible for certain federal programs that rural counties are not, and vice versa. Metropolitan areas are measured in part on the basis of commuting patterns between counties; so the more spread out the population, the greater the metro area tends to be. There is no standard geographic size for a metropolitan area. For example, the Los Angeles metro area is much larger than the Burlington, Vermont, metro area. Moreover, using a county as a unit of measurement can be misleading. Metropolitan counties in the West are often much larger than those in the East or the Midwest. This tends to exaggerate the size of urbanized areas because many western metro counties contain substantial areas of rural and fringe land.

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Figure 1.2 The Twin Cities Metropolitan Area.

Two indications of the dispersion of population in a metro region are the percentage of metro population in the core city, and the percentage of metro land area comprised by the core city. In 1993, the largest city in most major metropolitan regions did not contain even half of the region’s population and covered only a small proportion of the region’s territory (see table 1.1).⁵ For example, Boston’s population made up only 14 percent of the total population in its metro region in 1990 and only 3 percent of the land area.⁶ Since 1970, only eleven of the thirty largest central cities have gained population. Several central cities, such as Baltimore and Boston, continue to lose residents even as the populations of their metro regions grow. The newer suburbs and the fringe areas both attract new inhabitants, but the low-density settlement patterns in the fringe mean that the land area covered by the fringe increases dramatically and the amount of open space declines in tandem.

A prime example of metro fringe growth is the booming Greater Washington, D.C., area. The rate of population increase has been most rapid in the outlying metro counties of Virginia and Maryland, and the region is expected to lose over 300,000 acres of open land between 1990 and 2020, a rate of 28 acres a day.⁷

Table 1.1 Land Area and Population of Selected Cities and the Percentage of the Metropolitan Area and Population, 1992

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Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, tables 43, 46.

Within many metropolitan regions, particularly in western states, there are large areas of farms, ranches, forests, or open space. Greater Phoenix, Arizona, is well known for its spread-out development pattern. Figures 1.3A and B show different views of the settlement pattern in Arizona—especially in the Phoenix metro area—obtained by using counties or census tracts as the unit of measurement. As mentioned previously metro counties have a core city of at least fifty thousand inhabitants. The census tracts cover a smaller area and are a more accurate measure of the location of population; they indicate a much larger fringe area (the striped area showing at least 2 percent of the residents commuting to the urban core) than urban core or outlying suburbs.

Despite the expansion of metropolitan regions, Americans still live on a small fraction of the nation’s land. According to the Bureau of the Census, more than half of all Americans reside in the fifty largest metropolitan areas. In 1994, metropolitan counties accounted for just under one-fifth of a percent of the nation’s land base. But remove the 40 percent of the nation’s land owned by all levels of government and those privately owned places that are too flat, wet, cold, or remote for most Americans’ tastes, and the number of desirable locations rapidly shrinks.

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Figure 1.3A County-Based Rural-Urban Continuum, Arizona, 1990.

Source: John Cromartie and Linda Swanson, Defining Metropolitan Areas and the Rural-Urban Continuum, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Staff Paper 9603, 1996.

e9781610913478_i0007.jpg

Figure 1.3B Census Tract—Based Rural-Urban Continuum, Arizona, 1990.

Source: John Cromartie and Linda Swanson, Defining Metropolitan Areas and the Rural-Urban Continuum, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Staff Paper 9603, 1996.

In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced the end of the American frontier, meaning that America had reached the limit of its geographic expansion and population growth would result in less available space per person. By 1995, the nation’s population had risen by nearly 200 million to 262 million. The Census Bureau estimates that America will add 34 million people between 1996 and the year 2010.⁸ This is equivalent to absorbing the population of another California in just fourteen years. Most of this growth will occur in the outer fringes of metropolitan areas, as Americans search for space to live. While the population growth of the urban core lags behind that of the rest of the metro region, Americans moving to the fringe are using up more land per person than urban dwellers by purchasing large residential lots and working in campus-style office and industrial parks. Real estate consultant Christopher Leinberger predicts that geometric increases in urbanized land will continue at a rate of at least 8 to 12 times faster than the underlying employment and population growth.⁹ He cites the case of Greater Atlanta, the nation’s most sprawled-out metro region, which grew from spanning 65 miles north to south to 110 miles in 1998.¹⁰

This continued sprawling development has a powerful impact on the cost of the necessary public services. According to a 1991 study by the Urban Land Institute, Studies conducted over the last 30 years have concluded that when development is spread out at low densities, the per-unit cost of constructing and maintaining public facilities increases. The reason for this is that low-density development requires more miles of roads, curbs, sewers, and water lines; and municipal services must be delivered over a greater geographic area¹¹ (see figure 1.4).

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Figure 1.4 The Growth of Fringe in a Metropolitan Setting, from Panel (A) to Panel (B).

Defining the Rural-Urban Fringe

The semirural area beyond suburbia yet within its shadow has been given several names: the countrified city (Doherty), the ex-urbs (Spectorsky), semisuburbs (Louv), technoburbs (Fishman), the galactic city (Lewis), postsuburbs (Garreau), the urban fringe, and the rural-urban interface. I prefer to describe this region as the metropolitan fringe or the rural-urban fringe, a hybrid region no longer remote and yet with a lower density of population and development than a city or suburb.

Like a fringe, strips of urban and suburban fabric have extended into the countryside, creating a ragged settlement pattern of subdivisions, single-family housing on five- to 10-acre lots, shopping centers, retail strips, schools, and churches all separated by farms, forests, or other open spaces.¹² Towns and villages of under ten thousand residents are adding homes and commercial buildings, especially along main roads leading in or out of the community. These decentralized patterns blur the distinction between rural, urban, and suburban.

e9781610913478_i0009.jpg

Photo 1.1 A farm and new housing developments compete for space in the metropolitan fringe.

Some people may see the fringe as the suburbs of the suburbs and an area for future suburban growth. Others may see the need to oppose the forces of suburbanization that threaten to turn a community into Anywhere U.S.A. The juxtaposition of opposite ideas in the term rural-urban fringe also suggests the social, economic, and political tensions that accompany change or the threat of change.

The rural-urban fringe is best thought of not just as a geographic area within a metropolitan region, but also as a step in the development hierarchy between rural areas and a central city. The fringe is a region of middle ground between wide-open rural lands that are beyond commuting distance to a metro area, and expanding suburban residential and commercial development. America’s fringe areas have emerged on the edge of cities since the early 1800s. As fringe areas gained population and economic activity, they became suburbs. As the suburbs expanded, even more rural lands became accessible, within the orbit of the metro fringe. And in the 1980s, some fringe areas at ten to thirty miles from the core city actually bypassed the suburb stage and burgeoned into edge cities with major office and retail complexes.

The obvious question arises: When does a fringe area become a suburb or edge city, and when is it just a fringe area? The answer is not clear-cut but depends on the amount of open land (more open land means more rural character), population per square mile, and the make-up of the local economy, especially the relative importance of the traditional rural industries of farming, ranching, forestry, or mining.

It is not easy to say exactly where the suburbs end and the fringe begins, partly because many sections of fringe are in the process of turning into suburbs. The landscape is being fragmented into residential and commercial lots, and more and more of the people who live there make a long commute to jobs in the suburbs or the central city. But from GIS (geographic information system) parcel maps and aerial photos, it is possible to identify where smaller, suburban-type parcels give way to the larger tracts of fringe.

The fringe includes the less developed regions of metropolitan counties and sections of many nonmetropolitan counties that border metro counties. Population density in the fringe is less than one thousand people per square mile and often less than five hundred per square mile. Fringe areas vary in size, extending from a few miles beyond small cities to forty miles or more outside of major urban centers. Agriculture is found in most fringe areas and perhaps some forestry and mineral extraction, but these land uses and industries are yielding to housing subdivisions, office complexes, and retail development, along with employment in the growing service economy In fact, the new high-tech information economy means that businesses and workers can settle in just about anywhere they please. For instance, as of 1998, there may be as many as 10 million telecommuters, loosely defined as someone who works at home rather than in the office at least one day a week. The number of telecommuters is sure to increase, and when they look for a place to live, the amenities of the fringe—open space, slower pace, and a sense of safety—are a great draw.

How the Fringe Differs from the Suburbs

Metropolitan fringe areas differ from suburbs in their greater distance from a central city, less economic and political clout, newness, lower population density, scattered developments amid open space, the more noticeable impact of newcomers, less sophisticated land-use planning, and greater growth management challenges.

The growth of the fringe marks America’s third major population shift in the twentieth century. The first migration began around 1900, when people started to leave the farms to work in the cities. In 1900, about one-third of all Americans lived on farms. Today, fewer than 5 million Americans, less than 2 percent of the population, live on farms. The call to arms in World War II, the availability of good-paying factory jobs, and the mechanization of agriculture accelerated this move to urban areas. Then after the war, people began leaving the central cities for the suburbs. Cheap land, easy credit, and abundant home financing, and the combination of roads and cars fueled the exodus. This inner ring of postwar suburbs took shape between 1947 and 1970. And soon the jobs followed. The employment and shopping opportunities gave rise to an outer ring of suburbs, many of which are still growing. Today, most Americans and over half of the nation’s offices are located in suburbs.¹³

The third migration from the cities and suburbs to the fringe began in the 1970s, and affects a far larger area than the population shift from the cities to nearby suburbs. For example, in 1961 the New York metropolitan region consisted of twenty-two counties and fourteen hundred units of local government spread over a 40-mile sweep. By 1996, 20 million people lived in a Greater New York that included thirty-one counties and two thousand governments within a hundred-mile reach.¹⁴ A 1997 report from the Bureau of the Census found that metropolitan areas lost about 250,000 people between March 1995 and March 1996.¹⁵ The most popular place to settle was in nonmetro adjacent counties—an indication of growing fringe areas.

The term fringe implies something out of the mainstream. The suburbs, central cities, and edge cities are where America’s economic and political clout is concentrated. But increasingly, the people who wield the power are choosing to live in fringe areas.

As America’s population continues to grow, much, if not most of the growth will occur in the fringe. According to journalist John Herbers, Because development or expansion of communities in the outer reaches is a more radical step than the opening of the suburbs a generation ago, its potential for further change may also be greater.¹⁶

The development in the fringe is consuming more land per person than the suburbs. Tom Hylton sadly describes the evolution of suburban sprawl into fringe sprawl: In every decade it gets worse. In the 1950s, when people first started leaving the cities, if you lived on a quarter-acre lot, that was really something. Then, in the ’60s, you wanted a half-acre lot. Now, for every house we build, we’re using up an acre or two acres. For every shopping center or corporate center, we’re using more land than ever before. It’s an incredible waste.¹⁷

Experience bears out Hylton’s description. From 1970 to 1990, metropolitan Chicago expanded to cover 46 percent more land, while