Thursday, January 19, 2006
Is Portland Sprawling Despite Growth Boundary?
USA Today published a sprawl index that finds that Portland is sprawling more than Los Angeles despite its urban-growth boundary. The boundary, says the newspaper, has simply forced people to move to communities outside the boundary, such as Vancouver, Washington and Salem, Oregon.
This is almost certainly true, yet USA Today's sprawl index is meaningless. The paper claims that it is "density rank plus change in density rank." But it is no such thing. Instead, it is "percentage of metro area population that is in urbanized area rank plus change in that percentage rank." Density never enters into the index.
A "metropolitan area" consists of a city, its suburbs, and all of the counties in which they are located, urbanized or not. The percentage of a metro area that is urbanized is arbitrary depending on the size of that area's counties. Los Angeles ranks as "non-sprawling" not because it is dense but because the non-urbanized parts of the region are mostly federal and so have no people in them. A state with small counties is likely to rank less sprawling on the index than a state with big counties.
Beyond this, the USA Today article accepts all the tired old cliches about "sprawl bad, density good." Obviously the reporters have not read Robert Bruegmann's new book, Sprawl: A Compact History, which shows that the problems of sprawl are overblown and the remedies are more dangerous than the supposed disease.
This is almost certainly true, yet USA Today's sprawl index is meaningless. The paper claims that it is "density rank plus change in density rank." But it is no such thing. Instead, it is "percentage of metro area population that is in urbanized area rank plus change in that percentage rank." Density never enters into the index.
A "metropolitan area" consists of a city, its suburbs, and all of the counties in which they are located, urbanized or not. The percentage of a metro area that is urbanized is arbitrary depending on the size of that area's counties. Los Angeles ranks as "non-sprawling" not because it is dense but because the non-urbanized parts of the region are mostly federal and so have no people in them. A state with small counties is likely to rank less sprawling on the index than a state with big counties.
Beyond this, the USA Today article accepts all the tired old cliches about "sprawl bad, density good." Obviously the reporters have not read Robert Bruegmann's new book, Sprawl: A Compact History, which shows that the problems of sprawl are overblown and the remedies are more dangerous than the supposed disease.
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