Ideas for stopping sprawl

dogsdaddy

I would like to hear ideas on limiting sprawl and think a forum to discuss this topic would be good. A couple of ideas I have are a 1000 dollar an acre tax on green field development, and a law that no governmental entity can be less than 36 square miles or contain at least 50 thousand people. What do you think?

hood

I don't think the kind of regulations you talk about are very good ideas. They're too Orwellian. I think that the best way to encourage smart development and growth is through things like improving mass transit systems, improving urban school districts, offering tax incentives to offset brownfield costs and just all around making cities more attractive places to live.

There will always be people who prefer small towns and rural areas, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's really just the suburbs that are the problem, those are people that would likely live in cities or organically grown suburbs if the school and transportation systems were adequate.

dogsdaddy

It is true that there is nothing "wrong" with wanting to live in a rural area or small town, but when too many people move "there" then it becomes a suburb which really ends up not pleasing anyone. Then people abandon those areas and move further out. We cannot always run away, we need to start trying to fix the problems in cities and older suburbs because our current practices are too expensive and wasteful ~ especially with energy prices and lack of tax money for new roads, schools, utilities, etc.

hood

I agree that we need to address the issue of sprawl, I doubt anyone on this forum would disagree with your stance on it. I just don't think that laws dictating too much to people are the answer. Besides, with the recent rush of interest in urban areas around the country I'm beginning to think that we may be in the midst of a great push back to the cities, maybe this time people will stay.

Jared

There have been a lot of great improvements to urban areas over the past 10 years, and population trends are showing that people are moving back to cities. Honestly, I think the more important thing to keep in mind is making sure that gentrification is kept at a minimum when populations move back.

Freedom Fries

Sprawl will be contagious as long as it's funded by the taxpayer through tax abatements.

Jared

There could be effective legislation that requires developers to pay for any infrastructure improvements and to only qualify for tax abatements if developing on an already established mass-transit route.