the costs of sprawl

8/3/2019 The Costs of Sprawl

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T he C o $ ts of S praw l Executive Summary

Sponsored by CEQ HUD EPA


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This executive summary is based upon a report,The Casts of Sprawl: Detailed Cost Analysis

prepared by

Real Estate Research Corporation

for

the Council on Environmental Quality;the Office of Policy Development and Research,Department of Housing and Urban Development;

the Office of Planning and Management,Environmental Protection Agency

The data, analyses, and opinions presented do not necessarily reflectofficial positions of any of these agencies.

April 1974_________________________________________________________________

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing OfficeWashington, D.C. 20402 - Price 65 cents

Stock Number 041-011-00023-8Catalog Number PREX 14.2:SP/2/summ.


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Local officials are being faced with increasinglydifficult decisions about how land should be usedand how much and what type of development shouldbe allowed. They are being presented proposals fornew types of development that they may not havedealt with before; clustered single family housing,townhouses, walkup apartments, and high rise apart-ments are appearing in communities even out to theurban fringe.

At the same time, there is increased concern aboutthe impacts of new development on the community.This has been limited mostly to economic impactsof the developmentwhether the added tax basewould compensate for the added costs that the newresidents imposed on the community.

In recent years these economic concerns have been joined by environmental and other concerns. Whatwill the development do to air pollution, water pol-lution, wildlife, and open space? What is the impactof development upon energy consumption? On wa-ter consumption? How will the development affectthe lives of the people who live in it? Of those wholive near it?

The purpose of The Costs of Sprawl is to help themayor, the city manager, the planning board, andother concerned local officials and citizens answersuch questions. There has been no recent effort toassess all the economic costs associated with differ-ent types of development; nor until now has therebeen a document that attempted to integrate the vari-ous economic, environmental, natural resource, andsocial costs of these developments.

The Costs of Sprawl seeks to help fill this infor-mation void that has made local decisionmaking so

difficult. The study attempts to summarize what isknown about the different costs as they apply to dif-ferent neighborhood types and to different commu-nity development patterns, and it indicates whetherthe costs are incurred publicly or privately. Table Ilists the types of costs that have been included. Theseare not all the costs associated with residential de-velopment, but they are among the most importantones. The Costs of Sprawl should give the localdecisionmaker a strong start in dealing with many of the very difficult decisions that he has to face.

STUDY METHOD

This study is an analysis of prototype develop-ment patterns, not of actual developments, althoughmany of the data were obtained from empirical stud-ies undertaken by others. Here the approach was toassume typical site conditions and an absence of anyexisting infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.) at the siteand then, using standard unit cost figures, to esti-mate the costs of building alternative types of devel-opment.

The various costs were first estimated for differ-ent neighborhood types, each neighborhood beingcomposed of 1,000 dwelling units of one of the fol-lowing housing types:

single family homes, conventionally locatedsingle family homes, clustered townhouses walkup apartments (two stories) high rise apartments (six stories)

Because many environmental and some economic

TABLE I

TYPES OF COSTS ANALYZED

Economic Costs (capital and operating) Environmental EffectsResidential (capital only) Air Pollution

Open Space/Recreation Water Pollution, ErosionSchools NoiseStreets and Roads Vegetation and WildlifeUtilities (sewer, water storm drainage, Visual Effects

gas, electric, telephone) Water and Energy ConsumptionPublic Facilities and Services

police, fire, solid waste collection Personal Effectslibrary, health care, churches, Use of Discretionary Timegeneral government Psychic Costs

Land Travel TimeTraffic AccidentsCrime

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costs cannot be clearly identified on such a smallscale, neighborhoods were aggregated into differentcommunities, each of which contained 10,000 dwell-ing units (corresponding to a population of 33,000).Six community types were analyzed, each contain-ing a mixture of the various neighborhood housingtypes but differing in the amount of communityplanning (used here to mean a general compact-ness of development) and in the average develop-ment density.

Whereas different neighborhood types were as-sumed to require different amounts of land for the1,000 dwelling units, all six communities were as-sumed to contain the same amount of land6,000acres, with a mix of neighborhood types. The neigh-borhoods also differed slightly in population, depend-ing upon the housing type, whereas the communi-ties all were assumed to contain the same popula-tion. 1 The specific land use, housing, and popula-tion characteristics of the different neighborhood types and community development patterns are sum-marized in Table II.

The results of the study depend strongly uponsome of the assumptions underlying these basic costanalyses. Therefore, for critical parameters such aspopulation, acreage developed, etc., additional analy-ses were carried out to illustrate the sensitivity of the results to the assumption that was made.

RESULTS OF THE ANALYSES

In a study as complicated as this, it is difficult tosummarize the results briefly and in a readily com-prehensible form. This Executive Summary, in or-der to provide an overview, must necessarily avoidmost of the details. On the back cover of the mainreport there is a guide to more detailed results.

Community Analysis

This summary refers to three of the communitytypes analyzed: the low density sprawl, the com-bination mix, and the high density planned com-munities. They may be defined as follows:

Low density sprawl: The entire community ismade up of single family homes, 75 percent sitedin a traditional grid pattern and the rest clustered.Neighborhoods are sited in a leapfrog patternwith little contiguity. This represents the typicalpattern of suburban development.

Combination mix: This community consists of ahousing mix of 20 percent of each of the five typesof dwellings, half located in planned unit devel-opments, half in traditional subdivisions.

High density planned: In this community, hous-ing is composed of 40 percent high rise apartments,30 percent walkup apartments, 20 percenttownhouses, and 10 percent clustered single fam-ily homes. All of the dwelling units are clusteredtogether into contiguous neighborhoods, much inthe pattern of a high density new community.

The following briefly summarizes the studys find-ings in terms of land use, economic costs, environ-mental costs, energy and water consumption, andsome personal costs.

Land Use: Although all the communities coverthe same area, over 50 percent of the land in the highdensity planned community remains completely un-developed, whereas all the land is at least partiallydeveloped in the low density sprawl community. Onthe other hand, the low density sprawl communityhas more land that is improved but vacant, an indi-cation of the amount of leapfrogging that occursthere. 2

Figure I shows how these communities differ inland use. Although four times as much land is usedfor residential purposes in the low density sprawlcommunity as in the high density planned commu-nity, only two-thirds as much is dedicated to publicopen space. However, if backyards, which are also a

form of open space, are included, the low densitycommunity has twice the public and private landdedicated to open space as the high density commu-nity; it must be remembered, however, that in thehigh density planned community, over one-half of the land is not developed.

1 The assumption of constant population underlying the commu-nity analyses was made to emphasize the differences among com-munity development patterns. The actual populations could differquite substantially from those assumed, with corresponding impactson costs.

2 Improved here means that the land has been providedwith at least some infrastructure such as streets and sewers.

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The amount of land used for schools and otherpublic buildings is the same in all communities, but

the high density community uses about half as muchland for transportation as the low density commu-nity.

Economic Costs: In terms of total investment costs,the high density planned community is distinctlylower: 21 percent below the combination mix com-munity and 44 percent below the low density sprawlcommunity. Most of these savings result from dif-ferences in development densitysavings of about3 percent of total development costs result from bet-

ter planning, whereas those from increased den-sity amount to 41 percent. 3 The largest cost savingsare in construction of residential dwellings, althoughimportant savings are in construction of residential

FIGURE I

FIGURE II

3 Throughout this study planning" is used in a very limitedsense to mean increased clustering or compactness of devel-opment. Good planning includes much more than just clus-tering, and may well result in more significant costs savintsthan those indicated here.

Figures II and III summarize these investment andoperating costs for the three communities. The totalinvestment costs do not include costs of the land;they are indicated separately on Figure II. Theoperating and maintenance costs do not include thecost of maintaining the residential structures (al-though the operating costs for utilities comprise asubstantial portion of this cost), the financing costsfor the capital investments that have been made, orthe costs of operating automobiles.

Figure II also shows the difference in investmentcosts which are borne privately (initially by the devel-oper) and publicly. Not only does the high density

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dwellings, although important savings are attribut-able to reduced costs for roads and utilities, whichare about 55 percent lower in the high density thanin the low density community.


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planned community cost less to construct, but a lowerproportion of the costs is likely to be borne by govern-ment.

The difference in operating and maintenance costsis less noticeable than the difference in investment costs

because O&M costs are related more to the populationbeing served than to the pattern of development. How-ever, the higher density communities are again some-what less costly in terms of the total operating andmaintenance costs and in the costs paid by government.

Environmental Costs: Air pollution has two majorsources: automobiles and residential heating. Higherdensity developments require less energy for heating,and higher density and better planned communitiesstimulate less automobile use. Thus the high densityplanned community generates about 45 percent less airpollution than the low density sprawl community. Al-though planning has no effect upon the amount of pollution resulting from residential heating, it can re-duce the amount from automobiles by 20 to 30 per-

FIGURE IIIFIGURE IV

cent. The amounts of air pollution generated by the dif-ferent communities are shown in Figure IV.

Figure V indicates a similar pattern of water pollu-tion generated by the different development patterns.The type of development has no effect on the amountof sanitary sewage generated because this is a functiononly of population. 4 However, it does affect the impor-tant problems of storm water pollution and sediment.The less paved area there is, the less storm water run-off there will be. This is important not only in terms of water pollution problems but also in terms of down-stream flooding. More clustered communities havesomewhat less pavement than sprawl communities, butagain the significant savings come from increasing den-sity.

For both air and water pollution, it is important tonote that although the higher density community gen-erates less pollution, it does so in a smaller area, result-ing in a higher amount of pollution generated per acredeveloped.

In terms of other environmental factors, planning isthe key to eliminating noise problems, preserving valu-able wildlife and vegetation, and creating a visuallyattractive development. For a given developed area,increased density allows the planner greater flexibilityin accomplishing these goals. However, the increaseddensity does concentrate noise-generating activities andputs added demands on the designer to create aestheti-cally pleasing developments.

4 Sanitary sewage pollutants indicated are those remainingafter tertiary treatment of the sewage. With only secondarytreatment, which is more common, the volume of pollut-ants would be increased 5 to 10 times.

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Energy and Water Use: Energy consumption isdetermined primarily by residential heating and air con-ditioning requirements and by automobile use. Heat-

ing and air conditioning requirements are related pri-marily to the type of dwelling unitdenser develop-ments have lower demands than single family units.Transportation demands are affected both by the de-gree of clustering and community planning and by den-sity. Planning alone can save nearly 14 percent of total energy consumed, but planning combined withincreased density can save up to 44 percent.

Water consumed in cooking, drinking, etc., is notaffected by either planning or density. However, waterfor lawn watering is affected by both. Clustering alonecan save 6 percent of total water consumption, but the

high density planned development can save 35 percentover low density sprawl development.

Figures VI and VII indicate the variations in con-sumption of these two valuable natural resources.

Personal Costs: Some personal costs were also as-sessed in the study. These are more difficult to esti-mate. In general, planning and increased density re-duce the amount of time that family members spend

FIGURE V

traveling to work, school, etc., and higher density de-velopments typically take less of the residents time toclean and maintain. There are likely to be fewer trafficaccidents with better planning, but crime may increasewith higher densities, as will various psychic costswhich are particularly dependent upon design and plan-ning details.

These are the costs estimated for the different com-munity development patterns. More details may befound in the summary Tables III through VII.

Neighborhood Analysis

Few officials face a decision about what kind of de-velopment pattern is best for a community of 33,000.Rather, the decisions regard individual subdivision pro-posals. For these decisions, the neighborhood costanalyses, which pertain to only 1,000 units, may bemore useful than the community analyses.

Most of the neighborhood costs are similar to thecommunity costs, and the same conclusionsthat bet-

FIGURE VI

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FIGURE VI FIGURE VI

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FIGURE X FIGURE XI

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TABLE II

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