Slow Growth Policies Add To Sprawl, Not Reduce
Posted: June 16th, 2006
Category: real estate news
As elections approach this summer and fall, I thought it would be worth researching some facts about the anti-growth platforms some politicians are running on. The Brookings Institution has a policy brief that illuminates the problems with anti-growth policy…
"Regional growth rates are determined by broad forces beyond the purview of any one or even several local jurisdictions. These forces include the region’s location in the nation, its climate, topography, demographics, physical size, natural resources, past investments made in it by specific industries and government agencies, and the national economic climate. So when one locality passes laws limiting future growth within its own boundaries, it does not affect the future growth rate of the overall region, but rather moves the region’s future growth to other localities, or to outlying unincorporated areas. Local growth limits, then, actually aggravate sprawl.
Regional net migration—both foreign and domestic—is the major variable influencing the pace at which a metropolitan area grows. Therefore, slowing a region’s growth requires discouraging net in-migration. But regions gain a lot of in-migrants because the areas possess traits that attract newcomers looking for jobs and a desirable quality of life. Most of these traits are almost impossible to change through policy, especially local policy. Therefore, those seeking to slow a region’s growth can reduce its attraction to newcomers only by curtailing some of the very attributes that attracted them. Examples are reducing job opportunities, raising housing costs, increasing taxes, insufficiently funding public schools, and failing to finance adequate infrastructure. But all these negative changes will also harm existing residents.
Moreover, it is more difficult to dissuade poor, unskilled immigrants from abroad than middle-income, educated in-migrants from the rest of the United States. Unskilled immigrants willingly accept housing, wages, and other provisions that educated migrants consider sub-standard, because immigrants regard such conditions as markedly superior to those that existed where they came from. Therefore, the less attractive a region is portrayed to newcomers, the more likely the mix of immigrants into it will shift toward higher percentages of poor and unskilled ones and lower percentages of middle-income, educated ones."
I found this brief very enlightening, especially considering reports of the migration numbers from the northeast to our local communities.
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