The City Café

What has spurred the incredible growth in American suburbs over the last few decades? A Fannie Mae Foundation commissioned survey (of urban scholars) identified these top five contributing factors:

1. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act and the dominance of the automobile
2. Federal Housing Administration mortgage financing and subdivision regulation
3. Deindustrialization of central cities
4. Urban renewal: downtown redevelopment and public housing projects (1949 Housing Act)
5. Levittown (the mass-produced suburban tract house)

You can read the full paper here: The American Metropolis at Century’s End

I bring this topic up in light of a current debate on the Economist’s Free Exchange blog. Monday there was an interesting post titled the Density of Nations this post argued: America systematically starved and disassembled its public transportation and rail infrastructure and spent rather extravagantly on highways, both within and between cities. While Europeans also increased their spending on roadways, they nonetheless maintained strong national commitments to rail and public transit. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic disagrees with some of this reasoning, you can read here opinion here.

So what is the answer? Why are European cities more dense? I’m inclined to think that it has more to the American obsession with the status of a large home, a large yard, and a two car garage–which is usually pursued with suburban property.

An essential focus of our 100th conference was our new ‘Making Life Better Campaign.’  The campaign is aimed at educating citizens regarding local government, and primarily educating citizens on the services their municipality provide.  The League survey research consistently indicates that Utahns evaluate the quality of life in their community as very high.  Overall citizens rate the services they receive in their city highly also (water, trash collection, parks, libraries, police and fire, etc)–however, there is a significant disconnect when asked who is providing these services.  For example, in our latest Dan Jones & Associates survey we asked respondents (statewide survey of Utahns) if they had used a city or town service in the last 24 hours. 40 percent responded ‘No’.  Additionally, only 3 percent of respondents identified planning and zoning as a city service. Or only 10 percent noted parks as a city service.

We believe the part of the onus in on local government to do a better job of communicating what we do. There is definitely room for huge improvement and hopefully the ‘Making Life Better Campaign’ is a step in the right direction.

You can read the Deseret News article about the campaign here: Logo Targets Ignorance About Cities

You can also open a pdf version of my business session presentation here: Myth vs. Reality

Please contact me if you have questions or comments about this research or issue.

Back to the office today after our Annual Conference last week. Overall we felt the conference was a great celebration, in addition to a great learning and training opportunity.