Urban Economics: Growth of Boundary

Introduction

Urban sprawl is characterized by a variety of distinct land use patterns (Fishman, 10). One force shaping the social geography of cities (such as Portland) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the railroads. Freight terminals were built beside ports and near central business districts. The radial lines that serviced them attracted factories and warehouses. Adjacent residential areas were deemed undesirable by the middle class, and so sectors of working-class settlement soon extended from city center to urban fringe (Harris, 91). This sectoral pattern was first documented by Homer Hoyt, a real estate analyst, in a study using rent data that he prepared for the FHA in the 1930s. The growing use of trucks for freight from the 1920s, and the construction of the interstate highway network in the 1950s, altered the dynamic of metropolitan growth. Urban growth is path dependent, however. Sectors of high-income as well as of low-income settlement have tended to display inertia, and so Hoyt's sectoral model remains relevant to our understanding of the postwar metropolis.

As cities (such as Portland) expand, they extend out to and then absorb smaller urban settlements. Thus, from the late 19th century on, the growth of industrial suburbs and satellites, initially close to freight yards and then around highway interchanges and airports, created new nodes of employment and suburban development. Acknowledging these trends, in the 1940s the geographers (Keating, 18) framed a third, multi-nodal model of metropolitan development. This has become the dominant pattern of urban growth, one with no simple implication for the social patterning of residential areas.

Thesis Statement

The rapid horizontal expansion of cities (such as Portland) to suburban and exurban areas is a major cause of concern for the urban growth control movement.

Decentralization of Housing and Employment

First, large-scale municipal and commercial developments such as wide streets, broad parking lots, large retail stores, and expansive office parks all consume large land areas. Second, low-density housing developments add urbanized land disproportionately to increased population. Third, homogenous housing and commercial development often result in low structural diversity and uniform building designs. And fourth, segregated, single-use zoning results in commercial, residential, and business zones that are separated by large distances (Harris, 62).

There are many effects of urban sprawl. Urban growth control advocates argue that suburban sprawl diverts financial resources away from valuable urban infrastructure by funding new and upgraded road and highway projects; consumes open space with ecological ...