Save the cities, stop the suburbs?

• Author: Garnett, Nicole Stelle

Sprawl: A Compact History BY ROBERT BRUEGMANN CHICAGO: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2005. PP. 306. $27.50

The City: A Global History BY JOEL KOTKIN NEW YORK: MODERN LIBRARY CHRONICLES, 2005. PP. 256. $21.95

REVIEW CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. DON'T STOP THE SUBURBS! A. Natural, Universal, and Good 1. Sprawl in Historical Perspective 2. Sprawl as a Safety Valve B. Let the Cities Die? II. SACRED, SAFE, AND BUSY A. Sacredness, Safety, and Busyness B. Avoiding an Ephemeral Future III. SAVING CITIES WITHOUT STOPPING SUBURBS? A. Safety B. Safety and Busyness C. Busyness, Sacredness, and Beauty CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

The fact that the word "sprawl" is uttered by curling the upper lip into a snarl captures some of the emotion generated by the current debate over American land use policy. Two recent books--Robert Bruegmann's defense of sprawl and Joel Kotkin's ambitious but short history of great cities (1)--provide an opportunity to consider sprawl's costs and benefits and also to examine the case for legal efforts to curtail sprawl in order to save our cities. These are important questions because, as Bruegmann observes, calls for "stopping" sprawl may proceed from serious misconceptions about its extent, causes, and consequences; they also may systematically underestimate the risks attendant to growth management.

Bruegmann's descriptive account of suburbia, Sprawl: A Compact History, which proceeds on the assumption that dense areas are not sprawling ones, is informative and, at times, surprising. (For example, the densest urbanized area in the United States is Los Angeles. (2)) Bruegmann's most important contribution, however, is to place the current debate over the distributional consequences of suburban growth controls in historical perspective. Bruegmann documents that all cities sprawl, in part because residents have long sought to escape the negatives of urban life when it has become possible for them to do so. (3) And, because city life is most difficult for the poor, Bruegmann argues, sprawl does not exacerbate economic inequities but mitigates them. (4) Ultimately, however, Bruegmann undermines the strength of his arguments about the benefits of suburbs by expressing a total lack of concern for the fate of American cities. A "so what" tone pervades his book, in large part because he views the city-suburb divide as an artificial one. Suburbs, in his view, are simply a less dense form of "urban" development. (5) Yet it is possible to agree with Bruegmann that American suburbs are neither bad nor out of control and still to believe that the line between "city" and "sprawl" is not simply a matter of density. (6) Cities, by virtue of their mixed land use patterns (and perhaps also their greater densities) may be different, in valuable and important ways, from suburbs. Moreover, even people who endorse Bruegmann's view that cities and suburbs are simply flip sides of the same urban development coin may harbor concerns about the urban poor, many of whom live in cities not by choice but because they have no choice. Thus, Bruegmann's refusal to countenance arguments that cities are worth saving may leave many readers asking if he is telling only part of the story.

Joel Kotkin's short history of urban life, The City: A Global History, begins to fill in these gaps in Bruegmann's book. Bruegmann's work is the stronger of the two; Kotkin's book is not, nor is it intended to be, an academic treatment of cities. But Kotkin offers a critical insight worthy of serious consideration in the academic debate about American land use policy. Like Bruegmann, Kotkin disfavors limits on suburban growth. (7) But he also makes a strong case that cities can serve unique economic and social purposes. Cities, Kotkin argues, are "sacred, safe, and busy" places. That is, they inspire awe, serve as centers of community and economic life, and keep their citizens secure. (8) Most of Kotkin's book is devoted to describing how various kinds of cities-Muslim and Christian, Eastern and Western-have historically fulfilled these important functions. But a clear contribution of his book is to ask why so many modern American cities now fulfill none of them. In fact, social critic James Howard Kuntsler might well have been describing Detroit, Cleveland, or St. Louis, when he complained that American suburbs are "soulless[,] ... demoralizing" places that "disable[] whole classes of decent, normal citizens." (9)

The final Part of this Review uses Kotkin's "sacred, safe, and busy" formula as a template for considering what might be done to save cities without stopping the suburbs. Kotkin's work challenges city leaders to engage in serious soul-searching about what they might do to make city life attractive and enlivening, both for suburbanites and for their current residents. Many scholars assume that cities are so enfeebled, so systematically disadvantaged, as to be incapable of competing with suburbs. (10) Yet, despite the steady progression of suburban sprawl, many cities have experienced a comeback in recent years. (11) Kotkin makes a plausible case that renewed city fortunes are the result of cities' own efforts to better compete with suburbs, especially by seeking to restore a basic sense of security in urban neighborhoods. (12) As Kotkin observes, however, safety is not enough. Cities must also be busy places and provide some modern version of "sacred" spaces. Here, land use scholars (and city government leaders) have much to learn from the inward-looking approach championed by order-maintenance scholars. (13) Just as reforms to city policing practices make residents feel safer, city leaders should ask whether reforms to city land use policies could help restore social and economic vitality to our urban cores. If cities are to thrive, then they must demonstrate (contra Bruegmann) that the city-suburb distinction is about more than population densities--that cities serve social, cultural, and economic functions that suburbs do not. An important way to do so, in my view, is to guarantee that city land use policies enable city leaders to capitalize on urban distinctiveness. One important path to that goal, explored below, may be permissive land use reforms in our cities, rather than prohibitory ones in the suburbs.

1. DON'T STOP THE SUBURBS!

   Robert Bruegmann is a historian who argues like a lawyer. He uses historical evidence to challenge the conventional wisdom about suburban sprawl and to build a case against legal restrictions on suburban growth. While Bruegmann's case for sprawl is not without flaws, (14) he does mount an important challenge to several commonly held assumptions about suburban development. Sprawl, Bruegmann argues, is not a postwar American anomaly; it is a universal fact of all urbanized societies. (15) (Indeed, many of today's "urban" neighborhoods are old "suburban" communities, absorbed by cities through annexation. (16)) Sprawl also is not out of control. On the contrary, the decentralization of American cities peaked decades ago, and many of our urbanized areas are now becoming denser. (17) And his central point: sprawl is not a negative reflection of Americans' selfish souls, but rather a natural result of affluence that benefits even those of the most modest means. Contrary to the assertions of growth-control proponents, Bruegmann argues that suburban development maximizes overall social welfare by opening up a housing safety valve that helps even the poor. (18) The case that Bruegmann builds for sprawl, however, is partially undermined by his nonchalant attitude about our cities.

   1. Natural, Universal, and Good

   The animating thesis of Bruegmann's book is that sprawl is natural, universal, and good. To the extent that we think otherwise, Bruegmann argues, it is because we misunderstand sprawl (or perhaps because we have been misled by sprawl's opponents). Moreover, and more importantly, Bruegmann demonstrates that the costs of urban life have always fallen disproportionately on the poor, and, therefore, that those of moderate means have the most to gain from suburban development. He then connects this historical argument to more familiar ones about the economic costs of growth management.

1. Sprawl in Historical Perspective

   As Bruegmann carefully documents, sprawl--that is, low-density suburban development--"has been a persistent feature in cities since the beginning of urban history." (19) Bruegmann argues that most cities experience similar development patterns over time. During periods of rapid economic growth, urban densities increase, but when the economy matures and residents become more affluent, urban densities decrease and suburban growth increases. (20) Bruegmann uses a demographic tool--the density gradient--to illustrate this phenomenon. A density gradient graphically depicts population densities from the center of a city outward. Over time, Bruegmann argues, the density gradients of all wealthy cities flatten out--that is, center-city densities decrease and suburban densities increase. (21) According to Bruegmann, for example, nineteenth-century suburbia developed along similar lines in the United States and Europe. Most suburban districts were home to the affluent; working class residents occupied smaller, denser, suburban pockets; and, as transportation technology developed, more commuter suburbs began to dot the countryside. In the twentieth century, suburbia exploded. By the 1920s, in both Europe and the United States, thousands of middle class families were able to move to detached and semi-detached suburban homes. (22)

   Bruegmann also builds a strong case against the prevailing view that suburban development patterns in the United States depart dramatically from those in other industrialized nations. While the density gradients of older, European cities flattened more slowly than younger, American cities, suburbanization and decentralization trends in the United States and Europe have been...