Acknowledging and Addressing the Legacy of Urban Sprawl

Whenever I talk about the need to build affordable housing with my family, comments and questions tinged with implicit biases that reflect unfortunately common beliefs around affordable housing arise:

• We can’t build apartments here; the increased pedestrian and vehicular traffic will impact current residents and we’ll have less parking.

• What will the impacts be on our property values?

• What’s my yard going to look like when 250 more people live down the street with no additional open space?

• It’s expensive here. Why can’t we build where it’s more affordable in [South Los Angeles, San Bernadino, fill in the blank]? 

It’s attitudes like this that led to the creation of policies that reward urban sprawl and block the creation of affordable housing. Combined with the desire for the American Dream of a white picket fence and a home, these attitudes have led us to develop single-family homes further and further from city centers – a pattern that has led to urban sprawl and inspired several policies that have benefited white suburbanites at the expense of communities of color. This pattern has been a huge driver of the lack of housing across the country, and in Los Angeles County we see the impacts in the homelessness crisis that’s been a constant throughout the years. 

But how did we get here, and how has urban sprawl harmed communities of color in Los Angeles? What can we do to fight back against the entrenched attitudes that have led us here?

The Root Causes of Urban Sprawl

The roots of urban sprawl started at the turn of the 20th Century, with causes going further than that. Zoning laws across the country, including California, would be weaponized against density. Euphemisms such as “polluting” and “tainting” were given to apartments, and a prioritization of single-family homes would take precedent – which later translated into discriminatory policies restricting who could own housing, and where. The Supreme Court in a 2015 decision (Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project) noted that "unequal housing and economic conditions and residential segregation were 'significant, underlying causes of the social unrest,' with 2/3 of nonwhite families in inner cities living in neighborhoods marked by substandard housing and urban blight."

The prioritization of single-family zoning led to the creation of infrastructure that connected those individual homes to each other and to city centers following the post-WWII boom. 41,000 miles of roads were built between 1950-1960, signaling one of the largest transformations of infrastructure that was meant to serve those deemed worthy of homeownership. During this time, lenders would actively discriminate against Black people actively seeking loans, despite proof that black home values rose faster than white home values. Oftentimes, lenders would use maps developed by the infamous Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) as an excuse to not lend to Black Americans, low-income Americans and communities of color.

In short, federal policies made building suburbs more attractive relative to central city neighborhoods by funding freeways, underwriting suburban home ownership, and emphasizing subsidized housing and social services in central cities that made them attractive to needy constituents. This was in parallel to federal, state and local governments disincentivizing the creation of homes in areas deemed “risky,” using newly-built freeways to carve and blockade low-income communities and communities of color, and prohibiting the creation of denser communities through buildings like apartments.

Urban Sprawl’s Aftereffects

We now live in a world where it really matters where you live. Almost every metric on the standard quality of life index can be generally predicted based on a person’s address, from life expectancy, income and generational wealth, community safety, incarceration rates, education, even how likely one will get diabetes or hypertension – all of these are highly related to where one lives.  

Nowhere do we see the result of these policies more clearly than in Los Angeles. From a financial side, Los Angeles County is home to the most millionaires and low-income communities than any other metro area across the United States. The average income in Los Angeles at $67,641, a lower income than what’s needed to not be rent-burdened ($103,526) and a much, much lower income than what’s needed to buy a home ($257,892).

The creation of freeways spurred long commutes from the suburbs to city centers, where jobs tend to be located – and there aren’t many places in the United States where this is as apparent as Los Angeles. Across the board, the average pay for city jobs is 10% higher than the pay for suburban jobs, at the expense of the long commute from the suburbs to work. 

This division doesn’t only create long commutes – it also creates systems that extract wealth from formerly-redlined communities at the expense of those living there. If suburban communities are the home of many people with good jobs, those suburban areas are receiving more funding for schools, infrastructure and the like and essentially extracting it from the city areas that employ them.

This effectively means that the segregation of income groups into different local governments – one city and one suburban – means supposedly equal communities have unequal access to public goods funded by those living in segregated areas. By escaping across municipal boundaries, those that can afford to commute and buy a home in the suburbs avoid the costs of underfunded schools, civic departments and more – while those who cannot afford a home are stuck there and must deal with the hand they’re dealt.

For example, over 40% of a school's funding comes from local property taxes. The higher the neighborhood's home values, the more money is available to pay for teachers and textbooks, laptops and laboratories, counseling, and college prep. When local property tax revenue increases, student performance improves. When property tax revenue declines, class sizes increase, teacher salaries fall, and student performance suffers. But if there’s a lack of funding coming into an area due to workers there paying taxes elsewhere, those that are there suffer. 

This results in a vicious circle of poverty and economic isolation, and economic models show how economic segregation can lead to persistent economic inequalities across generations.  It's estimated that a household would make $910k more over their lifetime if they were born in a neighborhood that is at the top 25% of income distributions than if they were born in the bottom 25%. Rising levels of economic segregation helps explain why economic mobility by Americans has declined since the late 1960s, and Americans' "escape rate" out of poverty is by far the lowest among the 12 most industrialized countries.

Untangling the Legacy of Urban Sprawl

We’ve seen the impact that discriminatory policies focused on single-family homes has had on the United States. Taking apart the legacy of urban sprawl and reimagining a more equitable future is possible, however – and it will take large-scale action that we’re hopeful will happen in our lifetimes. 

One of the vehicles to address the legacy of urban sprawl is to create new policies that focus on decentralizing poverty and reinvest in areas affected by the extractive nature of the suburban model. This includes different methods of investing in disenfranchised areas that haven’t had proper funding for schools, infrastructure and the like, followed by a reimagining of how to regulate land. Promoting density across metropolitan and suburban areas, whether that’s through larger apartments, allowing for more accessible dwelling units (ADU’s), or just through allowing more homes to be built in single-family areas can go a long way in creating more homes for all.

In cases where cities or municipalities are resistant, the above changes should start at the federal level, driven by entities like the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to enact meaningful change. HUD could, for example, require a minimum level of low-income housing development across the country, built as mixed income models – where no more than 1/3 of a project is targeting low-income families. This, combined with a requirement for market rate rental housing to accept Section 8 vouchers, can create a more resilient, integrated model for communities most affected by the negative effects of urban sprawl.

The following books informed my work and are a good place to explore the impact of urban sprawl at a deeper level:

• Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century by Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom

• The Fight for Fair Housing edited by Gregory D. Squires

• Keeping Races in their Places by Anthony Orlando

• Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty

• Rethinking Federal Housing Policy by Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko

Matt Schauer

Matt is a Senior Project Manager on the development team, helping oversee projects from conception through tenant lease-up and beyond. He works closely with design, construction, and supportive services teams to ensure future residents love their new homes, organizes funding applications and manages lender teams to finance the building, and engages with local stakeholders.

You can read Matt’s full bio here.