Chapter 1 Planning for a Metropolitan Future There are estimates that the population of the United States could increase to 438 million by 2050. Where will we house these new residents? What kind of metropolitan regions will they live in? Will these regions be sustainable or equitable or even livable? If past sprawling land use patterns are any indication, we should be concerned about protecting our nation''s farmland, forests, water resources, and open spaces. With the prospect of climate change, we should be actively rethinking the way we manage our metropolitan areas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make our cities more resilient. By 2050, will we have a more sustainable metropolitan approach that promotes density, develops regional public transit systems, and equitably redevelops the city and inner-ring suburbs? Or will we continue to sprawl? A lot depends on our ability to develop more effective metropolitan governance that encourages local governments to plan sustainably. While other countries have consolidated power at the metropolitan scale through annexation and the creation of metropolitan government, the United States has a hybrid metropolitan governance approach that is limited by a lack of authority and depends primarily on collaboration. Metropolitan governance in the United States is typically made in a two-tiered system in which local governments still maintain ultimate control over their land use decisions, but also work in a collaborative manner to plan for and make regional decisions. Most metropolitan regions have made some attempt to develop institutions responsible for planning and governance--whether through a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) that coordinates state and federal transportation funding, a council of governments (COG), a regional planning authority, a metropolitan transportation authority, or a combination of these; metropolitan agencies serve primarily as advisors to local governments. One exception stands out.

Portland, Oregon, has been granted more authority by state government to insist on coordination of land use planning and development. However, Portland is largely viewed as an anomaly--not replicable and not reflective of broader trends in U.S. politics. If we want to govern our metropolitan regions more effectively, we first need to understand how our current hybrid system of land use planning and metropolitan governance either supports or hinders cooperation and the development of more sustainable regions (environmentally, economically, and socially). This book is a start. It tells the story of metropolitan governance in three U.S.

metropolitan areas (Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, and Denver, Colorado) that vary in their use of collaboration and authority. By comparing metropolitan planning processes in Boston, Denver, and Portland, the book critiques how having more authority (moving from capacity building to providing financial incentives to mandating local land use) changes decision making and whether agencies with more authority are more effective at getting local land use planning to take account of the spillover effects of development within their borders. The hope is that by understanding the impact that various metropolitan governance arrangements have on regional land use decisions, we can start to think more critically about what political arrangements and tools are necessary to govern more sustainable metropolitan regions. U.S. metropolitan regions grow because of thousands of incremental development decisions made by people deciding where they want to live, work, and/or invest. Individual land use choices made by millions of people in separate municipalities have a cumulative effect of creating serious local and metropolitan problems: little affordable housing, insufficient open space, stress on water supplies, unhealthy levels of air pollution, increased greenhouse gas emissions, severe traffic congestion, a loss of mobility and economic opportunity, traffic fatalities, poor health, crumbling regional infrastructure, and questions about regional equity and sustainability. These social, economic, and environmental costs of our current metropolitan development patterns are often ignored, but when they are quantified we see how serious they are.

Unfortunately, local governments do not have the capacity to respond to the interlocking set of problems facing metropolitan regions, and future challenges such as population growth and climate change will not make it easier. Just when we need to be reducing our ecological footprints and carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate climate change, our sprawling metropolitan development patterns continue to drive them up. However, there is reason to be optimistic about the future of America''s metropolitan regions. First, most regions in the United States already have a system of metropolitan governance in place, albeit weak, that could be strengthened. Second, as a nation, we are starting to appreciate a choice in how we develop land: there is a recognition that sprawl is inefficient and causes a number of environmental, social, and economic problems. Millennials and empty-nesters are also demanding more compact and urban living. Even people who prefer a suburban lifestyle are recognizing that walkable streets, public transit, smart growth, and mixed-use development are beneficial. Under the Obama administration, we have also seen an interest in sustainability and regional planning.

We can be hopeful that this sea change in the way we think about urban and suburban space may carry over into how we govern the region; however, making metropolitan governance work better will require us to first better understand our current approach and then to make necessary reforms. Living in Fragmented and Sprawling Regions Today American regions are governed by hundreds of individual jurisdictions, but many people may be surprised by just how fragmented metropolitan governance is. According to the Committee on Improving the Future of U.S. Cities Through Improved Metropolitan Area Governance, "The average metropolitan area consisted of 114 local governments: 2 counties, 42 municipalities or towns, and 70 special districts, of which 21 were school districts. There were 18 local governments for every 100,000 people in metropolitan areas." In a typical U.S.

metropolitan region, local governments will make independent decisions about land use without much regard for how it impacts neighboring communities or what the externalities are. The resulting trend has been urban sprawl--low-density development on greenfields in the outer fringes of metropolitan regions. Without metropolitan planning, one town approves a subdivision on a greenfield. Then another town does the same. Soon we have a sprawling development pattern in the metropolitan region and cities and towns are scrambling to find the revenue to support the new infrastructure to maintain these unsustainable planning decisions. We have known about the consequences of suburban sprawl development for decades, but U.S. land use and fiscal policy and weak forms of metropolitan governance continue to promote it nonetheless.

Writing in 1972, David Mckee and Gerald Smith describe urban sprawl as "an inefficient allocation of resources for society." They argue that "sprawl suggests urban areas which are larger than necessary which may mean that transportation, communication, utility services, and local public services all become ''unnecessarily inefficient and uneconomical.''" The Real Estate Research Corporation''s 1974 "Costs of Sprawl" study describes the phenomenon as "the most expensive form of residential development in terms of economic costs, environmental costs, natural resource consumption and many types of personal costs." Lower density development exacts more per person to service than higher density development. As Arthur C. Nelson writes, "It costs twice as much per unit of development to fully service two homes per acre as it does to serve four homes per acre." According to the American Farmland Trust, "For every tax dollar collected from newly developed suburban residential property, about $1.25 in services must be paid--a loss of 25 cents.

" Robert Burchell''s studies on the cost of sprawl in Florida, New Jersey, Kentucky, South Carolina, and the Delaware Estuary find the duplication of public services. In order to accommodate new development, each municipality is forced to provide new infrastructure investment: schools, roads, sewer, police, fire protection, and so on. However, many of these smaller and previously rural jurisdictions are not prepared financially or structurally to provide the type of suburban services necessary. Some of the services would also be best offered at a metropolitan scale, but because of jurisdictional boundaries and current systems of municipal finance, they are provided at the local level without economies of scale. Two towns right next to each other have to finance their own school systems, planning directors, fire departments, and police officers. Since new suburban development does not pay for the infrastructure that it requires, in order to generate more income, municipalities compete with each other to attract taxable development (retail development in sales tax states and industrial or commercial development that is taxed at a higher rate than residential development in non-sales tax states). Drier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom argue that communities compete for "favored residents and investments," and "each jurisdiction has a strong incentive to adopt zoning and development policies that exclude potential residents with incomes below the median for their jurisdiction or who require more costly services." Their research raises important questions about how equitable our metropolitan development patterns are, particularly those that are designed to attract high.