"That's twice as bad as the national average and the national average is bad," said Myron Orfield, a Minnesota state senator and director of the Minneapolis-based Metropolitan Area Research Corp.
Orfield, hired a year ago by the Cincinnati organization Citizens for Civic Renewal to study the area's growth, was in Cincinnati today to discuss his findings.
"I knew the central city had problems, but I was surprised by how much stress there is at the city's edge and suburbs" Orfield said. Rest of article
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In the latest issue "Planning" (the monthly publication of the American Planning Association) Anthony Downs, a Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institution, describes how different interest groups define "smart growth." Although he lists many of the issues where disagreement remains between homebuilders, environmentalists, and urban constituencies, he concludes with policies that enjoy broad support. Check out the website .
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"CONTRARY TO BELIEF, sprawl is not inevitable and is not a result of population increases," Shannon Harps, Transportation Policy Analyst for the Sierra Club's Ohio Chapter, said. "It is a result of policies and government spending over the past 50 years that supports new development rather than reinvestment." Rest of article
The Brookings Institutionšs Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy released their newest study, "Who Sprawls Most? How Growth Patterns Differ Across the U.S." This is the first national study to measure the consumption of land for urbanization compared to population change for every metropolitan area in the United States. A metropolitan area is deemed sprawling if it consumes land at a faster rate than population growth. It is "densifying" if it consumes land at a slower rate than population growth.
The study finds that: (1) Most metropolitan areas in the United States are adding urbanized land at a much faster rate than they are adding population. (2) The West is home to some of the densest metropolitan areas in the nation. (3) Metropolitan areas in the South are consuming large amounts of land to accommodate significant population growth. (4) The Northeast and Midwest are in some ways the nationšs biggest sprawl problems.
The report also examined variables associated with sprawl, density, and urbanization. It found, for example, that, all else being equal, metropolitan areas with large shares of foreign-born residents have higher densities and sprawl less. For a full copy of the report please go to www.brook.edu/es/urban/fulton-pendall.htm
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MIDDLETOWN--Middletown Regional Hospital should drop its pursuit of a new Interstate 75 interchange at Greentree Road and use roads that are there already for its relocation plan, the state's transportation department director said.
"We very much would encourage you to look at access
from the existing road network as the primary alternative
to the new interchange," ODOT Director Gordon Proctor
told Douglas McNeill, hospital president and chief
executive officer, in a letter in late July.......
........
Larry Crisenbery, Warren County Commission vice president, said the letter puts a "crimp" in the hospital's plans.
He agreed that new interchanges sometimes require widening an interstate to accommodate traffic, which means a higher price tag. Crisenbery couldn't estimate how high the cost might be, but said building a mile of interstate costs approximately $60 million. (Now there's a sprawl cost you can sink your teeth into!--webminder comment)
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DETROIT -- Michigan Roman Catholics who see urban sprawl as a moral issue are backing a campaign for balanced growth.
Clergy and lay members of the Detroit archdiocese joined experts on sprawl for two days this month at Sacred Heart Seminary, where they planned a statewide effort to raise awareness about rising inequality among southeast Michigan cities.
Detroit and many suburbs face more poverty, racial isolation and property abandonment, while services dwindle, they said. Subdivisions take over acres of land, drawing newcomers who overwhelm roads, sewers and rivers, they said.
Meanwhile, southeast Michigan has had little overall population growth, activists said.
"The church getting involved in sprawl could be a breakthrough," said Heaster Wheeler of the Detroit office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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