An expert on urban sprawl management says Greater Cincinnati has significant social and economic problems because land development has outpaced population growth by a 5-to-1 ratio in recent years.

"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.

By "stress," Orfield referred to mounting problems in paying for schools, services and community revitalization. Such financial problems can foster social decline, he noted.

"Greater Cincinnati has built an extra ring of suburbs with no growth, and now it has to pay for it," said Orfield.

"Developing suburbs, like Grant and Pendleton counties in Northern Kentucky and Butler and Warren counties in southwest Ohio, are very poor. They're growing with about half the tax base of the national average."

Orfield said there's also been "very rapid social and economic decline" in older suburban communities like Newport, Bellevue and Dayton in Northern Kentucky and in Mount Healthy, North College Hill and Lockland in southwest Ohio.

"There are very few places in America where older, suburban communities are becoming poor so rapidly," he said.

Orfield traced Greater Cincinnati's sprawl problems to competition among communities to grow.

"Rather than cooperate, they spend time competing with each oth er," Orfield said.

He is a proponent of regional cooperation and says a good example of it is the Minneapolis area, where communities share 40 percent of their commercial and industrial tax revenue.

Earlier this year, in a draft report of his Greater Cincinnati study, Orfield recommended a tax sharing plan for this area.

However, Citizens for Civic Renewal and other local organizations told Orfield not to make recommendations in his final report and Orfield agreed.

"We want to figure out ourselves what will work here," said Greg Harris, executive director of Citizens for Civic Renewal.

"So for the next year, we're going to do community outreach and find out what kind of reform is palatable to the region. We're going to get a feel about how serious people here are about reform."

Harris said Orfield's study raises some serious concerns.

"We are a region continually separating ourselves from each other," Harris said. ''We've been fiscally reckless in our growth and development.

"Developing land five times faster than our population growth means taxpayers are absorbing heavy costs. They're paying for infrastructure and other things not warranted by our population."

Harris said communities need to coordinate growth plans and develop financially sound policies for the entire region.

Despite the problems, Orfield and Harris remain optimistic.

"There are lots of good people who care about this community," Orfield said.

"I'm encouraged," Harris said. "A lot of people around here have a fundamental sense that the way we are growing now is to our detriment." -----------------------------------------------------------

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