You’ve probably already heard someone bemoan the evils of suburban sprawl.  If you’re anything like me, you were only half-listening because the diatribe came from some environmentalist wearing $130 dollar Birkenstocks. But in a forthcoming paper for the Fordham Law Review, Katherine Silbaugh presents an interesting take on the issue by explicitly linking sprawl to work-life conflict.

For the uninitiated among us, sprawl means the decentralization of land use or lower density development. In urban areas, a single city block may house retail shops, residential buildings, and office space. In suburbia, the same amount of space could contain a single McMansion. Perhaps the most common criticism of single-use zoning is that it fosters reliance on cars for commuting to work, running errands, and dropping the kids off at school. This is clearly bad news for the environment.  Sprawl also decreases opportunities for social interactions among a variety of people, consequently increasing racial and class segregation.  And it decreases the need to walk regularly – which increases the size of America’s collective ass.

If those aren’t reasons enough to stop sprawling, here are a few ways sprawl hurts your chances of achieving the holy grail of work-life balance:

1. More time commuting equals less time working and/or living.

Commuting time between work and home continues to increase. This is a logistical nightmare, people. A 25 minute parent-teacher conference or a brief doctor’s appointment will eat half your work day if your kid’s school or doctor’s office is an hour away from the office. That additional two-hour roundtrip means you probably won’t have time for a dip in your Olympic-size pool that day.

2. ‘Mo square feet, ‘mo problems.

Originally designed to allow women to cook, do laundry, and care for children all in one convenient location, the single-family home was conceived as a housewife’s “workspace.” Though women are entering the paid workforce in droves, the single family home has grown to nearly two times its 1950s size. Silbaugh argues that since larger homes obviously require larger amounts of (unpaid) household labor, this is society’s not-so-subtle hint to women that the home is a woman’s legitimate sphere. Feminist musings aside, someone is going to have to clean those extra square feet. Do you really want it to be you? (And those that can afford hiring help might think twice after reading this tasty piece from McSweeney’s).

3. Commuting to the ‘burbs?!?

It’s not just suburban soccer moms who are suffering from taxing sprawl commuting patterns. Middle-class suburbs have created the need for low-paid service sector workers like your local gas station attendant and fast food worker. With few affordable housing options in the suburbs, these workers often endure a costly and time-consuming “reverse commute” from the cities to the suburbs.

4. Your taxes are subsidizing The Jones’ five-car garage

If the fact that people pay ten times the national average per square foot to live in Manhattan is any indication, the desire for residences in mixed- use, densely built areas is alive and well. However, Silbaugh argues that the demand part of the supply-and-demand equation is distorted by government subsidies for purchasing newly built homes in the suburbs via mortgage deductions and infrastructure supports.  With mortgage deductions, bigger is always better: “By favoring bigger mortgages, the home mortgage interest deduction favors more expensive housing, which in turn usually correlates with bigger houses.”

Infrastructure subsidies are equally perplexing. A developer purchases land to build a single-family home and pays only for the construction and cost of land. The home-buyer pays for the home itself. Who pays for the additional costs of sprawling development? YOU! Your taxes pay for the running of utilities, sewer, and water.

Of course, if non-sprawling areas fail to provide green spaces, good public schools, and civic centers it makes sense that people with means will purchase them individually in the form of a big backyard or moving to a suburb within a good school district.

So how can we reconcile the desire for a white picket fence with the benefits of an efficient environment? Well, perhaps we can start with providing tax breaks for home-owners based on proximity to public transportation and walking distance to work. And while we’re at it, let’s support spending resources on green spaces, public school, and civic centers in America’s cities and towns. Manhattan isn’t for everyone. But cookie-cutter Levittowns seem to me a silly alternative.

 - Vetta

Thoughts?

ariel photo on flikr by Rich_Lem under creative commons licesne
mcmansion photo by  Dean Terry under creative commons license

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