Suburban Sprawl in Florida, photo by .res
This recent paper from the Brookings Institute’s Elizabeth Kneebone on so-called “Jobs Sprawl” is both interesting and slightly maddening. The “Jobs Sprawl” analysis is an attempt to measure the percentage of jobs in an employment area located near downtown (within three miles of the “center city”, defined arbirtrarily), sort of near downtown (three to ten miles away) and not at all near downtown (ten or more miles away). The paper notes that since the last study, in 2001, more jobs are being located outside of downtowns nationwide.
Seattle ranks as the tenth most “decentralized” major employment center, that is, the major employment with the tenth highest percentage of jobs located ten miles or more from the city center. In 2006, the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area had approximately 1,461,291 jobs, and 19.1% were within three miles of the center of the city, 24.8% were between three and ten miles away, and 56.0% were more than ten miles away. Seattle is also “rapidly decentralizing”, since the number of jobs being created more than ten miles away from the “center city” has grown much faster than the number of jobs within three miles of the heart of the city.
While that’s interesting, I have a serious problem with this analysis in that the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area has more than one downtown. Any job downtown Tacoma or Downtown Bellevue, since both are more than ten miles away from Third and Seneca or whatever is the center of Downtown Seattle, are “decentralized”, which means “job sprawl” according to Kneebone. And similarly any job in the University District is more than miles away from that point and is thus not centralized or decentralized. Having many centers may mean Seattle is “decentralized” – in fact that may be the very definition of “decentralized” – but that’s a pretty crummy definition of “jobs sprawl”. A job in North Bend is sprawled-out, a job in Downtown Tacoma or Downtown Bellevue certainly is not.
The Austin Contrarian has some other problems with the study, including a problem with the three and ten mile ‘polls’ used.
Trying to not get too far off topic, but looking at the photo from Florida put job sprawl into focus.
A scientist on the Artic ice pack commented, that he was no longer doing any science on global warming — just documenting the rate of its effects. Those homes in the photo will likely be under water in not too many decades, or wiped clear from a super huricane, so, what’s the point of documenting the rate of sprawl or it’s impact.
We’re still a slave to autos. Mass transit is still struggling for a 10% mode share. We’re still ‘unsure’ about switching from cars and planes to go between cities by HSR. We’re still building mega car projects (AWV, SR530, I405).
Unfortunately, job sprawl will sort itself out the hard way by people climbing to higher ground near city centers for both shelter and jobs., but I’m in one of those hyper negative places this morning. More coffee please!
Not to mention if you go three miles west of downtown Seattle you will be in the water. A city like Seattle or San Francisco doesn’t have a choice but to grow more than three miles in certain directions due to the lack of actual land available.
We can safely assume job sprawl will continue, working downtown has limited appeal to employees and diminishing value to employers. More importantly this metric of 3 miles from downtown has limited practical value, it’s data that doesn’t really lead to enriching knowledge. A more important spatial metric the average distance from home to work?
Not only are people commuting from one suburb where they live to another suburb where they work; people changes jobs a great deal more over the course of their careers. We cannot expect that a spoke and hub transit layout and market incentives/disincentives for single occupany commuters to solve this entirely.
Seattle (and Tacoma) are fortunate to have desirable residential neighborhoods in proximity to their downtown cores, but the declining reputation of their public schools is what drives many residents to outlying areas.
I don’t know about “limited appeal to employees” there are plenty of people like myself who strongly prefer to work in central downtown locations. I’ve worked in places like Canyon Park or Eastgate and hated every minute of it.
A further problem with the study in question that Andrew pointed out is it really doesn’t factor in things like the downtowns of Tacoma, Everett, or Bellevue. Nor does it factor in other established centers like industrial areas or the UW.
There is a truck bumper sticker: “when I stop, you will too”. Same thing applies to sprawl. When resources run out we will stop. Will we apply the brakes ourselves… or wait for the laws of nature?
I don’t know, considering DT Bellevue as a “center” kinda seems to show exactly these effects, no? How long has it been that you could call it a center like you could Tacoma or Everett? How long have people been saying, “Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue” as opposed to “Seattle-Tacoma-Everett”? I’ve only been here for a little over 10 years, but it seems to me that it has happened within those 10 years. How long will it be before another “center” is created (North, South, East) and folks argue that it can’t be called decentralized?
Without getting bogged down in the details of 3 miles and 10 miles, just look to Redmond and MS. A large employer in the outskirts of a city will just lead to more sprawl like this study suggests. Some folks here seem to fancy the idea of living close to work. This is what is happening. Employ 30,000 to 40,000 people in Redmond and watch the housing go up around it. Voila, sprawl.
Not everyone enjoys living in a city or even moderately high density locations. I’m sure there are many folks that think Redmond is too built up these days so they go farther out. The difference is that Redmond is their “starting point” and not Seattle. So the question is, why are employers going to Redmond or whatever a particular city’s version is of Redmond?
A center like Downtown Bellevue is much better than office parks placed at random, which is how most of the business development in Bothell and even in Redmond has happened. I don’t think it’s necessary to only have one center and with our current infrastructure it is entirely impossible.
Not sure where this conversation is going. Yes, downtown Bellevue is, well, and downtown, and jobs located there are not sprawl and not decentralized, unless the definitions of those words are seriously distorted.
To my way of thinking, sprawl really stopped with the establishment of the Urban Growth Boundary. Seems to me that development within that boundary isn’t really sprawl any more, rather it’s planned infill development.
Yes, within the UGB, there will be people commuting from the various residential districts to the various job centers, and that creates a mishmash of commute routes, but the largest and densest of these corridors are the ones connecting the largest urban centers (“downtowns”), which just happen to be the corridors selected for light rail construction.
The Urban Growth Area, which has helped channel growth in this area, needs some more teeth. It really needs to be a hard line like up in Vancouver BC. As it stands now, in some counties, once a city fills up its Urban Growth Area with single family homes,etc; it can just petition the county board or state(not sure which) to expand its urban growth area farther out so as to build more of the same.
What happens than is that you don’t really get any great growth or planning, just more areas opened to typical suburban development. I think if there was more teeth in the UGB, stating that nothing can be built beyond this line, regardless, than it would force more towns to build up instead of out and be more creative in how they use their existing spaces within the boundary.
I think Japan has a similar model. Towns just end at certain points. Entirely end. Andrew has a post coming up about this.
My observations in Canada some years ago, I saw cities and towns with hard edges, yes, but they still allowed expansion — with the apparent requirement that new subdivisions must abut one another — thus disallowing the scattershot pattern that characterizes sprawl in America.
I’m not sure we can or should view the UGB as a permanent and forever boundary, forcing the ultimate destruction of even viable single-family neighborhoods. The wisest planning, the best development pattern seems to me is to provide for a wide range of housing opportunities, including single-family homes. For families with more than one child (minority of households today, of course) the SF home is probably best for most such families — for the 20 years or so the kids are being raised. After that, then, yeah, the condo downtown (which may be downtown Bellevue, or downtown Kirkland, or downtown Renton…)
Moving outward of King County’s UGB remains a long way off, however, with all the infill sites remaining to be developed.
A more important spatial metric the average distance from home to work?
That metric is also increasing. According to this report, the average commuting distance in the Puget Sound region increased by 5% between 1999 and 2006.
But I’m not sure that metric is more important, anyway. A longer average commuting distance doesn’t necessarily indicate decentralization of jobs. It could equally well be the result of decentralization of housing. But both metrics (average commute distance and share of jobs within a certain distance of the CBD) are important. And both suggest that jobs and workers are becoming more spatially dispersed.
Exactly. I don’t know of a lot of jobs being created in Fall City (though a new casino opened in Snoqaulmie) but I know a lot of houses have been built there.
“A center like Downtown Bellevue is much better than office parks placed at random, which is how most of the business development in Bothell and even in Redmond has happened. I don’t think it’s necessary to only have one center and with our current infrastructure it is entirely impossible.”
“I think Japan has a similar model. Towns just end at certain points. Entirely end. Andrew has a post coming up about this.”
I’m really looking forward to the post, and would love to see maps that show what I hope would look like a network model?
I think the hub, concentric zone, zonal, Edge City, etc., models are just a recognition of what already happened, a study of the past. We would be healthier if we had the political will to create a network of dense towns and cities within the growth areas, with all of the economic and social diversity that implies. Guess I’m taking what we have already and trying to make lemonade out of lemons. Yes people will drive suburb to suburb but many will not need to go beyond the town boundaries to work and would have the opportunity to live, work, and be near where their children are in school. People drive from Mill Creek to Seattle every day. What if there were more jobs closer to where they lived? Or, better transit to the cities and towns?
Throw in a good rail system because stations focus the built environment. It takes getting into balance, zoning for housing and retail where we have office parks and zoning for more multifamily and town centers where we have housing subdivisions. It takes zoning and hard borders for the built environment that most Americans would view as socialistic private property rights violations.
By the way, I know that tons of people live near the Microsoft campus. They would live nearer if they could. They would also like to have walkable places for their daily needs. Maybe Redmond could dense up enough to even have some cool nightlife.
I think it would be good to calculate what percentage of jobs are inside an area of high job-density. That would include DT Seattle, DT Bellevue, DT Everett, DT Tacoma, the U District, etc., but not places like Canyon Park, or Microsoft.
I have many problems with this study, including what point they are trying to make. If they are simply pointing out that more people work in the suburbs now, ok we can see that so great, they have sort of confirmed that. But with this arbitrary definition of a center and of an “metropolitan area,” the data are not very useful. For a small town like Eugene, OR, 9 miles away from the center is far. While in NYC, depending on the center, you will have people in high density areas outside of that 10 mile radius. LA is sprawling, and is just now recovering from urban decay in it’s center, so of course it will have low centralization.
Most importantly, this method does not distinguish from a multicenter city like LA or San Diego to compare it with a unicentral metropolitan area like Chicago. To have multiple centers may still be less sprawl. And it can’t predict traffic patters because we don’t know if people are sticking to their centers, or they cross between them. A raw distribution of jobs, and job density would be much more interesting metrics to determine “sprawl.”
No post about the first Link/car collision? Interesting.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009064531_weblightrail15m.html
OK, this is off topic thread stealing but hey, it’s not everyday you see (for the most part) intelligent comments following a Times article.
“I didn’t see the bus” . They do manage to see the 2 inch video screen on their phones as they read text messages. The bus that they didn’t see is 22 feet longer than my house.
Sharing the road with trains will take some getting used to, but learning how to read traffic signals shouldn’t require any new skills.
Look to Japan on this one. They have this train thing worked out good son. Pull out in front of a train and cause a delay, you could have to pay lost wages for folks on there way to work.
The “didn’t see the bus” excuse is the best. I have a post up about this topic.
Sam, lets see how long it takes you to write 1,800 words on a train-car collision, with 15 links to boot!
:P
A raw distribution of jobs, and job density would be much more interesting metrics to determine “sprawl.”
I don’t know what “a raw distribution of jobs” or “job density” are supposed to mean in terms of measurable statistics. Perhaps you could define these phrases, as you are using them, in clear empirical terms.
Has anyone read The City by Joel Kotkin?
It does a fairly descent job describing the origin of cities and the three principles needed to sustain cities.
Towards the end of the book, he discusses the modern, “west-coast” garden cities. Unlike in the past, we’re able to create a network of smaller towns, centered around a strong metropolitan downtown.
In my travels, none really emphasize the benefit of this more than Seattle (perhaps Tokyo?). We have really strong neighborhoods, most of which have their own commercial centers. All of this is pegged with a strong economic core. Moreover, most of the sustainable cities (not overgrown suburbs like Lakewood) model themselves similarly, only increasing the regions economic strength.
Now, if only getting between all these hubs was either easier, or demanded less (which speaks more to the p-patch article).
Why do you single out Lakewood?
Yea, personally I’d pick on Federal Way. ;-)
I wonder if you have ever noticed how much space a car uses when parked when compared with an office cubicle? It seems like about the same square footage. A desk and chair could fit in it, with space for a filing cabinet. This means that a suburban office needs twice the space than one in the downtown (if most use transit to get downtown). I just hope that the property tax on that parking space is worth it (what is the property tax rate for a parking spot?).