Urban Sprawl and the Cost of Public Services

Abstract

One of the principle criticisms of urban sprawl is that it undermines the cost-effective provision of public services. In this paper the authors examine whether or not this is true through an exploratory analysis of the influence that alternative development patterns have on twelve measures of public expenditure: total direct, capital facilities, roadways, other transportation, sewerage, trash collection, housing and community development, police protection, fire protection, parks, education, and libraries. The objectives of the analysis are threefold. First, the authors, through a background discussion, provide a brief overview of previous research on the relationship between urban development patterns and the cost of public services. Second, through empirical analysis, they examine how the character of urban development affects per capita public outlays in a cross-section of 283 metropolitan counties during the 1982–92 time period. A separate equation is estimated for each measure of expenditure, providing substantive evidence on how density, the spatial extent of urbanized land area, property value, and political fragmentation affect the cost of services. Finally, the authors use the results of the empirical analysis to develop a set of policy recommendations and directions for future research.

The spatial range of local governments: does geographical distance affect governance and public service?

“…Due to economies of scale, supporting communities in lowdensity areas with all necessary local public services are more costly than in urbanised areas. Studies on urban sprawl (Carruthers and Ulfarsson 2003;Hortas-Rico and SoleOlle 2010) prove that public services, which provision cost is distance-dependent (infrastructure and community facility i.e. street cleaning, trash collection, public transport), meet raising costs by ca.…”

Evaluating the dynamic impacts of urban form on transportation and environmental outcomes in US cities

“…Whether compact urban development is the most sustainable urban form remains a hotly debated topic among urban planning scholars (Neuman 2005;Echenique et al 2012). A significant amount of research has been conducted to define and quantify urban sprawl (Wassmer 2000;Galster et al 2001;Tsai 2005); to evaluate its impact on environment, society, transportation, economy, and energy efficiency (Stone 2008;Brueckner and Largey 2008;Carruthers and Ulfarsson 2003;Holden and Norland 2005), and to evaluate alternative policy measures for achieving sustainable urban form (Nelson and Moore 1996;Song and Knaap 2004). However, what currently draws the most attention from researchers in this arena is the connection between transportation and climate change.…”

¿Cuánto cuesta la densificación? La relación entre la densidad y el costo de proveer servicios urbanos básicos en Brasil, Chile, Ecuador y México

“…Pero otros correlacionan la densidad con deseconomías de escala para esos mismos servicios (Abrate, Erbetta, Fraquelli & Vannoni, 2012). Incluso en otros estudios, no se atribuye ningún impacto a las altas densidades sobre el gasto en protección contra incendios y recolección de residuos sólidos; pero se indica que sí contribuyen a reducir los gastos en servicios de policía y educación y en la construcción de nueva infraestructura y carreteras (Carruthers & Ulfarsson, 2003. Por último, otros proponen una relación en forma de U entre densidad y gasto, sugiriendo que pasada cierta densidad óptima, los gastos aumentan (Holcombe & Williams, 2008;Ladd, 1992).…”