Growth, Development and Sprawl

Urban growth and development occur in many ways, often with dense metropolitan centers and discrete, compact suburbs, but sometimes in the negative form of sprawl, which has happened in Houston. Sprawl results when new roads are developed and houses are built farther and farther away from an existing urban or metropolitan center. These new communities then begin to form scattered commercial areas, which are linked with more crowded development, often in the form of large shopping centers.

Sprawl is becoming a national problem, one that results in increased traffic congestion and air pollution, displeasing concrete landscapes, and a sense of loss of community. Sprawl also destroys important ecosystems and wildlife habitat, and impinges on agricultural land, as it expands farther out from a city and encroaches on natural areas. Besides the obvious negative impacts on land and animals, sprawl affects existing urban and suburban development. In a city the size of Houston, taxes become a resource to provide new communities with such basic services as water, schools, fire, and police. In theory, sprawl expands a city’s tax base and, in return, city government maintains roads and provides public services. In fact, this highly inefficient development pattern produces inequities in infrastructure spending and increases central city taxes to support farflung private development. It diverts resources from already existing maintenance needs.

As road building adds more vehicles, the impacts to air quality, water quality, open space, and habitat within the city become more significant. This pattern has been repeated in the Houston region, with the 610 Loop, Beltway 8/Sam Houston Parkway, partial loop Highway 6 and 1960, and again with the Grand Parkway’s projected outer loop.

The Regional Transportation Plan approved in June of 2004 contains approximately $2.5 billion for seven Grand Parkway segments and another $2.5 billion for related projects going through communities and important wildlife areas. The Grand Parkway is proposed to transect Katy Prairie and Brazos Bend State Park, crossing the Brazos River three times, Lake Houston State Park, and crossing multiple bayous. The expansion of this freeway project will bring development farther outside the city as neighborhoods and shopping centers are constructed along the route. The project may also be built as a toll road connecting to every state and interstate highway running through Houston.

Watch for announcements from the Sierra Club about public hearings and activities anticipated during the first three months of 2005.

Smart Growth

City governments and community organizations in major metropolitan areas have begun combating the haphazard and often destructive effects of sprawl with smart growth, a set of principles that emphasizes quality of life in development, often weighing it against progress in the form of increased expansion. One of the key principles of smart growth is efficient use and upgrading of the existing infrastructure before adding new infrastructure that may be less revenue productive or simply not needed.

Houston’s lack of zoning has been a barrier to planning and a deterrent to smart growth. With no city zoning and few neighborhood covenants precluding commercial uses of land, Houston often has had uncontrolled development, even in urban areas, giving us both downtown and the Galleria area within a few miles of each other.

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