Rise in suburbs

Ryan Darmanie
Ryan Darmanie

RYAN DARMANIE

The population decline of Port of Spain and San Fernando has been accompanied by a rise in suburbs. These places, which house the vast majority of our population, attempt to be a blend of city and rural town, but are not quite either. They are a product of garden city thinking, in that they usually have low-population densities, are typically separated into areas that are strictly residential or strictly commercial, are made up to a large extent of one and two-storey single family homes, and lack easy access to jobs not associated with basic commerce.

Suburbs, though, have existed for just as long as cities have, developing spontaneously in some cases to house those who were unable to live within the city walls.

The major difference today is the scale of suburbanisation, and that it has become a replacement for, rather than a complement to city living. In his highly viewed TED Talk, planner Jeff Speck even refers to mass suburbanisation as the worst American export.

Third thing to know: Decisions with urban planning implications are not only made by qualified planners, or even a ministry of planning.

The push towards the suburban development of today, suburban sprawl, was summarised perfectly by Jane Jacobs when she said: “There is nothing inevitable about the decay of old cities or the fresh-minted decadence of the new (suburb). On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated… to achieve precisely what we are getting. Extraordinary governmental financial incentives (and) decades of preaching, writing and exhorting by experts have gone into convincing us (that) this must be good for us, as long as it comes bedded with grass.”

There are many public policies that encourage and subsidise suburban development. Drawing from a study released by the London School of Economics, here are just a few ways:

Urban planning regulations are probably the single most important factor affecting our pattern of development. Too often, planners unrealistically restrict the mixing of commercial and residential uses, the heights of buildings, and the number of dwelling units that can be housed on a lot, all while requiring problematic large building setbacks and minimum parking requirements. These hurdles are easier to overcome in suburban locations, but have become a death sentence for redevelopment activity in cities, since land is scarce and costly.

Parking requires multiple lessons on its own. Suffice it to say, providing parking is extremely costly and space-intensive. A standard car parking bay takes up 150 square feet of space. Just two parking bays, plus the aisle needed to get cars in and out of the spots, takes up 600 square feet of space – the size of a studio apartment.

Minimum parking requirements can make it physically and economically impossible to redevelop land in cities. Not only that, but because parking is so space-intensive, it causes the city to spread out and lose its compactness, which in turn makes it less pedestrian-friendly and harder to serve efficiently by public transport. As alternative transport modes increasingly lose viability, car usage, and therefore parking demand, increase further.

Parking creates a self-perpetuating cycle that destroys cities.

Public services to suburban locations are under-priced. The fees charged for water and electricity, in particular, bear little resemblance to the costs associated with providing the services.

Spread-out suburban developments require utility companies to extend infrastructure to far-flung locations, and are therefore more expensive to service on a per-capita basis.

Property taxes that do not take into account the increased cost of providing services and maintaining infrastructure in suburban locations further enable such development.

Gasoline subsidies for private cars obscure the true cost of commuting long distances.

Highway and road building being prioritised over public-transport funding places a disproportionate emphasis on expanding roads and infrastructure for private cars. This favours development in the car-oriented suburbs.

Public housing construction in suburban locations exacerbates the out-migration from cities. Imagine if the decision had been taken to house the residents of the proposed North Grove Housing Development in the de-populated city of Port of Spain. They would have been close to jobs and amenities, instead of on a controversial site where many of those same residents will now be forced to commute in traffic to work.

Tax benefits that allow deductions for those paying a mortgage incentivise home ownership while not extending those benefits to renters. Opportunities for renting tend to be more prevalent than home ownership in cities. The reverse is true for the suburbs.

The decline of our cities and the rise of suburbia have massive social, economic, and environmental consequences, and are a far more important issue than we realise.

Ryan Darmanie is an urban planning and design consultant (facebook.com/darmanieplanningdesign) with a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and a keen interest in urban revitalisation.

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