Truck and Barter: Statsmerkwürdigkeiten: Master Plans of Disequilibrium

August 07, 2004

Statsmerkwürdigkeiten: Master Plans of Disequilibrium

By Kevin

I hereby initiate a new series of posts on T&B entitled "Statsmerkwürdigkeiten", which is German for "the remarkable things of the state". The word has an origin in Gottfried Achenwall's lectures in the 18th century, although we use it with an impish sarcasm. (I found it in a translation of Meitzen's History, Theory, and Technique of Statistics). See page 5 of this document for orginial German context.

Our first example of Statsmerkwürdigkeiten is this Washington Post piece, demonstrating that there is no invisible hand coordinating the master development plans set by local governments.

Ask youself what happens if the big players in a tight network of local governments use their zoning power to plan for ~2.6 jobs for every home in the community, but people prefer to live in densities of ~1.5 jobs per home:

Attracting workers -- but not the homes for all of them to live in -- is not just official policy in Clarksburg and Montgomery County; it has increasingly become the practice across the region. Local governments believe this makes financial sense because workplaces pay more taxes and use fewer government services than homeowners do. And governments maintain this imbalance through zoning and other development controls.

But by creating housing shortages, the policies push developers, home buyers and renters farther and farther away to find available land and more reasonably priced houses.

This migration, in turn, produces longer commutes to work, more road congestion and the destruction of remote natural habitats, planners say. The extra auto travel contributes to other troubles, including air pollution and the "dead zones" in the Chesapeake Bay. And, most of all, sprawl.

"Many local governments haven't controlled growth, unfortunately -- they've deflected it," said Gerrit Knaap, a planning professor and the director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland.

Developers are often blamed for sprawl, and as self-interested businesspeople, they often lobby for road and home-building projects in outlying rural areas. But to a large extent, they are only catering to the housing demand in the Washington region within the constraints placed on them by local governments.

"Developers do what makes them money -- they build what they find to be profitable," Knaap said. "But what they find to be profitable is determined by consumer preferences and public policy."

Government officials find that they're punishing people who never live in their area, since they buy their homes elsewhere:

Several jurisdictions in the Washington area have pursued a strategy of attracting more workplaces than homes, but Montgomery County under County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) made it an explicit goal. Duncan proposed -- and the County Council approved in June -- a policy calling for faster job growth than housing growth.

New residents generally cost the county money. The average household in the county pays about $6,500 in property, income and other taxes to the county. But the county spends about $8,500 a year educating the average school student, not including state and federal aid.

"This policy is good for the tax base," Duncan said.

Or, as a Montgomery County booklet puts it: Creating workplaces faster than homes is "the economic development strategy yielding the greatest long-term net fiscal benefits."

County policy aims for employment growth of 2 percent and household growth of 1.4 percent annually. Though it won official approval only this summer, it appears to have been in practice for more than a decade.

Good for the tax base or good to get him re-elected?

Posted at August 7, 2004 02:28 PM

Comments

I might add a parenthetical note to this one. "State" control of this doesn't work in the other direction either. Jacob Levy posted on an example that's close to my heart: fiat-driven zoning has pushed commerce, and in part any sense of thriving neighborhood out of Hyde Park, Chicago.

Comment by Ian at August 8, 2004 05:34 PM | Permalink