COASTAL HERITAGE VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 WINTER 2002-03

THE FREEWAY City

WINTER 2002-03 • 1 CONTENTS

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THE FREEWAY CITY The South—where sprawl is king and where spread-out growth accelerates faster and farther than anywhere else. Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publication of the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university- based network supporting research, education, 13 and outreach to conserve coastal resources and enhance economic opportunity for the people CAN “SMART-GROWTH” TECHNIQUES of . Comments regarding this or WORK IN SOUTH CAROLINA? future issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed. Many obstacles remain to denser development patterns. Subscriptions are free upon request by contacting: S.C. Sea Grant Consortium 287 Meeting Street 14 Charleston, S.C. 29401 phone: (843) 727-2078 EBBS AND FLOWS e-mail: [email protected] Executive Director M. Richard DeVoe ON THE COVER , which cuts through , forms part of the freeway spine Director of Communications Linda Blackwell of the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Raleigh, North Carolina megalopolis. PHOTO/WADE SPEES Editor John H. Tibbetts

Art Director Patty Snow

Contributing Writer Susan Ferris  Board of Directors The Consortium’s Board of Directors is composed of the chief executive officers of its member institutions:

Dr. Ronald R. Ingle, Chair President, Coastal Carolina University James F. Barker President, SAFE HAVEN. The Honorable Ernest A. Finney, Jr. To limit sprawl and protect Interim President, S.C. State University wildlife, governments should purchase valuable lands Dr. Raymond Greenberg outright and encourage President, Medical University of South Carolina property owners to establish Major General John S. Grinalds easements that prevent President, The Citadel development, conservationists Leo I. Higdon, Jr. PHOTO/WADE SPEES say. President, College of Charleston Dr. Paul A. Sandifer Executive Director S.C. Department of Natural Resources Dr. Andrew Sorensen COPYRIGHT © 2002 by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. All rights reserved. President, University of South Carolina

2 • COASTAL HERITAGE THE FREEWAY City Is sprawl outsmarting “smart growth”?

CAR TREK. Like many other South Carolinians, Jon Boettcher commutes long-distance to work each day, primarily along four-lane highways. PHOTO/WADE SPEES By John H. Tibbetts

outherners are building a new kind of city, the After World War II, suburban tentacles reached semi-rustic megalopolis, hundreds of miles into new territory and then filled in with develop- S long. Researchers have found this startling land- ment. Giant cities grew in spurts that, over decades, use pattern spreading across the and other could be measured like rings on a tree, with first- and southern states where bits and pieces of sprawl blend second- and third-ring suburbs. Until the 1960s, most together along major freeways. suburban workers commuted to the urban core where “We’ve become aware of development that is not business and industry still flourished. really urbanization” in the traditional sense, says Ralph Starting in the 1980s, some outlying suburbs Heimlich, an agricultural economist with the U.S. bloomed into “edge cities,” a term coined by author Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Particularly in the Joel Garreau. Suburban office towers and corporate South, you’re seeing growth and development that has no campuses got mixed with cineplexes and mega-malls center.” The South, in fact, has become a trendsetter in and car dealerships. Edge cities became the new the “deconcentration” of American life—the scattering of business centers after jobs fled urban cores and inner- people, homes, and businesses across the landscape. ring suburbs. Until 1950, the typical American city included a What distinguishes edge cities is that everybody dense urban core dominated by factories and tall drives everywhere. commercial buildings built around seaports and river Conservationists and social activists have con- landings and railroad depots. The urban core was ringed demned sprawl—low-density, car-dependent develop- by tightly knit suburbs, which in turn were surrounded ment—for harming the environment and for leaving by open countryside. city dwellers behind in decaying urban cores. Sprawling

WINTER 2002-03 • 3 development chews up wildlife Georgetown area along Highway 17. habitat, damages air and water And the Charleston metro area will quality, and paves over farmland and eventually spread west along I-26 to other open space, conservationists say. connect with Orangeburg, creating a Sprawl is expensive, costing taxpayers 60-mile-long city, according to a recent billions to build extended roads and computer model. water and sewer infrastructure. Such vast tissues of development Yet, despite its harmful legacy, have emerged partly because of massive sprawl is stretching beyond edge investments in major freeways. The Sprawl inevitable? cities, creating a new urban form, 44,000-mile Dwight D. Eisenhower which gains energy from its spine— System of Interstate and Defense Is sprawl in your future? Probably. “Urban sprawl is more or less the four- or six- or eight- or even Highways, initiated in 1956, was the inevitable unless it runs up against ten-lane freeway. Across the South, world’s biggest public-works project an immovable barrier” like the ocean development sprouts from highways ever. The system was designed to move or a steep mountain range, says Rutherford Platt, a planning professor like leaves from a tree limb. “Today, goods, farm produce, and military at the University of Massachusetts. the nerve center of the metropolitan supplies. But it also soon formed the Witold Rybczynski, a professor of area is the highway, not the center backbone of the nation’s highway urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, has said that America city,” says Robert F. commuting system. does not have a future of very Becker, director of ROBERT F. BECKER In 1960, Daniel compact towns. It’s impractical to Clemson Patrick Moynihan, hope for greater densities in most urban areas, because “it’s not how University’s Strom then a university we live.” The solutions to spread-out Thurmond Institute “Today, the nerve professor and later U.S. growth, moreover, “are pretty tough: of Government & senator from New York, they either involve raising the cost of predicted that the gas by a factor of two, or imposing Public Affairs. “This center of the restrictions on private property. And is more of a linear interstate network neither of these things is likely.” development metropolitan area would transform urban Author Suzannah Lessard also pattern than we’ve America: “Highways believes that fighting sprawl is futile. Instead, “we must first accept seen before.” is the highway, not determine land use, sprawl’s fundamental legitimacy—its Arcing through which is another way inevitability—as a form” of develop- the southern the center city.” of saying they settle the ment, she writes in a recent essay. In researching a book on land use, , growth future of the areas in Lessard began to realize that “visibly along interstates has which they are built.” or invisibly, sprawl was everywhere. It knit together the Without proper was the shaping force in our landscape. It was the ascendant, metro area, small towns and planning, Moynihan argued, highways determining place form of our time.” mid-sized cities and their suburbs, would draw people and businesses to Rybczynksi has called for improved plus rural areas populated by long- the suburbs, and split and disrupt older planning, returning suburbs to a nineteenth century ideal of a “much distance commuters, into “a huge urban neighborhoods. more . . . green, country environ- countrified city across a vast space,” Yet no one in 1960 could have ment.” in the words of Robert E. Lang, anticipated that Americans at the turn An ecologically benign sprawl? Is it possible to create spread-out director of the Metropolitan Institute of the twenty-first century would build suburban communities—places of at Virginia Tech. This 600-mile-long homes so far into the countryside and elegance, open space, fresh air, megalopolis stretches along the I-20, commute such distances via freeways. trees—that won’t harm the wider Federal and state governments have environment with auto emissions and I-85, and I-40 corridors from runoff pollution? “This is happening Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to Raleigh, spent vast sums improving highway at the micro-scale in some develop- North Carolina, including the South systems, largely for commuters’ benefit, ments and in some of the better Carolina metro areas of Anderson, over the past forty years. planned communities,” says Timothy Beatley, an associate professor of Greenville, and Spartanburg. “A generation ago, a 60-mile urban and environmental planning at Another sprawling agglomera- commute on a two-lane road seemed the University of Virginia. “But tion is starting to fill in along 150 very long,” says Michael T. Ratcliffe, a certainly on the larger regional scale it’s very, very hard.” miles of interstate and U.S. freeways geographer with the U.S. Census from Augusta, , to Florence, Bureau. “But now on a limited-access S.C. Meanwhile, the Myrtle Beach highway it’s easier. We are seeing rings metro area is bleeding southward, of settlement within an hour’s commute linking up with growth from the of the metropolitan edge. These

4 • COASTAL HERITAGE LOADING ZONE. Americans continue to avoid mass transit and increasingly drive alone to work. Slightly less than five percent of Americans commuted to work via public transportation in 2000, a modest decrease from a decade earlier. Nearly 76 percent of Americans drove alone in their cars in 2000, up from 73 percent in 1990. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

WINTER 2002-03 • 5 CLOSE QUARTERS. A number of subdivisions are being built according to “smart-growth” principles, including narrower streets and smaller lots, which some say could reduce sprawl’s impact on the rural landscape. But the vast majority of these subdivisions remain as car-dependent as conventional sprawl. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

settlements spawn small retail tained leapfrogging growth. A July Yet the South’s sprawl maladies centers that push the commuting 2001 study by the Brookings are just beginning. A recent Transit field out,” because people travel Institution similarly showed that Cooperative Research Program study, from distant rural areas for jobs 12 of the 15 highest-density metro led by Rutgers University’s Center for in the small service centers. areas were western, while 9 of the Urban Policy Research, created a Americans are moving into 15 lowest-density metro areas “sprawl index,” rating each state’s houses along two-lane rural were southern. vulnerability to future growth in roads, setting down trailers on Cities in the Northeast and current “sprawl locations.” According five-acre spreads, building Midwest are spreading out too, but, to this index, three of the top five vacation or weekend homes with some exceptions, they’re not contributors to the nation’s sprawl along lakes and salt marshes, and increasing their populations by very until the year 2025 will be southern buying into large-lot subdivisions much. The South, however, is a states, with Florida ranking first, and in the woods. growth powerhouse in both North Carolina and South Carolina “There is a real desire for population and jobs. ranking fourth and fifth, respectively. this kind of lifestyle,” says Being mostly flat, the South That said, distinctions between Heimlich. “It’s a development has few geographic constraints to metropolitan and rural are breaking trend that has been going on for spread-out development. And the down in every corner of the nation. quite a long time. But traditional South lacks extensive public lands People are migrating from center cities urban statistics never picked it or high-value agricultural areas, to suburbs; from suburbs to farther- up. It may not be urbanization in which limit sprawling growth, flung rural areas; from larger, denser the technical sense, but it has according to the Brookings report. metros to smaller, less dense metros; accounted for a tremendous Perhaps most important, the and even from rural towns to the amount of land-use change.” South is historically a “wet” region outskirts. This migration is so perva- The South is where sprawl is with relatively high rainfall and sive that “we have begun to change our king. Nine of the nation’s 10 plentiful reservoirs, though a five- notion of what is urban, suburban, and lowest-density metro areas are year drought and rapid develop- rural,” says Ratcliffe. located in the South, according ment have severely cut into “Rural” once meant a landscape to a forthcoming study by Lang. supplies. In the mistaken belief that where people lived by farming, fishing, By contrast, eight of the 10 water supplies are unlimited, many or forestry. Over the past several highest-density metro areas are in southern metro areas, Becker says, decades, though, the southern agricul- the West, where vast public have subsidized sprawl by construct- tural economy has virtually collapsed lands, steep mountains, canyons, ing water and sewer lines willy-nilly in many regions. Johns Island 30 years and water scarcity have con- across the landscape. ago was a major tomato-producing area

6 • COASTAL HERITAGE with 2,500 acres under cultivation and 41 growers. Today, there are Reading three growers who cultivate 500 acres; many local growers have Cervero, Robert. “The American Superhighway and a Tale of Two Cities.” The World been driven out by competition Paper, March 2000. from Mexico. Firestone, David. “The New-Look Suburbs: Denser or More Far-Flung.” New York As the agricultural and small- Times, April 17, 2001. town manufacturing economies Fulton, William et al. “Who Sprawls Most? How Growth Patterns Differ across the have faded, country folks haven’t U.S.” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, July 2001. moved away. Instead, they drive Heimlich, Ralph E. and William D. Anderson. “Development at the Urban Fringe and to jobs in metro areas and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land.” ERS Agricultural Economic Report, tourism centers. 2001. www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer803/ Rural places still exist in South Johnson, Kenneth M. “The Rural Rebound.” Reports on America. Population Carolina, of course. But every year, Reference Bureau, August 1999. another stretch of our countryside establishes closer links with a Lessard, Suzannah. “The World Turned Inside Out.” Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2001. nearby metro area. “What people are not really acknowledging is the Lewis, Peirce. “The Urban Invasion of Rural America: The Emergence of the Galactic level of interaction going on City.” In The Changing American Countryside: Rural People and Places. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1995. between rural and urban areas,” says Ratcliffe. “The divide between Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The New Spatial Order? Technology & Urban urban and rural areas is disappear- Development. Boston, 2001. ing. We tend to think of metropoli- Rybczynski, Witold. “Landscape Artist.” Atlantic Unbound interview, July 14, 1999. tan as urban and not as rural. Yet Transit Cooperative Research Program. Costs of Sprawl—2000. Washington, DC: within these metro areas there is National Academy Press, 2002. quite a bit of rural territory.” Rural folks often declare they U.S. Department of Transportation. Summary of Travel Trends 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey. Washington, DC, December 1999. want to remain separate and distinct from metro areas. Yet old distinctions between city and country are dissolving, and many relations, urban in the way they claim rural status and are indignant Americans who call themselves make their living,” Peirce Lewis, an when it is suggested that are really rural are not, in fact, rural in any emeritus professor of geography at residents of a city.” practical sense. “They are urban in Pennsylvania State University, has outlook, urban in their personal written. Even so, they “proudly SMALL TOWN TO SPRAWL

The South’s sprawling megalopo- lises have been shaped, ironically, by the region’s history of small-town and rural settlements. In the eighteenth century, many inland southern towns were originally built quite close together. Settlers founded communities along the “fall line,” where rivers flow off the rolling, hilly landscape of the piedmont, creating small waterfalls and rapids. Columbia, Raleigh, and Durham used fast-moving water for power genera- tion, which eventually set the stage for manufacturing. In the late nineteenth century, upstate river towns took the AUTO MILE. Americans’ love affair with their cars makes “smart-growth” principles politically difficult to implement. U.S. society continues to move toward greater reliance on lead in manufacturing by exploiting automobile transportation and freeway networks. PHOTO/WADE SPEES hydropower. Thousands of poor

WINTER 2002-03 • 7 southerners fled exhausted farmland to work in textile mills. During the mid-twentieth century, small industrial towns and cities diversified in the southern piedmont, producing tobacco, furniture, and other wood products. Since the 1960s, state and local governments have offered incentives and subsidies to companies, encouraging their relocation from the North to industrial parks on metro edges and rural areas. “That made it possible for (southerners) to stay in low-density areas and commute in and have jobs,” says Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer and sociologist at Loyola University, Chicago. Companies migrated to the South partly for its cheap land. And southern government made it even less expensive to develop at the urban edge by subsidizing spread-out growth, pouring enormous amounts of money into upgrading highways, bridges, and water and sewer lines. Northern industrial cities, originally built around railroads and ports, contain physical and cultural legacies that have made mass transit feasible in some corridors. Public transportation is most popular in , Jersey City, Boston, and Washing- ton, DC. Modern southern growth, by contrast, emerged in the era of the car and truck. “Because the TALL REMINDER. Over the past several decades, the southern agricultural economy has virtually collapsed in subdivisions and golf courses. PHOTO/WADE SPEES South developed later, the car and the truck were more signifi- cant factors in its spatial develop- ment than they were in the high-tech industry, and automo- That region helps drive coastal North,” says Johnson. bile manufacturing. prosperity too. Residents of booming Over the past two decades, Now dozens of old factory Charlotte, and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel the southern industrial base has centers, mill towns, railroad towns, Hill and Atlanta are buying vacation stretched out and flourished in a and county seats are growing out to homes along the southeastern coast. spectacular fashion along free- meet one another, creating urban The ’s largest tourism ways, particularly in the pied- agglomerations across a vast scale. segment relies on travelers driving mont. International investment “The sprawling mega-regions of the from within 300 miles away, including poured into the region, which has piedmont are the engines of large stretches of the southern pied- become a center for banking, southeastern growth,” says Lang. mont, according to Ashby Ward,

8 • COASTAL HERITAGE still separate enough that there’s a definite distinction. I don’t see Sumter as part of the greater Colum- bia metro area.” But Dick Dondero, a research analyst with the Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments, a planning agency, argues that Sumter County already belongs to the Columbia metro area. “Sumter is really an outer ring of Columbia, though many people here don’t think of it that way.” Nevertheless, Sumter’s place within the midlands commuting pattern is dizzyingly complex. People, after all, don’t just commute from suburbs or outlying small towns into cities anymore. They travel from city to suburb; from city to small town; from suburb to suburb; from mid-sized city to mid-sized city; from far-flung rural area to suburb; and on and on. We commute every which way, and on weekends we travel some more. On a weekday morning, a typical couple might travel in separate directions for jobs in two different towns. On the weekend, they might shop in a third town and visit friends in a fourth town, traveling every- where on freeways. Decades ago, the American giant city was like the sun in the solar system, with an overwhelmingly dominant gravitational pull. Now, writes Peirce Lewis, the typical urban agglomeration is actually a “galaxy” of small towns and mid-sized cities. The result, Lewis has written, is a new many areas. Farms have increasingly disappeared in the South Carolina lowcountry, replaced by kind of city “where all of the tradi- tional urban elements float in space like stars and planets in a galaxy, held together by mutual gravitational president of Myrtle Beach Area ment Division in Columbia 45 attraction but with large empty spaces Chamber of Commerce. miles away. His commute, mostly in between.” along four-lane freeways, takes less Sumter County, for example, has A FREEWAY RUNS than an hour. During the past five its own gravitational influence that THROUGH IT years, traffic and development have balances Columbia’s. Its businesses increased between the two cities, draw workers from west (Richland Jon Boettcher lives in Sumter, though Columbia and Sumter County, home to the state capital), a small midlands city (pop. aren’t growing together because the from east (Florence County), from 39,000), and commutes to his job Wateree Swamp divides them, he north (Kershaw County), and most of at the S.C. Emergency Manage- says. “The two communities are all from south (Clarendon County).

WINTER 2002-03 • 9 Sumter is just one planet among According to smart-growth Smart-growth policies can be many in the emerging Augusta- principles, states and localities effective in controlling low-density, Columbia-Sumter-Florence agglom- should agree on where they want land-gobbling growth in some eration. A 1994 USDA Economic development to occur. They should metro regions, experts say. But Research Service study showed that fund or support construction of governments that apply these tools at least 30 percent of residents in all freeways and water and sewer lines are pushing against long-term census tracts stretching 150 miles only in designated growth areas. economic, technological, and from east-central When communities demographic currents. American Georgia to do not carefully society is racing not toward more South Carolina’s ROB ATKINSON control infrastructure, urban concentration but toward region they end up with further dispersal. commuted for “The infrastructure of the chaotic growth. For many companies, location jobs in the four interstate system and the Developers of simply matters less than it used to. metro cores. (In office parks, large Until the 1980s, businesses had to 2003, the U.S. information-technology subdivisions, and strip be situated in an urban core, where Census Bureau development usually they could expeditiously ship out will complete its revolution is already want to build on products and import supplies and analysis of cheap land on the raw materials via a port or railway commuting built for another outskirts of metro terminal. But improvements in patterns based areas and along communications technology and generation of sprawl.” on the 2000 highways where transportation have reduced the census.) government has “friction of distance,” says Johnson. It’s striking constructed water and Satellite technology, fax machines, how many rural people imitate sewer lines. As a result, sprawling the Internet, plus massive state and suburbanites. That is, they live in a growth explodes along these federal investment in roads and green, quiet place and every infrastructure corridors. “If you can’t airports have changed how Ameri- morning drive along the freeway to control the infrastructure, you can’t cans work and play. a job. “Rural people are more control anything,” says Becker. If Suzannah Lessard, a recent mobile than ever,” says Dondero, government managed these growth fellow at the Woodrow Wilson “and they are mentally prepared to subsidies, then development into Center, has argued that “technology commute longer distances.” the countryside could be curtailed. made a spreading, decentralized Smart-growth advocates also world inevitable, a world in which DISPERSAL AND call for closely connecting down- the distinction between city and DECONCENTRATION town business districts politically country was dissolved.” Take the and administratively to suburban catalog retailer Lands’ End, which Many conservationists have areas through metro or regional operates a national distribution called for “smart growth” policies to governments. headquarters out of the small town control spread-out development in Finally, conservationists have of Dodgeville, Wisconsin. The the countryside. convinced government agencies, success of Lands’ End is partly due Smart-growth advocates call individuals, and nonprofit groups to to the fact that state government for denser housing patterns in cities preserve hundreds of thousands of upgraded a two-lane U.S. highway and suburbs. They urge smaller lots acres from development through to a four-lane divided highway in for single-family homes, plus more land purchases, conservation the 1980s. Because Federal Express apartments and townhouses, in easements, and regulation. Along the trucks armed with technological already urbanized areas. People South Carolina coast, the Ashepoo- equipment can swiftly deliver living closer together in towns Combahee-Edisto (ACE) River packages almost anywhere, a retailer and cities apply less development Basin and other protected lands can set up in what used to be pressure on farmlands, forests, effectively prevent development backwoods. and wildlife habitat on the metro from blending together between the “Companies can afford to be outskirts. Meanwhile, transit is Charleston metro area and out there because the logistics more feasible in communities Georgetown-Myrtle Beach area to systems are so good,” says Rob with higher population densities, the north, and between the Charles- Atkinson, director of the Technol- so residents can reduce their ton area and Beaufort County’s resort ogy and New Economy Project at automobile use. communities to the south. the Progressive Policy Institute,

10 • COASTAL HERITAGE Spartanburg

Greenville

Columbia

Charleston

U.S. Census Bureau metropolitan areas

Interstate highways

POPULATION PATHS. Across the South, growth along interstate highways is knitting together cities, small towns, and mid-sized communities and their suburbs, plus rural areas populated by long distance commuters, into emerging megalopolises. The metropolitan areas shown here are based on a 1994 U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service study, which delineates urban and suburban areas and rural places where at least 30 percent of residents commuted for jobs in metro cores.

WINTER 2002-03 • 11 based in Washington, D.C. “Now made it easier for people living in the companies are able to do all their countryside to reach workplaces at the functions” outside of denser urban metro edges. A worker traveling from a centers. Information technologies and rural county to an office park on an freeways allow companies to be outer beltway often has a shorter travel “physically dispersed while still being time than a suburbanite battling rush functionally close.” hour traffic to a downtown office. Worldwide sprawl For most of the twentieth century, “I’m a Yankee who fought New

The has some of Americans migrated from rural areas to York traffic for years, so this is easy for the most extreme examples of cities to find jobs. Today, skilled me,” says Paul Pietrowski, who com- spread-out growth on the planet. Yet workers pick where they want to live, mutes 50 miles in 50 minutes along I-26 virtually every metropolitan area in and companies follow them. “The old from his home in small-town St. Western Europe, North America, and Japan is experiencing some form of economy was all about the location of George in Dorchester County to his long-distance “deconcentration”—or companies, and now it’s much more civilian job at the Air Force Base in urban development spreading about the location of workers,” North Charleston. In the early 1990s, across the landscape—due to the influence of commuting by automo- says Atkinson. he settled in Summerville on the bile and the dispersing effects of More than ever, Americans choose Charleston metro’s western edge. Then information technologies, according to live in single-family homes in low- three years ago, Pietrowski and his wife, to Peter Hall, professor at the University of London’s Bartlett density neighborhoods. When a suburb Stephanie, thinking that Summerville School of Planning. gets too crowded, they simply move was becoming too crowded and In Pacific Asia—from Indonesia to farther out. Or when one city becomes expensive, decided to move farther out Japan—outer fringes of giant cities have grown the fastest in population too densely populated, they move across to St. George. and land-use changes, says Yue- the country to another, less dense one. Many Americans have similarly man Yeung, director of the Hong The typical household commuted fled giant metros to mid-sized and Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong almost 40 percent more miles in 1995 smaller cities. The share of jobs in the Kong. Land-use controls are than in 1990, according to a 1999 largest 61 metro areas declined slightly weakest in the metro edges of cities study by the U.S. Department of from 1988 to 1997. The share of jobs in such as Jakarta, Indonesia, and Manila, Philippines. Now these Transportation. Yet commuters did not mid-sized metros (between 250,000 and urban centers are spreading out and spend an equivalent increase of time on 1 million), like Charleston and Colum- blending into adjacent smaller towns the road. Commuting times grew by bia, grew by 4 percent. The share in and cities. less than 20 percent through the entire small metros (between 50,000 and In China’s Pearl River Delta, the cities of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and decade of the 1990s. Americans spent 250,000), like Myrtle Beach, expanded Guangzhou are becoming one nearly 26 minutes commuting to their by 7 percent. continuous urban area containing jobs each way in 2000, up from 22 During the 1990s, Americans more than 20 million people. Development has been spurred in minutes in 1990, according to recent flocked to rural recreational counties, part by China’s first superhighway, census figures. retirement counties, and counties the Shenzen-Guangzhou tollway, Why have commuting times gone beyond the metro edges but within which runs for 72 miles through this corridor, one of the fastest-growing up less than half as quickly as miles driving distance of metro jobs. Non- regions in the world. traveled? One reason is that employers metro counties (those lacking an urban Many developing countries have have moved to the suburbs, where center of 50,000 or more) gained 10.3 become more dependent on the private car for transportation. Most three-quarters of Americans now live. percent in population between April Chinese major cities, such as The outward movement of jobs has also 1990 and April 2000. Shanghai, have moved factories out to industrial zones on the metro edge. This relocation has freed up land for gentrification at the urban Web sites core. Inner-city workers have been moved to satellite suburbs, where they live in concrete high rises. Now Center for Urban Policy Research: many urban Chinese, who once http://policy.rutgers.edu/cupr/index1.htm bicycled to nearby factories, have to South Carolina Real Estate Center, USC Moore School of Business. This site commute by buses or private cars. China has spent billions of dollars provides links to smart-growth information, including a document outlining the South on expressways to accommodate Carolina Smart Growth Initiative: http://realestate.moore.sc.edu/smartgrowth.html increasing traffic, while bicycle sales Economic Research Service (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) Rural Indicators Map have plummeted. Machine: http://maps.ers.usda.gov/new_rural/

12 • COASTAL HERITAGE Over the past decade, the fastest Can “smart-growth” techniques work in South Carolina? growing South Carolina counties were found along the coast. New- Three “smart-growth” tools offer the best chance to control sprawl in U.S. metro comers poured into places such as areas, according to a new report, Costs of Sprawl—2000, by the Transit Coopera- Beaufort County, South Carolina, tive Research Program led by Rutgers University researchers. Each of these smart- home of Hilton Head Island, which growth tools encourages higher housing densities in urban and suburban areas. Each tool guides development toward central cities, towns, and densely populated had a population increase of 40 suburbs, reducing growth pressures on rural areas at the metro edges. Each percent in the 1990s. technique, though, requires strong action by regional agencies or state legislatures. Even so, migrants to South The first tool is the regional urban-growth boundary. With this tactic, a state Carolina are spreading throughout legislature requires each metro area to draw an urban-growth boundary around its the state, says Pat Mason, co- periphery. Future growth then would be directed within this boundary, creating higher densities there. This technique has been used in Oregon and Florida. founder of the Center for Carolina The second tool is a regional urban-service district. A state legislature would give Living, a marketing and research authority to a statewide or regional agency to designate growth areas within each enterprise, “We see all ages, all metro area. Growth areas would be the only places to receive state funds to finance motivations for moving here. It’s roads, sewer and water systems, and other infrastructure. This technique has been surprising how many people are used in the region of Minnesota. The third tool makes state aid contingent on local governments creating growth moving to places you wouldn’t zones. A state legislature would limit financing assistance for new infrastructure only think of.” But one thing stands out, for those localities that designate growth zones and keep new development within he says. “A huge majority of them those areas. Communities that have growth boundaries would receive more “points” have college degrees.” It’s people in a statewide system for infrastructure improvements. Maryland has adopted this with money and education who technique. Two more strategies could help control sprawl if used by most counties in a metro are likeliest to relocate, and region. Large-lot zoning in rural areas—10 acres or more—can discourage tradi- can afford to. tional suburban-style development. Finally, governments can designate land that Workers in the future will be would remain undeveloped for some public purpose, such as wetland or watershed less limited geographically by their protection. jobs, largely due to a confluence of Yet none of these strategies would significantly reduce sprawl within South Carolina’s fastest-growing regions over the next two decades, according to the TCRP new technologies. “People are report. Smart-growth tools would likely be ineffective in the Charleston metro area, going to make more decisions on in Beaufort County, Horry County, in some rapidly urbanizing stretches of the South where they live based on lifestyle Carolina midlands, and in most of the upstate, according to the comprehensive, five- choices,” says Becker. year study of U.S. sprawl. The nation’s freeway system For one thing, low-density development is “proceeding too quickly” in these South Carolina regions for any measures to make a large dent in growth patterns, accord- and continued exploitation of ing to the TCRP report. Another roadblock is South Carolina’s suspicion of state or technologies will probably encour- regional land-use planning and regulation. “There is little history of strong intergov- age further spread-out growth, says ernmental coordination and cooperation in South Carolina, though it is improving Atkinson. “Our nation’s economic slowly,” says Daniel Pennick, assistant director of Charleston County Planning. fundamentals and spatial distribu- “South Carolina has a tradition of independence, of not depending on anyone else.” Property-rights advocates would fight any attempt to establish regional land-use tion are going in the opposite agencies with authority to draw regulatory or public-service boundaries in South direction from smart growth. Carolina. “There are horror stories all across the country of people’s property rights Dispersive forces are just going to being trampled by regional bureaus,” says John Templeton, chairman of the S.C. continue,” largely because Landowners Association. “The state needs to stay out of it, and we’re definitely Americans have already created opposed to regional agencies. Local governments should control their own destinies.” When localities act alone to control sprawl, they are usually ineffective, and their the framework for the spread-out, efforts can even aggravate sprawl, says the TCRP report. Development simply polycentric urban constellation. moves to localities that lack growth controls. “The infrastructure of the inter- The Smart Growth Initiative, sponsored by the Urban Land Institute and the S.C. state system and the inform- Real Estate Center, is identifying smart-growth options for the state. In September ation technology revolution is 2002, this group organized a symposium in Charleston, where stakeholders offered dozens of recommendations, such as creating a statewide vision for growth, already built for another identifying sensitive lands for protection, and improving infrastructure and regional generation of sprawl.” planning. Now we may have only one But symposium speakers were realistic about where new development will take choice. Over the next few decades, place. One million residents will pour into South Carolina over the next 25 years, particularly in the South, we may and the majority will live in rapidly growing areas at the metro edges. “Most new development in this state will be in outlying green-field areas” at the urban fringes, have to accept our overwhelmingly said Terrance Ferris, director of Clemson University’s city and regional planning popular urban form: the sprawling program. The Smart Growth Initiative will present its recommendations next year. “freeway city.”

WINTER 2002-03 • 13 Southeast Coastal RecFish II Coastal Zone ’03 Ocean Science St. Pete Beach, Florida , Maryland Conference February 23-26, 2003 July 13-17, 2003 Charleston, South Carolina January 27-31, 2003 RecFish II will provide a The Coastal Zone conference series focused forum for marine recre- is the premier international gathering of The conference will focus on ational fishing constituents to ocean and coastal-management profes- current and planned research, out- evaluate the potential impacts of sionals. This biennial symposium reach, education, observations, Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) attracts more than 1,200 participants monitoring, assessments, and manage- on the quality of, and opportunity from around the world. Attend Coastal ment in the South Atlantic Bight. for, marine recreational fishing. Zone ’03 to explore coastal-zone Scientists, resource managers, and For additional information management through time–yesterday, others working in coastal and coastal contact Bill Price, Director, today, and tomorrow. Through concur- ocean environments in the southeast- NMFS Division of Recreational rent plenaries, panels, roundtables, and ern United States, from watersheds Fisheries, (301) 713-9504 or discussions, participants will gain out to the shelf-edge environment, are [email protected]. knowledge they can use to guide future invited to attend. For additional coastal-management decisions. For information, contact Rick DeVoe at general information, contact Gale Peek, [email protected] or (843) conference manager, at 727-2078. Visit the conference Web [email protected] or (843) 740-1231. site at http://www.csc.noaa.gov/secos/

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14 • COASTAL HERITAGE