Saving neighborhoods by saving farms: Metropolitan congregations united for St. Louis challenges urban sprawl |
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Authors: | David Rusk |
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Institution: | (1) Metro, 600 NE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR 97232, USA; |
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Abstract: | Critics usually decry urban sprawl's impact on the natural geograph— polluted air and water, vanishing farmlands, forests
and open spaces. However, urban sprawl's effect onhuman geography has been even greater, as exemplified by metro St. Louis. With the region's urbanized land growing at seven times the rate
of urbanized population, sprawl accelerated the decline of the central city and older, built-out suburbs (St. Louis lost over
half its population since mid-century), increased economic segregation and stagnation (10 percent in 20 years by one measure)
even as racial barriers were slowly lowered, and widened fiscal disparities among local governments (St. Louis City's property
evaluation shrank by over 70 percent in 35 years). Inner-city and older-suburb coalitions, like Metropolitan Congregations
United for St. Louis, are now joining environmental advocates to lobby for new state growth management laws. “We cannot win
the ‘inside game’ without winning the ‘outside game,’” church leader explained.
David Rusk is an urban policy consultant and author of Cities without Suburbs (1993),Baltimore Unbound (1995), andInside Game/Outside Game (1999). He is a former mayor of Albuquerque and New Mexico legislator. |
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