Local governments must ensure balanced growth, as sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin*See The Economics of Growth, Sprawl and Land Use Decisions.
* Or at least big tax increases.
Note and jobs, not just people: jobs so the people can work and afford the houses they live in.
- Green spaces increase property values of surrounding land
- Green and open spaces can provide environmental amenities for free
- If green spaces contribute to quality of life, you attract people and jobs to community
But this doesn't mean exurban subdivisions with big yards:
- Development patterns have an impact on the cost of service delivery: sprawl is expensive to service.
- The same growth done more densely and contiguously saves both money, farmland, and provides environmental amenities.
Using results compiled by AFT, the national averages are:He goes on to say which sorts of development work (dense and contiguous) and which don't (sprawl doesn't).These figures are $dollars of revenue for each $1 of expenditures.
- Residential: $0.87
- Commercial/Industrial: $3.45
- Farmland/Forestland/Open Space: $2.70
And remember, nobody wants to live in a strip mall and fewer people today want to live in cookie-cutter suburbia:
- Sociologists are finding that today more and more high skill workers are choosing where to live first, then finding jobs.
- Because businesses want high skill workers, they follow these workers to places with good quality of life.
- If you attract good workers, good jobs follow.
-jsq
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