Why are so many people unhappy with the way our communities are growing? Increasing congestion, decreasing air quality, vanishing farms and open spaces--we're all familiar with these tangible costs of new developments. Less apparent is the harm this kind of growth causes to existing places and good jobs. As public dollars and new jobs move out to green fields, the places where we already live and work take a hit.

To help you and your community get a better idea of the impacts of sprawling growth, Good Jobs First concentrates on three things: 1) the role that economic development subsidies play in distorting growth patterns; 2) how subsidized job flight affects economic opportunity for low-income workers; and 3) the ways that low density growth, "job sprawl," harms job quality.

Economic Development Subsidies: Distorted
Taxpayers pay for sprawl when they subsidize corporate relocations, many of which go from older core areas to newer fringe places. Companies tend to remain in the same metro area, so they can retain their workforce and stay close to their suppliers and customers.

Some economic development subsidies--such as enterprise zones and tax increment financing (TIF)--were originally created to help revitalize depressed areas. But over time, these and many other subsidies have become part of the problem instead of the solution. Subsidies originally intended to rebuild older urban areas are being distorted into subsidies that promote suburban sprawl. Wal-Mart and other big box retailers are getting subsidies, even though they pirate much of their sales from existing merchants. Upscale malls, office parks, and even golf-course projects are getting subsidies from programs originally intended to help low-income neighborhoods.

The net effect has been to worsen sprawl, fueling the out-migration of urban jobs, the growth of jobs in areas that are not accessible by public transportation, and the resulting hyper-concentration of unemployment and poverty in urban cores.

Economic Opportunity for Low-Income Workers
Sprawl creates a spatial mismatch between unemployed workers at the core and job growth at the fringe. Because many unemployed workers in the core, who are disproportionately African-American and Latino, cannot afford to own a car, and because many of the new jobs on the fringe are not accessible by public transportation, sprawl undercuts economic opportunity for people who need help the most.

Good Jobs First's national survey, Missing the Bus found that of all the 1,500+ economic development subsidy programs enacted by the 50 states, not one gives preference to--much less requires--projects in which subsidized jobs are accessible by public transit.

Sprawl causes much other harm to families who are trapped in core areas, whether or not they can afford a car. Sprawl drains the tax base from the inner city and inner-ring suburbs, forcing those areas to raise tax rates and cut back on public services. Schools, healthcare, public safety, libraries, parks and other public services all suffer, and that in turn makes the neighborhoods less attractive for employers; a spiral of decline sets in.

Broad Harm to Job Quality
Good-paying jobs that provide health care are what working families truly need. Unions have traditionally been the main way workers have gained better job quality. However, unions are urban institutions. When jobs thin out geographically, they also tend to de-unionize. A well-known example is Wal-Mart and its Supercenters, which undermine unionized grocery stores that employ members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

This phenomenon is also true in manufacturing, health care, hospitality, warehousing, building services, transportation, and construction. In the public sector, the erosion of the tax base in older areas hurts public employees across the board: in transit, education, police, fire, human services and sanitation.

Of course, many workers benefit from higher wages and benefits even though they don't belong to a union. When unions improve wages, benefits, and working conditions at a firm, nonunion firms will often match those terms in order to hire competitively. So when union density declines in a metro area, the living standards of both union workers and nonunion workers will suffer.

We summarize how sprawl harms job quality in our publication Talking to Union Leaders About Smart Growth.

Smart Growth Movement and Working Families
Although smart growth has many roots, such as Oregon's pioneering legislation creating Urban Growth Boundaries in the 1970s, the movement reached a critical mass in the mid-to-late 1990s when the American Planning Association, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Surface Transportation Policy Project and other groups formed what became Smart Growth America. In 1997, Maryland Governor Parris Glendening won enactment of the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Act, a model state law aimed at reducing sprawl and promoting "smart" approaches to new development.

Other organizations were also critical, bringing their specific expertise and concerns, such as environmental protection, affordable housing, and farmland preservation. Professional associations such as the Urban Land Institute and the Congress for New Urbanism (whose members include developers) also started to promote city-friendly development principles.

Good Jobs First entered this debate in 1999, urging that the issue of economic development subsidies be considered (as both a problem and a potential solution) and that organized labor be actively recruited as a participant in the movement. Growing acknowledgment by labor of its self-interest in the issue came in 2001, when the national AFL-CIO passed a resolution denouncing sprawl and urging its affiliates to get involved in smart growth campaigns. Since then, Good Jobs First has published several more studies and curricula on the union-smart growth connection.

Read More
In the Smart Growth for Working Families section of this website, you will find:

A Beginner's Guide called Smart Growth 101 that breaks down all the jargon and lays out basic smart growth principles.

Job Subsidies and Sprawl explains how job subsidies actually help perpetuate sprawl--and how accountability safeguards can promote smart growth.

Unions and Smart Growth describes labor's self-interest in smart growth and provides examples of how unions and labor federations are combatting sprawl.

Job Opportunity and Sprawl details how sprawl removes economic opportunity from the urban core.

Harms of Big-Box Retail explains how big-box chains harm local economies, good jobs, small businesses and the environment.

Connecting Jobs to Public Transit  shows how economic development subsidies can be better integrated with public transportation systems to create more economic opportunity, greater commuter choice, and cleaner air.

Building Rehabilitation and Infill Development  explains the policies that facilitate the redevelopment of urban cores, and can create lots of good jobs.

Training Materials contains free downloadable training materials that you can use to teach others about these issues.

Links and Resources contains a directory of smart growth groups around the country as well as listings of books, reports, websites and data sources on the subject. There is also a glossary of key terms.