(Video: US 30 construction from Cedar Rapids Gazette)
Two substantial highway projects are underway in Linn
County: extension of Iowa 100 around the northwestern side of Cedar Rapids, and
diversion of U.S. 30 to the south of Mount Vernon and Lisbon. With total federal
and state commitment in the mid-nine figures, it’s worth asking what impact
these projects will have on our towns? With widening Interstate 380 between
Cedar Rapids and Iowa City also still a live option, what does all this rural
concrete say about the vision for our future?
These bypasses will have different effects than the bypasses
around small towns I surveyed in my last post. Those moved through traffic
out of the center of town, but besides that had no immediate effect, either
positive or negative, on the towns themselves. In Linn County we’re dealing
with one entirely new road, and one replacement for an existing two-lane bypass.
Moreover, we’re dealing with them in Iowa’s second-largest county, one that has
seen 17 percent population growth since the 2000 census (average for the U.S.,
but much faster than the whole State of Iowa). The Cedar Rapids metro area
presents a more dynamic context than do the towns in the last post; so, given that
change is already happening and ongoing, what will the bypasses contribute to
it?
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| Commercial strip on Bus US approaching 151/13 bypass (Google Earth) |
Officials in each town anticipate the bypasses will accommodate,
indeed will facilitate, future growth. (The population density of the city of
Cedar Rapids is a modest 1,189/sqmi, but we do like our personal space.) Cedar
Rapids projects a 2035 population of 161,073, assuming 1 percent annual growth,
a gain of 29,000 from the current
estimate of 132,228 (EnvisionCR
54). Cedar Rapids's future land-use map anticipates the area around the new
highway to be a mix of commercial and "urban medium-intensity"
characterized by 4-12 units per acre, a "high-connectivity grid
pattern" and "transportation, housing and shopping choices in close proximity
to each other" (EnvisionCR 69).
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| Future land use map including areas to be annexed (Envision CR 67) |
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| Future land use map including areas to be annexed (cityofmtvernon-ia.gov) |
The most likely outcome of federal-state highway spending
and local growth ambitions is suburban sprawl, by which I mean low-density,
car-dependent, loosely-controlled expansion into unsettled areas. Here’s why:
((1)) The new and expanded highways will
induce demand, but even so the areas available for expansion would accommodate
growth beyond the most optimistic projections. Eyeballing, the area around
Highway 100 adds about 20 percent to the Cedar Rapids current area; at current
density that would add over 26,000 residents. Mt. Vernon expects to spread not
only to the new U.S. 30, but southward along S.R. 1, and as new U.S. 30 swings
south it provides Lisbon with plenty of room to grow. So I'll say to fill up
all three areas even at low suburban densities would take at least 30,000.
That's nearly double the three towns' combined growth between 2000 and 2016,
and equals the optimistic growth projection for Cedar Rapids alone. Development
is going to be low-density here, and unless economic development and demand for
labor ramps up in a hurry, the newly-opened areas will add residents by
competing for existing residents with other parts of the county.
((2)) Because development will occur
before annexation, the future land use maps are merely suggestive. This limits
their influence on the nature of development, for all that Mt. Vernon city
administrator Chris Nosbisch tells the Gazette "it's
imperative" for the new commercial area by the bypass to fit with what the
town already has (Payne 2018: 11A; see also Kalk 2018). Town leaders ravenous for “game-changers”
will accept whatever’s done.
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| Newer suburban development south of U.S. 30, Lisbon (Google Earth) |
((3)) Previous bypasses, like Iowa 13
east of Cedar Rapids or U.S. 30 to the south, have produced exactly this kind
of development. Exits off U.S. 30 in Cedar Rapids lead to the miles of big-box
stores and commercial strips along Edgewood Road, Williams Boulevard and other
"stroads" in that area, with characteristic swaths of pavement and low tax
yield per acre. Entering Marion off Highways 13/151? Same. Residential
developments around these highways are either large-lot subdivisions or
mobile-home complexes, and never both. (The latter are, admittedly, densely-populated, but
in a way that's more efficient for the owner than walkable for the residents).
Public transit out here is scanty where it exists at all. The current two-lane,
non-limited access U.S. 30 south of Mount Vernon and Lisbon mostly features a
typical highway commercial strip of gas stations, fast food and car dealers.
((4)) While the last decade has shown some
impressive appetite for walkable urbanism living, particularly among younger
consumers and empty-nesters, gasoline is too cheap, commutes too short, and the
environmental consequences too remote for this preference to expand enough to
reshape our development pattern.
((5)) It’s what developers want to build
anyway (Samuels
2015).
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| Edgewood Road SW, looking towards U.S. 30 |
The negative consequences of the suburban development
pattern have been thoroughly catalogued (for example, in these older essays, "Urbanism Review" and “The
Urbanism CLEF”). Inducing more driving stresses the environment, the school
system and the local economy. The arterial stroads typically used to funnel
traffic through populated areas to the highways have seen the greatest increase
in pedestrian deaths ("On Foot, At Risk" 2018). An
increasing pile of studies have shown negative health impacts of sprawl (Jackson
and Kochtitzky 2009). Sure, Cedar Rapids, Lisbon and Mt. Vernon can use the
property tax revenue, generated by anticipated new development around the
highways, to fund existing services and older parts of their towns. However, like
the energy from a sugar buzz, this can’t last forever, and in the meantime will
largely be spreading out the metro area population. Given the proclivity of all
three towns to expand in low-density, auto-centric ways, this is not good news;
in the long run suburban development over-extends the cities' financial
capacity (Marohn 2011). Annexations rarely pay
for themselves after the initial infusion of property tax revenue (Nielsen 2018).
The solution to ongoing suburban development probably needs
to be cultural change, and depending on who you read and how alarmed they are, the
impetus for that may be closer than we now think. In the meantime, we could use
a regional
governmental entity for Linn and Johnson Counties that has the resources to
do long-term planning, make the public case for policies designed for
resilience, manage and possibly even limit urban growth, and which shares revenues among all the local governments so that
they don’t feel the need to pursue separate sugar buzzes to the detriment of
the whole (see also Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl [Island, 2001]).
A resilient city is prepared when current conditions--cheap
gasoline, new infrastructure that can go maintenance-free for a while, ready
access to federal money, a booming economy--change. Suburban commuting is the
opposite of resilient, draws resources away from the city particularly poorer
residents, and draws open land and resources away from the natural environment.
Sprawling our way into the future is not the way to go.
