Tuesday’s City Talk considered some issues regarding population density in Savannah’s older neighborhoods.
I noted in that column that demographic trends in Savannah seem to be reflecting national trends showing a considerable rise in suburban poverty even as younger, wealthier people are moving back into urban areas.
So what’s wrong with that? If neighborhoods are always in flux, why not just let the free market have its say?
If poorer people want to get out of older neighborhoods because of blight and crime, why shouldn’t they? If wealthier people want to move into those very same neighborhoods because of their historic character and proximity to services, what’s wrong with that?
I’d argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with either of those trends, assuming that we’re doing everything possible to eliminate the reasons why folks want to get out in the first place.
In recent years, researchers have been detailing reasons why America’s suburbs are problematic places to live for people with limited incomes. Housing costs might be lower in some outlying areas than in gentrifying urban neighborhoods, but the math changes dramatically when we include transportation costs.
Many working class and single parent households are especially susceptible to disruptions in transportation options — from unreliable cars to spikes in gas prices.
Organizations like the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology are also now researching the impact of “transit deserts” — areas not served by public transit.
It’s worth adding that suburban sprawl is very
expensive to maintain — a huge drain on tax dollars.
Take a look at the draft of the Total Mobility Plan on the Metropolitan Planning Commission website, which details over $1 billion in transportation projects over the next 25 years. Very little of the money will be spent in the downtown area. Most of the funds will be devoted to adding road capacity in suburban areas or facilitating suburban access to the core of the city.
That long-range transportation plan obviously doesn’t include the cost of maintaining other public infrastructure and paying transportation costs for school busses, police cruisers and other government vehicles.
The city of Savannah has an extra – if often ignored – reason to encourage greater urban density. No one now alive remembers the last time a major hurricane (category 3, 4 or 5) made landfall on the Georgia coast, but it happened three times in the latter half of the 19th century.
Given the likelihood that the region will eventually be hit by a major hurricane with a catastrophic storm surge, it just makes sense to have as many residents as possible living on the high ground at Savannah’s core.
Also, as this column has noted numerous times over the years, Savannah’s historic neighborhoods were built for and occupied by far more residents than they have today.
Imagine how the downtown economy would be transformed if, for example, every other big hotel were replaced by an apartment building.
Of course, such apartment buildings would not have been allowed on the sites of those hotels because of zoning rules that restrict density. As has been noted often in the national media in recent months, local zoning ordinances that excessively limit urban density drive up real estate prices and fuel suburban sprawl.
The city of Savannah and the MPC recently allowed greater residential density in the upper stories on Broughton Street, a policy change that should make the street more affordable and that should give a jolt to the downtown economy.
That’s a good step forward, but a small one.
When I first started writing this column in 2000, the prevailing sentiment downtown was that increased residential density was a bad idea, but the mood has shifted as more residents observe density’s benefits and understand the drawbacks of current policies.
Despite this increased local awareness of the benefits of greater density, U.S. Census estimates suggest that a number of Savannah’s older neighborhoods still have stagnant or declining populations.
There are certainly lots of people who are moving into the downtown area, but it’s easy to find young professionals who feel shut out of the downtown market because of high prices.
And we’re still witnessing a steady exodus of working class folks who see quality of life diminishing.
I guess it’s a good thing that officials from the city and from the police department have been talking so much lately about blight and crime, but years of public indifference have made many of us cynical.
Other recent news – like the revelation that city officials apparently spent years negotiating to buy a blighted property on Waters Avenue, the plan to destroy historic homes for a new police precinct and the spate of violence in neighborhoods already known for high crime – have only reinforced that cynicism.
The city can tout also all sorts of policy successes, but the bad news is far too often trumping the good.
In short, we need a renewed emphasis on quality of life in our urban neighborhoods. If we have policies in place that make historic neighborhoods more affordable and safer, we’ll have no shortage of people who want to move into them.
And we’ll stem the exodus of folks who want to get out.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.