BEEN THERE, TRIED THAT
Another aging Rust Belt metropolis
discovers that Rome wasn't built in a day.
But it was built
by Jennifer Halperin
Illustrations by Daisy Langston Juarez
City officials in Cleveland knew there was a problem when they looked at the U.S. Census figures: During the previous decade, the city had lost 2.4 percent of its population, the largest loss of any major city in the United States.
A special study was commissioned to assess the situation, identify causes and come up with solutions. Its conclusion: "There is a basic trend of migration which for the past decade has been from the older established sections to the relatively underdeveloped communities on the periphery.
"A major portion of the population of Cleveland, which has the highest standard of living and the most desirable characteristics from a civic viewpoint, is leaving corporate Cleveland. From a dollars and cents standpoint, the population trends ... have reached significant proportions. If they are permitted to continue without hindrance, the whole structure of the central city is jeopardized."
Nothing surprising, when the terms "urban sprawl" and "edge cities" have become part of everyday vernacular—except this dilemma describes Cleveland 60 years ago.
Like many aging metropolises, Cleveland today is battling the decay and decline left behind when those citizens with the highest standard of living migrate farther and farther away from the core of the city. And like many metro areas, Cleveland is attempting to stem the tide with regionwide measures aimed at forestalling continued suburban sprawl.
The effort shows some signs of success. But it also illustrates what communities are up against when they try to reach across political and geographic boundaries to seek regional solutions—problems, attitudes, social forces, development patterns that evolved over decades won't change overnight. As the saying goes, Rome—or its empire—wasn't built in a day.
Or a century. Around 1900, wealthy residents of Cleveland's famed Millionaires' Row began leaving their urban mansions for places outside the city limits when the district's residential nature started to change.
Entrepreneurs eager to capitalize on this migration of the affluent built and marketed suburban housing developments in the early 1900s by exploiting people's safety concerns. Their advertisements are clear precursors to the philosophy behind today's gated suburban communities that have been springing up around the country: "From even the finest sections of Cleveland,'' the ads read, "old families have been forced away because undesirable buildings, features, neighbors could not be kept out. But not in Shaker Heights. Protective restrictions operate for 78 years to come. We created it—we sell it."
The stock market collapse in 1929 brought development in northeast Ohio to a temporary standstill, but, as the 1940 Census figures showed, people still were eager to leave Cleveland proper during the 1930s.
And while the study spawned by the Census showed foresight in terms of sprawl's effect on a city, it did nothing to stem the relocation tide. Rapid post-war housing development in the 1950s lured tens of thousands of middle-class and blue-collar households outward, a trend that continues today. During the 1980s, Cleveland lost 18,500 households, according to the Housing Policy Research Program at Cleveland State University. If current patterns continue, the city is expected to lose 105,000 households by 2010.
The movement has had a significant financial impact on the region: Between 1979 and 1991, Cleveland residential real estate lost $1.5 billion—or 25 percent—of its value in dollars adjusted for inflation. Cuyahoga County, in which Cleveland sits, lost $2.9 billion, or 8 percent of its value. And there are other alarming consequences as well: Surplus housing could grow between 20 percent and 25 percent in Cleveland by the year 2000, according to a study by the Ohio Housing Research Network.
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Of environmental concern is the fact that the annual number of miles driven in the five-county region surrounding Cleveland increased by two-thirds from 1970 to 1990, according to the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, NOACA, the metropolitan planning agency that conducts comprehensive transportation planning in the region and acts as a clearinghouse for federal transportation money.
The ongoing population drain was lamented for years by different factions in the area. But it wasn't until about five years ago that enough people fed up with what they saw as unchecked growth started banding together, says David Beach, a trustee of EcoCity Cleveland, a nonprofit educational group whose mission is to stimulate ecological thinking about Northeast Ohio.
Many environmentalists, planning experts, academics and elected officials found they had a similar goal: encouraging public policies that would help stem the duplication of infrastructure and housing that was spreading farther into rural areas, even as overall population growth was stagnant.
Especially notable is that between 1980 and 2010, the five-county region around Cleveland is expected to lose 3 percent of its population while occupying 30 percent more residential land.
"For many years our metropolitan area was growing in population, so we had an excuse to develop outward," Beach said. "Until the 1960s, you could make allowance that new land was needed—not that it was done in a sustainable way. But Northeast Ohio has not been growing in population during the last 20 to 30 years. We've got the same number of people supporting increased infrastructure."
At NOACA, officials began realizing such expansion was unsustainable. They slowly began changing the way they approached transportation projects. For a long time, Beach says, the "planning process" worked like this: A new development would bring heavy traffic to an area and local officials would demand that the county or state
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widen roads, add highway interchanges or improve traffic signals to ease congestion. These road projects would be placed on a list for federal funding without regard to regional effect; NOACA's role was to speed up the process without asking questions that would curtail growth.
That has changed. Officials at the planning agency have started listing projects as deserving of federal funds based in part on whether the project saves infrastructure costs, preserves environmentally sensitive and agricultural lands and enhances the economic viability of existing communities in the region.
The change is nothing less than revolutionary, say those who have watched it occur.
"The economic forces involved—the transportation subsidies that promote sprawl, for example—are very powerful and are difficult to turn around," Beach says. "Our land use is out of control. But as our metropolitan region sprawls out into farmland and open space and saps vitality from the city and inner suburbs, people are making that connection. It's been exciting to watch. The Cleveland Catholic Diocese and the bishop here have become concerned about the social justice and moral impact of planning and development, and why it is unjust to leave the city, with a largely low-income and minority population, behind to crumble."
Inner-ring suburbs surrounding Cleveland have joined the movement. The First Suburbs Consortium, started in 1996, recently held a statewide conference for public officials of built-out suburbs throughout Ohio who see their communities as the next dominos to fall as population spreads outward.
Ken Montlack, a city councilman for the suburb of Cleveland Heights, is chairman of the organization. He sees the group—in conjunction with other smart-growth advocates in Cuyahoga County—as already exerting influence, albeit limited, on how decisions are made. "We've made progress in raising the consciousness of elected officials, but to varying degrees among the voters and residents," he says. "The policies we focus on, such as government spending that subsidizes unchecked growth have not been changed."
The difference, he says, is that now their voices are heard. The First Suburbs Consortium was part of a larger group, including the city of Cleveland, that opposed widening Interstate 90 west of Cleveland and Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus until planning studies that looked at alternative means of transportation could be reviewed. Although the Ohio Department of Transportation went ahead with the I-90 expansion and plans to do so with I-71, the latter widening will include designated lanes in urban areas for high-occupancy vehicles, and park-and-ride lots will be improved to help encourage people to use light-rail.
At the same time, Gov. George V. Voinovich appointed a farmland preservation task force, which was instrumental in the creation of the Office for Farmland Preservation within the Department of Agriculture. This gives farms the same attention in state government that, for example, small businesses have through the Department of Development and women's health issues have through the state health department.
And there is momentum building for farmland preservation legislation that has been pushed by rural and Cleveland-area state lawmakers who want to slow developers' transformation of agricultural land into housing subdivisions. The legislature postponed until fall consideration of the measure, which would help local governments, charitable organizations and the state's agriculture department pay farmers to keep their land in agriculture through so-called purchase of development rights, which currently are allowed in a handful of states. The postponement means roughly $1 million in federal funding for farmland preservation will be lost, but supporters are glad the measure is being considered and is gaining support.
On another front, the First Suburbs Consortium has reached an agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that makes modest reforms in how the agency handles vacant property, including renovation of homes before they are put on the market. The thinking, Montlack says, is that urban areas must feel safe and be visually appealing to attract residents. "When the federal government becomes the owner of blighted properties, you know you've got a problem."
Perhaps most promising for the group's goals is the potential political influence its members hold. Montlack believes the state's transportation agency has been slow to recognize the benefits of limited freeway expansion, and he notes the agency takes its marching orders from the governor's office.
"We plan to keep a close eye on the governor's race this fall, and play an active role in that election."
In the meantime, Montlack is philosophical.
"It's an intellectual revolution at this point," he says. "Whenever you're faced with big changes in thinking, it is a slow process getting people on board. It's going to take time."
A case study for regional activists
For decades, the Chicago metropolitan area has faced all of the problems that go with a relentless outward migration from the central city: a declining urban tax base, congested roadways, suburban, even exurban sprawl.
But advocates of regional cooperation should take heart. The Cleveland, Ohio, metropolitan area
has been facing—and staring down—these same problems for nearly a century.
That region can provide an object lesson on just what it takes to reach across political and geographic boundaries to find regional solutions.
The Editors
Jennifer Halperin is the former Statehouse bureau chief for Illinois Issues magazine. She now lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is an editorial writer for The Columbus Dispatch.
This article was made possible by a grant from
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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