Studying Sprawl
Jepson faculty member Thad Williamson explores the civic costs of the American way of life
November 5, 2009
Spring 2009
Political scientist and civic activist Thad Williamson is interested in a number of urban and political issues and is now working on a book about Richmond politics. His book, “Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship: The Civic Costs of the American Way of Life,” will be published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. He looked at the benefits and costs of sprawling development patterns in the United States. He used Census Data and the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey to assess the impact of sprawling neighborhoods on quality of life, social trust, political ideology, and political participation. The dissertation on which the book is based was the co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s 2005 Harold D. Lasswell Award for best doctoral thesis in the field of public policy. Williamson holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.
In "Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship: The Civic Cost of the American Way of Life,” you research sprawl and conclude that sprawl is bad but that people like it anyway. How did you approach the topic?
In my book, I am using prominent normative perspectives—utilitarian, liberal egalitarianism, republicanism and libertarianism. I look at how those competing contentions reform what we think about suburban sprawl.
Libertarianism is radically different from the other perspectives because libertarians believe people have very strong rights to property that the public does not have a right to infringe upon, except in very extreme circumstances.
The other three philosophies say that the public has a right to regulate property use. This is applied to sprawl because we look at how the public is allowed to use property. If you are coming from a utilitarian perspective, you will ask if sprawl is efficient. I looked at evidence of the cost and benefits of sprawl. I asked if people were happier in these neighborhoods than the people who are living in the central city areas. The answer is that, yes, they are.
But that’s not the “be all end all” in my view because we have to ask where those preferences come from. Many people like being in neighborhoods where there aren’t poor people or certain social problems. Is that a motivation that democratic societies should honor?
In the liberal egalitarian perspective, the default answer to that question would be “no.” No one should have the right to claim a disproportionate claim of privilege in society, they would say. You may want to go to a better school than someone else and get better resources, but we shouldn’t regard that as a legitimate motivation.
An egalitarian will not begin by asking what people like. They will ask, “What is justice? What does a justice structure look like?” You give people a set of liberties that can’t be taken away from them—such as free speech—but you provide equal opportunities for people to become who they want to be. What you want to do is to work around what justice is and ask how we can organize our societies that way. So if you grew up in downtown Richmond, you would have no reason to believe that your life would end up any different than someone in Hanover County.
An egalitarian would be very critical of sprawl because it seems to be a mechanism by which more affluent people can work themselves out of metropolitan areas into more localized communities so they don’t have to share resources with poor people. These societies are set up for people who own cars, and that limits poor people. The egalitarian has strong reason to believe that sprawl helps create and reinforce injustice in society.
There is a tension between egalitarianism and liberalism with respect to sprawl, however. On the one hand, the egalitarian is saying that where you live affects how your life will turn out, but on the other hand, liberals are not very enthusiastic about telling others what to do. They want to respect people’s choices. Suburban sprawl is created in part by people’s choices and preferences. To make changes you have to critique people’s preferences, and this is something liberals are very wary about doing.
That leads us to the third philosophy of republicanism—instead of starting up with a theory of justice, you start with presumptions about what politics is really like. In real world politics, people often try to get what they can out of the system. It’s not everyone working together harmoniously, but there is conflict. They look at what’s workable given people’s motivations. One of the upshots of these republican theories is that if the system is going to work, it has to be the case that we have a strong active citizenry that’s very alert. The evidence suggests that several kinds of political activism are more prevalent in traditional urban neighborhoods than in sprawl areas.
So, looking at the different perspectives, it turns out sprawl is bad for justice and bad for civic engagement, but people like it anyway. That’s not a trivial conclusion. It would be an easier story if I could show that sprawl was completely bad, but the research shows that it depends on what goods you value the most.
What is sprawl?
The definition of sprawl is a lower density, car-oriented development, predominantly on the fringes of metropolitan areas. They tend to be newer neighborhoods.
I’m interested in not just the technical definition of sprawl but the social arrangements it helps promote. Everybody knows that if you want your kids to have a good public school then you’ll be better off in a suburban environment where they have more financial resources. The cities are loaded down with a lot of poor children, and also with kids who have special needs. People know that where they live will affect how their children will turn out.
What are some of the positive aspects of living in urban areas?
People living in suburban areas are less likely to be involved politically, and less likely to be politically knowledgeable. Cities are great places for civic engagement and getting involved. People who live there are able think about how to have a positive impact and discuss issues of substance. In all cities you have rich people and you have poor people. You have more exposure to people who are different from you. In the more homogenous suburbs, you don’t have to deal with people you don’t want to deal with.
Even so, polls consistently show that people in suburbs are happier with their communities. So improving urban quality-of-life is crucial if sprawl is going to be reversed. You have to give people a reason for why the city is a good place to live. One increasingly important reason is ecological considerations—living in the city and driving less is better for the environment. It’s possible that rising gas prices over the long run will help encourage more people to live in the city.
Could you discuss how sprawl can be seen in Richmond?
Richmond is a very good example of sprawl because of how quickly developments are going up, and because Richmond has socio-spatial arrangements there are very clear differences between the kids living in the cities and those in the suburbs. People move out of the city simply because of the quality of the school system. Improving city schools is crucial for the city’s future, but the lack of regional cooperation here makes achieving that very difficult. One sign of hope for the city however is the recent Downtown Master Plan process, which lays out a real strategy for revitalizing downtown. Professor Amy Howard and I will be working on a book about Richmond.
What are some ways students have gotten involved in your research?
They were looking at the differences between urban neighborhoods and suburban neighborhoods. I had students in one of my classes keep a blog that focused on issues in the city of Richmond. Each student was assigned an aspect of Richmond that they were supposed to keep an eye on and write about. They all became independent researchers. I definitely learned a lot through that. Some of the students did work on land use and the real estate market.
How does this area of study directly relate to the Jepson School of Leadership Studies?
If are going to exercise leadership, you have to understand the society you live in. We need to ask how we should live together, and what kind of community we want to be. We talk about lot of ideas in our Justice and Civil Society class—how does where people live affect their life chances? If you are a leader thinking about how to deal with sprawl, this gives you a resource to think about the problem and its complexities.
How does your master’s degree in religion contribute to the work you do?
It doesn’t have a direct role, but I have often thought when I’m driving through sprawl that it makes me feel dead to the soul. Urban planners have talked about that kind of thing. It is hard to measure how urban space might shape our consciousness. Those things are hard to measure and model in social science terms. But what we end up doing or not doing about sprawl is as much an ethical question as a technical question, and I hope that my book encourages people to make the connection between their own views of ethics and justice and the ways we organize our communities.
Article ID: 396
