World News

Book Review

Better Not Bigger

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How can you tell good growth that benefits a community from cancerous growth that raises costs and taxes? This book makes it crystal clear says our reviewer Cynthia Pollock Shea.
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Posted 18 April 1999


Eben V. Fodor
In his first book, Better Not Bigger, Oregon community planning consultant Eben Fodor breaks down many of the myths and misconceptions regarding the benefits of urban growth. Fodor suggests that community activists and elected officials should ask hard questions about what they really want to achieve and then offers a range of policy options to get there. The book is well documented and full of case studies, primarily from California, Colorado, New Jersey, and his own Oregon. For those who suspected that many types of growth were actually costing more than the benefits provided, this book will confirm your suspicions and provide you with the evidence needed to convince others.

Twelve of the most widely held myths shattered in the book include:

  1. Growth provides needed tax revenue.
  2. We have to grow to provide jobs for people in the community.
  3. We must stimulate and subsidize business growth to have good jobs.
  4. If we try to limit growth, housing prices will shoot up.
  5. Environmental protection hurts the economy.
  6. Growth is inevitable.
  7. If you don’t like growth, you’re a “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) or an “ANTI” (against everything).
  8. Most people don’t really support growth management or environmental protection.
  9. We have to “grow or die.”
  10. Vacant or undeveloped land is just going to waste.
  11. A person’s visual preference is no basis for objecting to development.
  12. Environmentalists are just another special interest.
Growth raises costs and taxes. Fodor refutes each of these myths with sound arguments. The average cost for providing public facilities to a new house, for example, is calculated at $24,500, NOT including local streets and utility connections. Schools are one of the highest costs, followed by sewage, roads, parks, open space, water, drainage, police, fire, libraries, and municipal services. Various methodologies are presented for calculating these costs and allocating them among different user groups. Contrary to the assertion of developers, growth often raises taxes with most of the increased burden falling on existing residents. As a general rule, the larger the city, the higher the taxes. “The bottom line on urban growth is that it rarely pays its own way.”
Regarding environmental protection, studies from the Bank of America, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Institute for Southern Studies all found that states with higher environmental standards also have higher economic growth rates.
Existing businesses are more valuable than new ones. Additional studies found that states with a “good” business climate--less government regulation, lower taxes, and higher subsidies--actually had worse economic outcomes than states with a “bad” business climate. This is because many traditional economic development programs are little more than taxpayer funded corporate subsidies. Fodor argues that protecting existing jobs is even more valuable than providing new jobs because the company has already been integrated into the community and does not require additional infrastructure investments.
Computer models measure impact. Fort Collins, Colorado, is cited as one community with sound policies regarding its economic development incentives. Companies do not receive assistance unless they can demonstrate, through analysis, that their benefits to the community are greater than the cost of any public subsidies. To aid this analysis the city recently developed what may be the first computer model to evaluate local economic, fiscal, and environmental impacts of economic development investments.
Smart help for small business. “If local government officials insist on extending economic development subsidies to businesses, the subsidies should be generating clearly defined benefits,” writes Fodor. “An example of such a subsidy would be a tax credit that rewarded any business (not just certain big businesses) that created a permanent new job and hired a local unemployed individual to fill it. If subsidies are targeted to any particular class of businesses it should be locally owned, small businesses, that actually create more than 90 percent of the new jobs in our economy.”
Hard criteria for those seeking help. “Any business seeking tax subsidies, special favors, or some other form of public assistance could be required to meet at least the following minimum standards,” writes Fodor:

  • Offer median salaries that are higher than the existing median for local workers in the same industry. Too many economic development funds are used to lure companies that actually “lower the bar” for local salaries. (Median means half are above and half are below. This is a better measure than average salaries because average salaries can be inflated by a few highly paid executives.)

  • Produce less pollution per worker than the average of existing businesses.

  • Use less of the area’s natural resources per worker than the average of existing business. This means less land consumed for each job created and fewer gallons of water and fewer kilowatt-hours of electricity are required per worker.

  • Use fewer hazardous and toxic chemicals than existing business.

  • Minimize waste products through recycling, reuse, and most-efficient production practices.

  • Have minimal negative impacts on the community in terms of traffic, noise, parking, aesthetics, and general livability.

  • Agree to return any public subsidies if the business moves out of town or closes within the first five years of beginning operation.
Creating positive tourism impact. In areas where tourism is a mainstay of the economy, as in much of Florida, Fodor encourages a balance between new jobs and housing needs. “A hotel, for example, will create many low-wage service jobs. The hotel workers may be forced to seek low-cost housing in distant suburbs or outlying communities. Jobs-housing linkages can be used to help ensure that workers have nearby housing they can afford. Linkages require that the commercial developer either contribute to an affordable housing fund or build suitable nearby housing commensurate with the income levels of the jobs created. The linkages help create a balance (or link) between residential and commercial land uses and reduce automobile travel. Linkages are widely used in California and the Northeastern United States” and in Aspen, Colorado.
Can sprawl really be tamed? A variety of policies to augment the supply of affordable housing and reduce growth rates are examined in Fodor’s book. Most of the policies have already been implemented on at least a limited scale. One particularly interesting chart (on pages 108-109) compares ten common growth subsidies and ten corresponding growth neutral policies. Although Fodor illustrates the cost savings associated with taming sprawl, he cautions that even compact, multi-use developments may not always be desirable. As Colorado University Professor Albert Bartlett says, “Smart growth ultimately gets you to exactly the same place as dumb growth--you just get there first class.”
Ensuring quality. Threshold and performance standards for growth are ways to ensure quality. Setting growth rate limits or capping ultimate city size are means of dealing with quantity. The City of Boulder, Colorado has adopted a multi-pronged approach to both guiding and limiting growth. It has raised $116 million to acquire 33,000 acres of greenways and mountain parks, resulting in an attractive physical border around the city. It has additionally purchased some private commercial land to prevent it from being developed and has down-zoned other commercial land. Rate caps have reduced the number of new dwelling units built each year and encouraged a greater share of them to be built downtown. Caps can also be used to create competition among prospective developments, enabling city officials to raise the bar relative to design quality and public amenities. “The cities of Boulder and Aspen, Colorado and Petaluma and Livermore, California have all taken advantage of this potential to foster better developments.”
Twelve principles for a brighter future. Regardless of where your community stands on the desirability of additional growth, Fodor offers these universally applicable Twelve Steps Towards a Sustainable Community.

  1. Build a positive vision.
  2. Improve citizen involvement.
  3. Provide economic opportunity.
  4. Use land wisely.
  5. Provide better information.
  6. Use indicators and benchmarks for progress.
  7. Use full-cost accounting.
  8. Think long range.
  9. Encourage efficient resource use.
  10. Make neighborhoods walkable.
  11. Preserve unique features.
  12. Recognize physical limits to growth and consumption.

Cynthia Pollock Shea, Contributing Editor

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Title: Better Not Bigger
Author: Eben Fodor
Publication Date: 1998
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Address: P.O. Box 189 Gabriola Island, B.C.
Canada, V0R 1X0
Phone: (800) 567-6772
ISBN: 0-86571-386-3
Price: US$14.95/Can$17.95
URL: http://www.newsociety.com/ttl.html

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