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Scholar says area sprawl worse than L.A.'s
Friday, June 08, 2001 By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
To Bruce Katz, Pittsburgh is slowly sprawling out of control.
Surprisingly, the Brookings Institution scholar sees more unnecessary, unchecked suburban development in the six-county Pittsburgh metropolitan area than in traffic-choked Los Angeles, Phoenix or Atlanta.
"If you regard sprawl not as congestion but as [inefficient] use of land, Pittsburgh did not perform very well in the 1990s," Katz said yesterday. Pittsburgh, in fact, could be considered "one of the worst sprawling places in the country," said Katz, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank.
How can this be?
Pittsburgh, after all, is also one of the least congested big cities in the United States, with the average driver spending only 14 hours a year stuck in traffic, according to a recent study. That is 42 hours less than the average Los Angeles motorist.
But Katz's concern is land density, not congestion.
When he looks at Pittsburgh, he sees a metropolitan area that continues to add new suburban office buildings, schools and shopping centers despite being one of the few such metropolitan areas to lose population over the last decade.
"If we were talking about Austin [Texas], this would be different," Katz said. But, "this is a region that lost population. The region as a whole needs to step back and ask, 'Are these development patterns in the greater good?' " Or, 'Does this just spread around the population more in a way that weakens the core?'
"I think those are very tough questions, but I think a place like Pittsburgh really needs to come to grips with them."
Katz plans to talk about those issues tomorrow as keynote speaker of a Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference at Sheraton Station Square.
The conference, scheduled to run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., is a chance for area politicians, planners, developers and citizens to talk about the tricky relationship between economic development, the environment and the regional economy.
So-called "smart growth" is a hot topic nationally, driven by a desire in some communities to balance new growth and development with concerns about environment and quality of life. Locally, such a philosophy could make the region more attractive to new companies and workers, conference organizers said.
"There is clearly a tailwind behind our economy in the Pittsburgh region now," said Sustainable Pittsburgh Director Court Gould, one of the hosts of tomorrow's conference. "We need to match that optimism with being more choosy about the type of development we use to grow the region and to avoid a growth-at-any-cost mentality."
Pittsburgh, Katz said, once led the country in center city development.
He cited the work done after World War II, when public and private officials tackled pollution, floods and urban decay by redeveloping the Golden Triangle and attempting several urban renewal projects in city neighborhoods. But federal, state and local government policies also made it easier for sprawl to spread in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with highways and government-backed mortgages leading city dwellers to homes in the suburbs.
Now, Katz said, Pittsburgh is "a thinning metropolis."
To reverse some of those trends, Katz wants local leaders to establish land-use plans, rely more on public transportation solutions and rehabilitate older homes closer to the urban core.
But some local observers argue that Pittsburgh is already doing a lot to combat sprawl.
Several developers, for example, are turning old city industrial sites into office parks, entertainment centers and housing tracts. And the Golden Triangle remains vibrant, with more than 60 percent of the region's office space and three department stores located there. Also, more commuters use public transportation to get Downtown than in many other similar-sized cities. New stadiums on the North Side and an expanded convention center should only reinforce that trend.
Compared to other regions, "we don't have sprawl problems," said Chuck DiPietro, acting executive director of the 9-county Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a regional planning group.
"We all want growth," said Bill Hunt, a developer who owns buildings in the city and suburbs. "Do we want smart growth? Yes." But, "we need to define what smart growth is."
Sometimes, Hunt said, "a lot of anti-growth people call themselves smart growth, but they are really trying to stop all growth."
While Hunt said development in some parts of the metro area is spreading away from the urban core, he also noted how difficult it is to reverse such a trend. Some people, he said, just prefer to live and shop in the suburbs, away from the city.
"That is what people want," he said, adding, "I don't think we should discourage it."
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