by Arthur Mullen

Suburban sprawl is the number one environmental justice issue facing our country today. The arguments made against sprawl are almost never framed in this manner however. Most people look at sprawl as a quality of life issue where farmland is lost to miles of look-alike strip malls and unconnected subdivisions. Sprawl also reduces the ability of regions to support unique talent pools where culture and the arts can be supported, enjoyed and thrive. The critical mass needed to support these cultural quality of life districts that are not possible in suburbs. These are the issues that most anti-sprawl individuals cite in arguments against the problem. What often is not discussed is how sprawl affects those residents who are left behind in older deteriorating urban and suburban areas. Most of these individuals left behind are from minority groups, thus the environmental justice issue.

Why is sprawl an environmental justice issue? First, there must be an understanding of what happens due to sprawl. With sprawl, the tax base in urban areas is reduced from the outward migration. This reduction in tax revenue impacts the ability of municipalities to provide the social and community services necessary for the remaining urban populations, many who are primarily black or recent immigrants. Second, suburban sprawl shifts where the primary job market is for a region. Once the jobs were plentiful in urban areas with clerical jobs, manufacturing, retail and service industry opportunities that were easily accessible. These jobs have been supplanted to the suburbs where there is limited access to public transportation. Over one in three Detroit residents do not have access to a car, thus making them reliant on public transportation. These suburban jobs, many suited for low skilled or trade-skilled workers, have been diffused across the entire region due to sprawl, and they are not easily accessible to the urban workforce who could fill the jobs. Third, the level of services is far lower in urban areas as our economy has shifted to large box retailing and away from smaller family owned stores that once existed along many commercially lined streets. Not only do the poor inner city residents often do not have access to these suburban shopping opportunities, the retailers have show little interest in entering the urban markets. Thus, the poorer urban residents are forced to pay higher costs for food and necessities and use higher percentages of their income on such items. Fourth, the drug war has not been waged in the suburbs; it is waged in the cities! Ever wonder why many of America’s inner city areas look like European cities in the 1940s. A war is being waged in our cities but we Americans have turned our backs on the impacts. Many suburbanites use the drugs but don’t have to live with the impacts of crime and broken families caused by family break ups and murder associated with the drug trade. Another outcome of America’s suburban rush is that concentrating poor and disadvantaged into pockets where they are cut off from opportunities for advancement which furthers the cyclical patterns of decline. There are few successful role models for those individuals left in our cities to demonstrate that you can better yourself.

What is fueling our growth of the newest outer ring suburbs? Most Americans have lived in single-family homes for the last 30 years, why are we still heading further out? Manifest destiny - the American dream is to own suburban house, but do we need larger houses further on the urban fringe? America is already the most wasteful society in the history of the world, and sprawl just increases our society’s wastefulness.

Racism and bigotry - is it that we don’t want to live next to people who are different from us? Our parents lived next to people who were different from them. Have we as a society forgotten that we use to live next to people who were different than us or earned different salaries.

In our rush to the further, bigger and posher suburbs, we have left behind whole communities of our own countrymen. We have a responsibility and an ability to help themselves improve their living conditions. It would just take civic and governmental leadership to eradicate this serious environmental justice condition.