The Southern California Association of Governments' regional strategy to improve air quality included a land use strategy to better align jobs and housing. Now the scientists are saying that changes in land use are too long-term in nature to afford much relief in the here and now. Instead, they're putting their money on more technical fixes like gasoline refinements and electric cars. It maintains that infrastructure costs are higher for sprawl than for compact development. Now Bob Burchell and Paul Tischler, two of the nation's best-known experts on fiscal impact studies, are saying that the fiscal impacts of sprawl are a good deal less impressive than we might like.
Sprawl increases only some infrastructure costs, and by small amounts at that.
Local road costs, however, are generally paid by developers and utility costs by raising water and sewer rates. Other capital costs are about even. Furthermore, revenues from some types of development more than compensate for these differences. Projecting costs over the long run and accounting for operation and maintenance costs produces bigger differences, but would require relatively modest increases in annual taxes payments. If we're talking open space, which I believe most of the fuss is about, then perhaps we ought to admit it and plan to pay for it.