REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
CINCINNATI METROPATTERNS
"Cincinnati Metropatterns," a study by Myron Orfield of the Metropolitan Area Research Corporation, Minneapolis, finds pieces of our region are growing apart. All U.S. regions are plagued by increasing disparities between rich and poor neighborhoods and by inefficient patterns of development. But Cincinnati places high in the severity of these trends.
The accelerating difference between rich and poor, combined with increasing racial segregation, move our communities and region further and further away from sustainability. Sustainable communities use energy and resources fairly and efficiently, organize their activity around their region's natural systems and strive to join social equity to economic and environmental progress.
The Orfield study of the 13 county Cincinnati Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical
Area: 1
1. Documents social separation and wasteful development patterns in the Cincinnati region;
2. Identifies the effects of these patterns on local governments and the region; and
3. Introduces strategies for addressing challenges facing the region.
The study seeks to assist regional efforts toward policy reform that will lead to a more socially
and economically sustainable future.
By examining factors such as poverty cores, schools, crime, infrastructure, land use patterns, fiscal disparity and jobs, a picture of the region emerges. The Greater Cincinnati region has development patterns similar to metropolitan areas throughout the country and these patterns are problematic for the region and its residents.
Four types of communities in this region are described:
• high poverty neighborhoods at the core;
• 'at risk' communities threatened with social decline;
• rapidly growing communities straining to pay for their growth;
• a small group of communities with high resources and few social costs.
The area of concentrated poverty is predominantly in the core. Cincinnati concentrates it's poverty more than most central cities in the country. Studies find that poor individuals living in concentrated poverty are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, drop out of high school and remain jobless than if they lived in socioeconomically mixed neighborhoods. The diminished quality of life and opportunity and related social isolation makes education, job search and general interaction with mainstream society difficult. The regional economy suffers with a lower pool of skilled workers and less attractive environment for economic growth and development.
Frequently, a community in decline leads to an increased concentration of low income households and to the segregation of minority students. Resulting partly from subtle discrimination in the housing market, income and racial segregation remains a persistent challenge in the region. The degree of segregation can be measured and is 20 points higher in this region than the national average.2
The communities showing signs of decline are
referred to as "at risk" communities. Usually they are just beyond areas of concentrated poverty and show signs of fiscal and social distress due to regional development patterns. These
inner suburbs are more vulnerable because they lack elements found in Cincinnati that can buffer decline: the city's central business district, older neighborhoods with housing stock able to be
redeveloped, and cultural amenities. Growing instability can lead to more rapid social decline. At risk communities strain because of aging
infrastructure, low population densities, poverty and racial segregation. These communities have a tax capacity that is both lower than the regional average and growing at below the regional average rate. Tax capacity measures the potential of local government to generate revenues and provide needed public services based on its property and income tax bases.
27% of the population of the Greater Cincinnati region lives in communities considered "at risk."
There are parts of the region where population is growing rapidly and infrastructure needs are increasing. In the near term, these communities tend to have access to jobs and to the cultural amenities of the central city, and they offer higher achieving schools, lower land costs, new homes, less congestion and lower taxes. These communities are growing faster than any other in the region. These "bedroom" communities have more public costs than tax revenues generate. On average they have a tax capacity less than half the regional average and inadequate to provide for the long-term health and quality of life of the community.
26% of the population in the region lives in these rapidly growing communities including Alexandria, Florence and Carlisle.
There are a few communities in the region where there are high local resources and few of the region's social costs. Tax capacity in these places is more than 200-500% of the regional average. However, there are people who work in the employment centers located in these areas who cannot afford to live nearby. Local businesses could be challenged to fill positions in growing companies if employees look elsewhere.
9% of the regional population live in this group of affluent cities such as Mason, Sharonville, Blue Ash.
The problems associated with these development patterns include high social needs around areas of concentrated poverty, neighborhoods in decline with diminishing fiscal capacity to reverse the trends and areas of rapid growth that cannot be sustained with current fiscal resources. Problems also include inequitable fiscal disparities and wasteful land use patterns which contribute to congested roadways and loss of open space and farmland.
By contrast, well-planned, compact, efficient communities promote economic and social stability over the long-term and infrastructure costs are decreased by up to 25%. A study in New Jersey found that directing population and job growth to already developed areas and using existing infrastructure would save municipalities $112 million annually and school districts $286 million annually in maintenance costs and debt service.
HIDDEN COSTS OF GROWTH
Schools are an early predictor of neighborhood trends because deepening poverty and other socioeconomic changes show up especially in elementary schools. While Cincinnati had the highest concentration of poor students,adjacent communities had high percentages of poor students including: Newport, Dayton, Lockland, Covington and Elmwood Place.3
School spending indicates the financial resources available to each school district. Low spending districts are found in older suburbs that have too small a tax base for strong spending and also in fast growing bedroom communities at the edges of the region that have low tax base and higher number of students per household. Cincinnati, Covington, Newport have higher than average spending per student due partly to federal and state funds for lower-income students.
The region's urbanized land has grown 5 times the rate of the population.4 Population density has decreased in the Cincinnati area by more than 28%. Growth is moving away from population and employment centers, contributing to longer commutes and pressure on open spaces, and away from where infrastructure already exists. Fast growing communities in the region are experiencing fiscal strains. Public expenditures are needed to provide roads, schools, parks, public safety services, etc. Communities in Boone, Butler, Warren counties are being built without a strong commercial or industrial tax base. Residential property taxes on which they depend provide a fragile balance between revenue sources and expenditure needs.
Tax Capacity helps determine whether desired services can be offered at reasonable rates. Regional development patterns tend to heighten any regional disparities that exist. Lower than average tax capacity tended to be concentrated in the core, particularly in Northern Kentucky; higher than average tax capacities were found in places such as Indian Hill, Blue Ash, Sharonville. In the nineties, tax capacity in the region grew by 14%. Cities that had a percentage drop in their tax capacity generally were older communities including: Reading, Amberley, Evendale. Considering only property taxes, a low base of values per household are starkly concentrated in the core of the region. Cities with low and declining property tax base include: Cincinnati, Golf Manor, Amberley and North College Hill.
Tax disparities can be measured. Of the twenty-five largest metropolitan regions in the country, this region has the second highest disparity, second only to St. Louis.
Relatively low-paying and low-skilled jobs are found in suburban office parks and retail centers where employees cannot afford the more expensive housing. This strains the roads and makes it more difficult for the poor to find transportation to these centers.
Cincinnati's central business district remains the largest employment center. Increasingly, however, jobs in the region are concentrated in areas such as Sharonville, Springdale, Evendale, the cluster having a greater number of jobs than residents. Communities in Northern Kentucky and inner suburban Cincinnati areas have far fewer jobs compared to the number of residents in places such as Silverton, Villa Hills, Mount Healthy.
REGIONAL STRATEGIES FOR REFORM
Orfield's research for Greater Cincinnati finds a majority of communities destabilized by social and economic disinvestments, fiscal disparities and sprawl. Policies shaping public and private investments are at the heart of the problems. Orfield offers three strategies to combat the problems:
FISCAL EQUITY
Local governments vary widely in tax revenues available to provide services to their citizens. Ohio's taxing and development policies encourage growth at the urban edge. The communities don't generate enough revenue to support themselves in the long term. Competition for tax base and jobs creates winners and losers among local communities. Often, the losers are most in need of fiscal resources because of rapidly growing population (sprawl) or increased social stress (areas of poverty) while the winners are temporarily favored with surplus revenues. Temporary, because as the entire region falls into decline, other regional economies will draw Cincinnati's resources away.
Other regions have found answers to these problems by reforms which shift the financing of local governments away from dependence on local fiscal resources and land-use decisions towards a more equitable distribution of costs and benefits of regional growth. Cooperation rather than wasteful competition between communities becomes possible and creates the potential for both improving services and lowering taxes for the majority of citizens in a region.
Most states including Ohio, use some type of "equalization" in funding schools in rich and poor districts. A number of states have extended this concept to funding of rich and poor local governments by sharing of tax resources. Referred to as tax base sharing, such sharing helps to address the underlying causes of disparity in a region. Since 1971, in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, communities contribute a percentage of the growth in commercial-industrial tax base value to a shared pool. Referred to as tax base sharing, the pool is distributed back to communities based on population and property value relative to the rest of the region.
METROPOLITAN STRUCTURAL REFORM
Orfield's study revealed that social separation and sprawling development is threatening the entire region. Fragmented local government structure and land-use planning by hundreds of local jurisdictions in the region means there are few coordinated strategies for addressing regional problems outside of transportation.
Federal funding requirements have led to regional collaboration in transportation planning through OKI.5 However, OKI has no power to coordinate land use and economic development in the area even though such coordination determines the need for transportation and other infrastructure expenditures. The lack of regional coordination of development, land use and transportation decisions, made worse by state policies that abet inefficient land use, fosters winners and losers.
REGIONAL LAND USE PLANNING
The sprawling growth in the region results in an impoverished central city and fiscal stress for most of the suburban communities. Worsened traffic congestion with concurrent pollution and energy use, social separation, loss of open space and habitat are the result. Successful regions coordinate how local governments use their land, a strategy often referred to as "smart growth."
Smart growth means that the region manages land use to reduce the destruction of forest, farm and open space, ease congestion with a balanced transportation system, ensure affordable housing throughout the region and lower the cost of public investments. Dispersed affordable housing and transportation alternatives can avoid the social consequences of concentrated poverty. Efforts in the direction of regional land use planning are being undertaken by the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission with its Planning Partnership. Nine townships and 13 municipalities have joined to engage in community planning in Hamilton County.
Fundamental to successful regional reform, Orfield noted, is action by Ohio's Governor and General Assembly that gives incentives for regions to plan and to direct state growth-related expenditures to areas that counties designate for compact urban growth. On a state level, an Ohio Smart Growth Agenda has been proposed. The Agenda includes state level promotion of sound planning and an incentive-based state investment program that targets state growth related expenditures to locally designated compact growth areas. Mr. Orfield cited the Ohio Smart Growth Agenda as a starting point for an incentive plan.
Other states have found policy reform through land use planning or smart growth legislation is the key to regional collaboration and health. Limiting infrastructure investments to areas within a planned growth boundary keeps resources focused within the region.
Orfield shared several observations based on other successful regional efforts:
• credible, powerful, effective leadership is key;
• concepts are not compelling, a plan must be simulated so that a significant majority of
citizens can see better services and lower
taxes;
• alternative transportation benefits everyone;
• come to terms with social separation including environmental justice and nonwhite citizens of the community.
CITIZEN STRATEGIES FOR ACTION
Keep informed and talk about these issues in your community.
Join in County Government and Regional Issues/Natural Resources committee discussions and help shape LWVCA action on these issues.
Work with state and local elected officials and government agencies to increase the awareness of the state's role and involvement in constructive planning in regions across the state.
Participate in the citizen groups of COMPASS by attending the meetings and workshops and serving on the County Action Teams.
Footnotes
1. In this study the Cincinnati region is defined as the Cincinnati-Hamilton Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA). It includes 13 counties in three states: Dearborn and Ohio counties (Indiana); Boone, Campbell, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton and Pendleton counties (Kentucky); Brown, Clermont, Hamilton, Warren and Butler counties (Ohio).
2. The Index of Dissimilarity measures the percentage of minorities that would have to switch areas to achieve an even racial distribution. Of the 25 largest metropolitan regions in the country, the Greater Cincinnati region had one of the highest indices of dissimilarity in 1997 measured at 77, more than 20 points higher than the national average of 56.
3. A widely used measure of student poverty is eligibility for free lunches which are available to children of families whose household income is at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. Elementary school data is used because it is available yearly and is an early indication of what is happening in a community.
4. The census bureau defines urban land as having 1000 people per square mile.
5. Ohio-Kentucky-lndiana Regional Council of Governments, a federally designated regional transportation planning organization.
Regional Issues/Natural Resources Committee
March 2001
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