VIEWPOINT - CUDC Quarterly 1:3 - Srping 2001
First Suburbs in a Regional Perspective
Terry Schwarz, AICP
Senior Planner, Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio
Like metropolitan areas all across the country, Northeast Ohio is struggling with issues of regional land use, equitable allocation of limited resources and urban sprawl. The region’s population is growing little, if at all, so people’s decisions about where they live, work and shop have far reaching political and economic consequences. Although there is significant market demand for residential, commercial and industrial development in the outlying suburbs and the rural areas beyond, this development drains residents, jobs and tax revenues from the City of Cleveland and its inner ring suburbs, pulling affluence out to the periphery of the region and leaving behind aging buildings and infrastructure, and concentrated poverty.
The First Suburbs, those communities that border the City of Cleveland, are caught in the middle. Because these individual municipalities are much smaller than Cleveland and have, for the most part, experienced a milder and more gradual kind of decline, they cannot readily tap into the federal and state resources available to Cleveland for large-scale redevelopment. Unlike newer, outer ring communities, the First Suburbs have little vacant land for development, so they have few opportunities to attract the new housing and businesses they need to shore up declining tax bases.
Unwilling simply to watch and wait while the physical condition and economic health of their communities slowly but steadily deteriorate, elected officials and staff from the First Suburbs have united to gain support for their common concerns and to lobby for resources to help reverse the decline. Their efforts have begun to result in positive change and have even attracted the attention of urban policy experts, who cite the consortium as a model for aging suburban areas nationwide. At the same time, there is a degree of suspicion among officials in some of the outlying areas who are concerned that the increasing influence of the First Suburbs Consortium will be harmful to their own interests.
The argument in the outer ring is that development occurs in response to market demand. The newer suburbs are where people want to live, shop, and locate their businesses, and this growing demand is what drives new development. And, after all, the First Suburbs were themselves the urban sprawl of the last century. The First Suburbs counter with the argument that much of the new development in outlying areas is being unfairly subsidized by residents of the central core whose tax dollars are being used to help build new roads and interchanges, extend infrastructure, and build new schools at the periphery.
In this endless tug-of-war for residents, development and public funds, a key question gets obscured. Can the central city, the inner-ring suburbs and developing communities at the outer edges of the region peacefully coexist? Clearly people want choices in selecting their environments. A nice old house in a dense Cleveland Heights neighborhood may be perfect for me but utterly unappealing to someone who dreams of a new house on acres of land in Geauga County or a loft apartment in downtown Cleveland. The metropolitan regions most likely to thrive in the new century are those that offer the widest range of high quality housing options and amenities. The implication for Cleveland, then, is that we all need to look beyond the boundaries of the places where we have chosen to live and work and seriously consider what is best for the region.
Of course, that’s easier said than done when each local jurisdiction clings tightly to its home rule authority and every gain for one community seems to come at the expense of another. But together we must figure out how to stabilize the central city as the economic and cultural heart of the region, while simultaneously protecting older suburbs from decline, encouraging appealing and responsible new development at the periphery, and preserving sensitive environmental and agricultural land, or our region will never achieve its full potential. Creating a dynamic and equitable regional vision is a big challenge, to be sure, but our collective futures depend on it.
