Pittsburgh makes another top-10 list

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by chielgirl

Philosophical question: What's the big deal about growth? Is maintenance so bad?

Do we really want sprawl and all that's associated with it?

I think that is an excellent question. Long term, I think a slow-growth model is often preferable. One way to think of it is in terms of capital investments, defined broadly to include all sorts of infrastructure, institutions of all sorts (cultural, educational, government, etc.), and so on.

On the one hand, if you have no growth at all or shrinkage, you may find it difficult to finance necessary capital improvements and upgrades, including being stuck with excessive legacy costs (to the extent you are failing to meet prior growth expectations). Unfortunately, Pittsburgh is in some respects a good illustration of that problem. On the other hand, if growth is too fast you may exceed the maximum practical rate of new capital investment such that you don't expand and improve the related goods and services fast enough to keep up with the growth. "Sprawl" can be a symptom of that sort of problem, and arguably some of the most rapidly growing U.S. cities in recent decades have suffered from it.

So, arguably it makes sense to seek out a happy medium where there is enough growth to attract capital financing and limit legacy costs issues, but not so much that you can't keep up in terms of capital investment. Get that balance approximately right, and you should see improving prosperity and quality of life on various per capita measures, and that is more or less what many U.S. cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and so on have achieved (although recently they have run into a problem with excessive housing costs, which is a whole other issue).

I'd actually tend to agree that the recent apparent growth rate in Pittsburgh may well be too high in light of this sort of analysis, if it was sustained over an extended period. However, my hope is that this is more a kind of temporary "catch up" growth--in many ways we were left behind by the likes of NYC, Boston, and SF in recent decades as they were slowly growing and we were stagnating, and if we had a short term burst of growth before slowing down onto such a path it might turn out fine.

But there would be specific problems to watch out for, assuming this is the unfolding scenario. One would be signs that our renewed growth was not being matched by renewed capital investment. In some respects we are doing fine--for example, our universities and hospitals are definitely investing lots of capital. But in other respects, such as public transportation, we are in the midst of a huge capital investment crisis, in part because we are not in control of our own fate (the state and the feds control most of the financing in that area).

And as noted, housing prices are a known concern in light of the experience of other cities. Lots of people have been studying this issue, and I think it is fair to say some of these issues are interrelated--e.g., if you want to have cheap housing near high-quality public transportation, you need to provide enough high-quality public transportation to make that possible. But some are about housing policy itself, and there is a good argument some other cities have screwed themselves by making it excessively difficult to build new housing units in prime locations. I don't really get much sense of that around here yet, but it is worth keeping an eye on.

Anyway, all this is very complicated, but I absolutely agree that more growth is not always better. On the other hand, you can't really do all that much to control growth--after all, we have open migration within the United States--which is why I tend to focus on the issues of how to best manage and prepare for the growth you are getting.

[DaBurgh]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I have a feeling the poster in question knows, which is sufficient for me.

Well don't go trusting your feelings too much

[chielgirl]

Thanks Brian,
I've seen cities grow too quickly and become nightmares.

Public Transport is interesting. PAT screwed us and themselves for years and it's come home to roost. Unfortunately we all pay the price. There were decades of mismanagement.