The Virginian-Pilot
Monday, July 19, 1999
BY ALEX MARSHALL
New ways of looking how we grow and develop are rare. But I think I’ve found one. It’s the “favored quarter” theory.
Myron Orfield, a state representative from Minneapolis, talks about it in his book, Metropolitics, (Brookings 1998).
In every metropolitan area, Orfield says, there is usually one chunk of the region that is receiving the lion’s share of private investment. Here is where the expensive new homes are going, the new offices and the new shopping centers.
Orfield calls it “The Favored Quarter.”
Now here’s the kicker . Not only is this favored quarter getting most of the private investment, it’s also getting most of the public investment. Here is where is going the lion’s share of new roads, sewers, schools and libraries.
Does Hampton Roads have “a favored quarter?” I think so, although perhaps it’s more like a favored edge. On the Southside, it starts in Sandbridge around Pungo, goes up by the Municipal center, past Stumpy Lake into Chesapeake, and then on into Suffolk.
Here is where the fat McMansions are being built in spanking new subdivisions, here is where the state and city are spending millions of dollars widening two lane roads into four and six-lanes with medians and turn lanes. This is where the Chesapeake City Council is debating whether to extend sewer service — after just spending millions on the Oak Grove Connector.
It would be interesting to see just how many dollars The Edge is receiving in public dollars, compared to the rest of South Hampton Roads. How much public investment have places like Bayside and Norview seen in past decades?
Well, so what, you might ask? You naturally spend public money to try to catch up with all that private growth, right?
Actually, it’s just the opposite. Everything we spend on new roads, sewers and services promotes the very growth we are trying to “catch up” to. In actuality, we are subsidizing growth in one area, at the expense of all the rest of the region. It’s as if the favored quarter has managed to rig up the game at everyone else’s expense, Orfield says.
“These (favored) quarters are developing suburban areas that have mastered the art of skimming off the cream of metropolitan growth, while accepting as few metropolitan responsibilities as possible,” Orfield said in an article in Two Cities magazine.
In an interview from his home in Minneapolis, Orfield said that every metropolitan area has a favored quarter. The King of Prussia suburbs outside Philadelphia, for example, represents 20 percent of the households but is get 80 percent of the growth, he said.
It goes beyond just roads and sewers. Favored quarters, Orfield said, tend to keep out lower-income people with large-lot zoning and other measures. Only the richest gain entrance. With such policies, the favored quarters are able to actually decrease their social costs and while their tax bases increase.
Take a step back, and we can see that favoring one quarter over others is the wrong way to plan growth. It encourages metropolitan areas to develop “new rings” of growth, causing “old rings” to decline, Orfield says.
Others are focusing on the same dynamic. A study in Baltimore showed that the number of new schools built in the outer suburbs were equal to the number torn down in the inner city, a Sierra club official said at the Smart Growth meeting last week.
The alternative to a favored quarter is to spend your infrastructure dollars where people already live.
Private investment follows public investment. Build big roads in the middle of nowhere, and pretty soon you’ll have shopping malls and subdivisions. Build rail lines, bike paths, recreation centers and maintain what you already have, and pretty soon you’ll have renovated strip shopping centers and young couples adding additions onto old homes.
In this light, we can see why the proposed Southeastern Parkway between Chesapeake and Virginia Beach is such a bad idea. Right in the middle of the Edge, our “Favored Quarter,” we would plant a massive highway, thus greatly expanding the growth that already exists.
From this light, we can see why the light rail line between Virginia Beach and Norfolk is such a good thing. It spends our tax dollars where people already live, and so stabilizes and lifts up an area that might otherwise decay. Not to mention making the resort’s July 4 planning a lot easier.
Do we have a “favored quarter?” And how do we start passing the favors around more evenly?