In Search of a City: Urban Flight
Years ago, OSU Professor Hazel Morrow Jones studied home purchases in central Ohio to see where people moved within metropolitan Columbus. She discovered that 80% of the people who sold and bought a home in central Ohio moved at least one mile further from Broad and High, a startling outward migration.
Sadly, the flight has continued. The Columbus Dispatch reported on October 1 that Franklin County had a net loss of 4,161 people to outlying counties between 2007 and 20o8. The movement of residents within metropolitan Columbus is still largely one way.
Enabling the flight are government policies that reward and encourage sprawl with new highways, interchanges, schools, water and sewer systems, and other infrastructure. Even tax abatements, originally designed to benefit distressed urban neighborhoods, are now used mainly on the urban fringe, fueling abandonment of existing urban centers.
Ironically, taxes paid by established neighborhoods and commercial districts often fund their own demise.
October 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am
All is not completely lost though… Columbus has a lot of potential lying dormant in neighborhoods like Weinland Park, The King Lincoln District, Franklinton, The Hilltop, and Milo Grogan. With the right types of revitalization programs and a steady increase in a population willing to move back into these areas over the next few decades, we can course-correct some of the sprawl/flight issues of the past half century.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:11 am
We do have the classic doughnut urban sprawl. A semi-viable downtown ringed by pockets of nice/blight and an aging inner suburban ring and a new gleaming outer shell. I do wonder what our downtown would look like if these giant corporate campuses ringing the city were more properly placed in the urban core. I can clearly see why it might be nice for those living in the suburbs to work near home, but that desire exacts a toll on our urban core. One thing to consider is the fact that we are being called on to make decisions that will affect our long-term growth pattern. Hopefully this is not too confusing, but the present is the future’s past. Just as we look back at decisions to build the freeways and how that shaped the city, we have the power to help influence how this city might look when we have topped 2 million in population. That population level is only a matter of time, and we have a unique opportunity to make this a great place for the rest of the 21st century and beyond. If Chicago could see its coming greatness by putting in mass transit when their population was where we are now, we need to similarly foresee our coming greatness. Great cities are primarily a function of density and our choices for transportation will enable or destroy that density.