COLUMBUS AREA Suburban sprawl to take over
The region is losing 47 acres of farmland daily, a planning panel estimates.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Sometime this year, the scales will tip and more people will live outside the interstate that circles Columbus than within it, planners say.
Franklin County has been growing more slowly than the six surrounding counties combined since 1970, according to planners in Delaware County, just north of Columbus. And for every new person who settled inside the Interstate 270 loop since 2000, nearly four people have settled outside.
Urban sprawl has given way to suburban sprawl in the 21st century, with the majority of construction far from the city hub. The Columbus region loses 47 acres of farmland each day to subdivisions and shopping centers, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission estimates.
Some of the areas most affected by the shift are townships, which generally have the most undeveloped land and weaker governments.
"While it's great for a while to live there with all the open space and clean air and lower taxes, it's not going to be that way for long," said Kimberly Gibson, the commission's regional growth strategy program manager. "Everybody else is coming, too. And they'll need the new roads and new schools and new libraries. And then there will be the taxes to bring all the things they left."
Population projection
The commission calculates that by 2030, 1.4 million people, or about 60 percent of the region's population, will live outside I-270, compared with 726,000 inside.
In Delaware County, planners expect most of the growth to come from those leaving Franklin County. The three townships closest to the Franklin County line nearly tripled their combined population from 1990 to 2000.
People are moving to the townships to flee crime and urban school systems, said Mike Cochran, executive director of the Ohio Township Association.
The development needed to accommodate that growth will take up an additional 700 square miles of land if unchecked, Gibson said. She and a 70-member committee working since 2003 hope to persuade local governments in the region to cluster houses and businesses more densely, which would require about 400 square miles.
Townships taking action
But many government officials outside the I-270 loop are limiting high-density development to spare school systems and other government services from a rush of newcomers.
"A lot of townships surrounding major cities are zoned much more restrictively than cities," Cochran said. "Township zoning is sprawl, if your definition is going into virgin territory. But it's less houses than it would be in cities."
Cochran blames home builders for the sprawl, but they say their hands are tied by the townships, which dictate where and how they build.
"It's not our fault," said Jim Hilz, executive director of the Building Industry Association. "There are very few areas where densities are higher than two units an acre. In fact, they're trending the other way, to one an acre."
Charging fees
In an attempt to make the sprawl pay for itself, some local governments have begun charging impact fees. The city of Delaware, north of Columbus, has used the $3.7 million it has collected since 2001 to buy police and fire vehicles and expand a recreation center, city spokesman Lee Yoakum said.
Other efforts to slow sprawl include a fund that pays farmers to keep their land from being developed and tax incentives for property owners to restrict development.
"What's happened so far isn't enough," said Larry Libby, director of the John Glenn Institute for Public Service, a think tank at Ohio State University. "The [next] governor of the state of Ohio needs to say the growth pattern of Ohio is a matter of importance."