Stroads and Sprawl– Urban Planning in Charlottesville-Albemarle and Beyond
An intersection of US-19 in New Port Richey, FL. Source: VOX
Most new urban development of the last century is cold and uninviting at best, and hideous and detrimentally society-altering at worst. Picture the quintessential North American stretch of highway: with strip malls on either side, superficially satisfying most regular commercial needs of the nearby community. The succinct and pejorative term “stroad” was coined by author and civil engineer Charles Marohn and popularized by Jason Slaughter of the Youtube Channel “Not Just Bikes.” It describes the unsightly amalgamation of a street (think: the Corner) and a road (think: Interstate 64.) A stroad is a high-speed, multi-lane thoroughfare with sprawling businesses and massive parking lots on either side (think: Emmet Street North where Trader Joe’s is.) Throughout this piece, I may at times refer to stroads as “commercial sprawl.” For our purposes, they are identical in meaning.
Stroads are three things: 1) soul-crushing, 2) financially unsustainable, and 3) dangerous for drivers and the few pedestrians who dare brave them. I will focus on points 1 and 2, while maintaining point 3 as an assumption (which the reader can verify next time they are driving anywhere north of town or attempting, unimaginably, to visit any large grocery store in Charlottesville by foot.)
Most people must resign to tolerating these developments, because they have neither the political power nor the time to take on the dysfunctional fabric of American urban development. On top of this, I suspect that many of us have been conditioned to turn a blind eye to the overwhelmingly unattractive North American built landscape because our need for walkable spaces is satisfied mainly by old towns, like the Corner or the Downtown Mall. These are the sections of cities that were largely constructed pre-1950s and were lucky enough to be spared from demolition when interstate highways were built throughout the nation. For those of us in Charlottesville, Vinegar Hill, the predominantly Black neighborhood that was leveled in 1965 largely without the say of residents, comes to mind. Today, the area that was once Vinegar Hill is mostly parking lots. It goes without saying that today, the remains of many old towns suffer from crumbling infrastructure, homelessness, and poverty, all of which are often not adequately addressed by local governments. Alternatively, they may be gentrified, pushing the aforementioned social problems to the periphery of the municipality. For all their problems, the more successful old towns still make up the majority of the built areas in North America that are interesting enough for people to even bother to visit.
What very often distinguishes the role of successful old towns from the role of sprawling new developments is that we visit old towns because we want to, and we live in them if we can afford to. In contrast, we visit sprawling commercial suburbia because we need to, and often live in sprawling residential suburbia because we can’t afford to live anywhere else.
This phenomenon is not universal. In most developed countries, it is not a wild idea that a middle-class family (even a middle-class family living in a suburban area) could live a walking distance from most amenities, that their children could bike to school, and that they could (God forbid) survive without a car. So why has the US condemned its middle class to a soccer-mom lifestyle of chauffeuring kids around all day, driving 25 minutes down a multi-lane stroad to go to Trader Joe’s, and reminiscing about four years of college, the only time they experienced decent walkable infrastructure? This is not to mention anyone who does not have a car and must rely on sparse and underfunded public bus systems if they are to avoid entering the car-centric hellscape by bike or foot.
The theory that Marohn puts forth in “America’s Growth Ponzi Scheme” is that sprawling development is an unintentional Ponzi scheme, meaning suburban expansion is only sustainable as long as there is constant sprawling expansion. Various case studies on Strong Towns detail this mathematically in terms of tax revenue in specific localities. While I haven’t examined local data closely enough to make any radical claims, I also haven’t observed anything about the format of the Charlottesville-Albemarle area that suggests it has been immune to this scheme. And frankly, no matter the financial theory behind the dysfunction, I don’t think we accomplish anything by sugarcoating the monstrosity that is Emmet Street North. Urban peripheries should not need to look like this, and yet almost all expansion today is sprawling and inefficient.
I will note that to widely apply Marohn’s claim, we would have to consider nation-wide transfer payments as well as econometrically accounting for global financial trends. Nevertheless, his foundational points are extremely valuable moving forward with planning policy.
New roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure projects in the United States are mostly federally funded. That means for a city or county (like Charlottesville or Albemarle) it doesn’t cost much to build new infrastructure, and according to Marohn, they are incentivized to expand by the influx of tax revenue from new developments. However, low-density sprawl does not generate enough tax revenue to maintain this infrastructure when it eventually falls into disrepair, so, many urbanists conclude, cities must continue to expand to maintain existing infrastructure.
Furthermore, sprawling suburban neighborhoods (whose residents cannot walk to a grocery store) naturally create demand for commercial suburban sprawl (where these residents must drive to a grocery store.) The hegemony of this low-density format also leads public services and amenities to be located a drive away from residents. This is not to mention policies we see are directly harmful and complicit in maintaining this hegemony, including parking minimums, which are responsible for the giant empty swaths of concrete you see in any commercial area in Albemarle. While Albemarle has maintained its parking minimums, the City of Charlottesville exempts downtown development from parking requirements.
Robert Moses, a powerful mid-20th century urban planner, was infamous for building expressways through New York neighborhoods, forcibly displacing residents. He also deliberately and systematically prevented public transportation development, going so far as to strategically design overpasses such that buses could not enter certain neighborhoods. Urban planners have come a long way since Robert Moses and his contemporaries at least in academic settings. That is to say, planners have succeeded in theory but not yet in practice. What’s more, we all know what kinds of places are beautiful and worth visiting. Most regular people can come to a vague consensus that sprawl, and undoubtedly commercial sprawl, isn’t pretty. Perhaps the only point they might disagree on is the functional benefit of tolerating sprawl. I argue that sprawl is not only unsightly, but it is also economically inefficient and unsustainable, and survives and proliferates only because of short-term financial incentives, zoning laws, and existing auto-oriented infrastructure.
So what can be done? Urban planners and civil engineers must have a concrete vision with popular support, and secure the cooperation of local governments. Moreover, the general public must be loudly dissatisfied with the status quo. It’s hard to know whether change will ultimately come from the bottom-up or top-down. At the moment, local groups like Livable Cville and non-profit organizations like Strong Towns are the main actors supporting the preservation and creation of sustainable, equitable, and engaging spaces. Economically, I like to think that demand for a better landscape, whether expressed through consumption decisions or voting, might eventually reform these issues. However, when tackling such a deeply-rooted and hegemonic problem, I know it will take more than people not liking stroads for us to see them disappear.