Metro Growth: The Hidden Cost of Urban Sprawl

BY LUKE ZARZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Drive along the interstate into Colorado from its eastern side and the rolling plains slowly transform into vast hills of lights.

Shelley Cook, a former director with the Regional Transportation District and a former Arvada councilor, moved to the city in 1983. Back then, those lights weren’t as bright.

“(I moved) back when Olde Town was that sleepy little place and property values were cheap,” she said.

Over the decades, Denver and the cities and towns that surround it have grown together, absorbing wide open spaces in all directions. Every decade for almost a century, the region’s growth rate has outpaced the national average, according to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, and prices did too.

“People aren’t able to live right in Olde Town, property values are expensive,” Cook said.

In the last 10 years, the region grew fast, and the Regional Transportation District is keeping track. RTD expects the population to keep rising, from 3.36 million people in 2020 to 4.41 million by 2050.

at means more roads, more water pipes, more single-family homes and ultimately more greenhouse gas emissions. In the past 30 years, Colorado has warmed substantially, and estimates project a rise by 2.5-5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050.

“I’m very concerned too, have been for years,” Cook said. “But for the world, for the people who follow us and the people who live in other places and people in developing countries who are the hardest hit in many cases, I’m very, very concerned.”

Zoom in from the mounting pressures of a world issue and see Colorado’s local municipalities — and residents — at the forefront of a solution. Climate anxiety may be alleviated with solutions that aim to reduce emissions.

Housing is part of the equation. Increasing density, building developments near transit lines and planning for other vehicles, like e-bikes, can all be solutions to the climate crisis. ough, they may come with other issues too.

Higher density results in less lawn use, accessible transit increases ridershi[ and electric cars emit less pollution. However, people are less inclined to live in dense areas, funding for transit remains low and electric cars may outsource pollution elsewhere.

Part of the problem is traced to housing and the way Americans live, according to one study from the University of California Berkeley. Households in the United States alone directly or indirectly bear responsibility for about 20% of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, and those households represent only 4.3% of the total global population.

Local leaders have identi ed the scope of the problem, solutions and, in some cases, new problems created by attempts at solutions.

Pouring sand on a map ey don’t know if density is causing sprawl: they just know that’s what happened historically.

Christopher Jones, director of the CoolClimate Network at the University of California, analyzed the relationship between density and carbon emissions per household.

To measure the carbon footprints, Jones and his team looked at six key variables to estimate consumption: household income, household/family size, size of their homes, home ownership, education level and vehicle ownership.

Overall, Jones said they didn’t nd any correlation between overall density and emissions. Looking at zip codes everywhere, there are very rural areas with very low emissions, very rural areas with high emissions, cities with low emissions and so forth.

However, there exists a strong correlation between dense cities and emissions.

“It’s only when you get into the very, very high density areas that you have low emissions,” he said.

Looking at New York City, those living in Manhattan or Brooklyn have low carbon footprints, but that doesn’t necessarily mean lower emissions overall. Large cities are associated with extensive suburbs.

“It’s like pouring sand on a map. You can pour more sand in the middle and the pile just gets bigger and bigger. What you really need to do is pour the sand in a cup on the map and have it go up without going out, and we haven’t seen that in the United States,” he said.

“Large populous cities actually have higher carbon footprints overall, even while the people who live in the urban core, their carbon footprints are much lower. So what you really need to do is prevent sprawl,” he said.

Sprawl by design e Denver area isn’t zoned for density. Instead, it encourages the kind of growth Jones nds problematic.

Jones sees building density as a short-term solution to reducing carbon emissions from housing. Technology and decarbonizing the economy in the long term will be much more e cient. at serves those who don’t want to change their lifestyle, as well as those who can’t a ord to live in dense areas, since density sometimes leads to pricing owners out of the area.

In Colorado, vehicle fuel and electricity are the two highest contributors to one’s carbon footprint, according to the CoolClimate Network data.

“If you can get truly renewable electricity to power your vehicle and your home, that’s certainly the quickest thing you can do,” he said. ough, that may take years to come.

Carrie Makarewicz, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Colorado Denver, said roughly 80% of land in the metro area is zoned for residential single-family homes.

“Of the percentage of land in the region (included in the Denver Regional Council of Governments, or DRCOG) that is zoned only for residential, whether the zoning is for low, medium or high density residential (but excluding agricultural land that allows residential), the very low density zoning is 83.9% of land. Our de nition of low density is almost exclusively single family detached,” Makarewicz wrote in an email.

Just 4.4% of the built housing units is for two-to-nine unit housing.

A lot of communities in Colorado are mostly single-family homes, resulting in less density and forcing developments to sprawl out. Within Denver metro communities, that means space is limited.

According to Root Policy Research, between 2000 and 2019, Adams County increased single-family attached homes by 34%, Arapahoe County by 26%, Douglas County by 76% and Je erson County by 11%.

Progress to diversify housing stock has picked up in some areas, such as in Douglas County. e county increased duplexes by 174%, developments with three to four units by 179%, developments with ve to 49 units by 220%, and developments with 50 or more units by 471%.

However, numbers for denser residential developments are much lower than single-family homes. In 2000 in Douglas County, there were 54,428 single-family attached homes, 103 duplexes, 738 of three to four units, 4,453 of ve to 49 units and 773 of 50 or more units. With most of the land zoned for single-family homes, the process for developers to build anything else is more arduous for them. It means they’ll most likely face hurdles, including public hearings and approval processes involving elected o cials.

Local purview

Zoning rules, infrastructure and transit between communities all impact climate change and a ordability. So does hyperlocal opposition to projects. at’s because housing plays a major role in how people live, and it’s decided by local electeds.

“Land use decisions are the purview of local governments exclusively,” said Jacob Riger, the long range transportation planning manager for Denver Regional Council of Governments.

It puts power within municipal government, since housing policy is local: cities set codes, they vote on plans for development and they decide how they want their land to look. at accounts for the housing stock today.

Infrastructure within cities can address climate change. Dense, walkable neighborhoods with public transit have the potential to lower carbon emissions and there are plans for such neighborhoods popping up along the Front Range — along with ghts over them.

Bill Rigler, principal at Boulderbased Greenlight Strategy, has seen it all.

“NIMBY tactics are literally the same in every community across the Front Range,” Rigler said. “I will never not be astounded by what a group of 10 or 15 angry individuals with the working knowledge of Nextdoor and Facebook can do to scuttle or dramatically alter the proposals for housing.”

NIMBY stands for Not In My Back Yard, but given the adamant opposition of groups to some projects, Rigler said a new attitude has appeared: “NOPE,” standing for Nothing On Planet Earth.

“ ere is rarely — if ever — a time I can think of where opponents to these projects have relied 100% on the truth. ey have a very uid relationship with facts,” Rigler said. Rigler’s group works with developers to help get mixed-used and affordable housing projects approved and only accepts developments if they reach a certain standard regarding sustainability.

He noted each one he works on goes above city building requirements, like water usage, by a factor of two or three. Even so, approval isn’t guaranteed and extra e orts