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Book Reviews
Much contemporary U.S. urban literature is propelled by a like (European cities) and a dislike (U.S. suburbs). In this literature, European cities are examples of urban systems done right; the corollary, of course, is that U.S. cities are not. Compare Paris and Dallas, for example. American cities, the argument goes, would be wise to emulate the scale and capture the vitality of their European brethren with healthy centers, mixed-use neighborhoods, small shops, and pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares. True, some U.S. cities come close—San Francisco certainly, Boston perhaps—but even they do not quite measure up. In this same literature, U.S. suburbs epitomize the failings of the American urban system. These enclaves are said to suck the life out of central cities; further, they are exclusionary and boring. The quintessential image of the postmodern, suburban edge city is the big-box retail store.
Pietro Nivola’s book, at first glance, seems a vehicle for driving home the like and the dislike. But it detours from the expected path: Laws of the Landscape challenges both the like and the dislike. Nivola counsels the reader to exercise caution in embracing European solutions that are fundamentally at odds with the U.S. context. In addition, he suggests that U.S. suburbs may not be anathema to civilization as we know it. The book’s willingness to confront conventional thinking is one of its most compelling features.
There really aren’t any laws in Laws of the Landscape. Instead, land usages result from contextual conditions and a congeries of private and public decisions, both individual and collective. Government actions affect land use, to be sure, and policies and programs produce myriad patterns. Additional impacts on the landscape come from the unintended consequences of government decisions: secondary effects, indirect spinoffs, and the like. The book pursues answers to three questions: (1) Why are U.S. urban areas the way they are? (2) What are the consequences of the urban arrangement? (3) What would it take to change patterns of land use in U.S. urban areas?
The answer to the first question involves several considerations. The U.S. has space, a lot of space. This fundamental characteristic makes the U.S. case very different from the European setting. Urban development patterns in the U.S. have been influenced by other factors including high rates of population growth in the postwar period, the incidence of serious crime in central cities, increased racial and ethnic diversity, and the embrace of new technologies. However, it is government at all levels that has played a major role in determining the urban form. In the U.S., policy choices have emphasized highway construction rather than mass transit, kept the price of fuel low, favored the taxation of income and property more than consumption, encouraged the development of shopping malls in the suburbs, and so on. The result is a remarkably dispersed urban population. In Europe, different policy preferences have generated a different urban form.
Readers will likely agree with Nivola on the factors that have contributed to America’s urban landscape. His analysis of the consequences, however, might generate some debate. Many observers contend that suburbanization, or the more pejorative term, “sprawl,” generates a host of negative outcomes. The case against sprawl is broad: the installation of costly infrastructure and the abandonment of the physical plant of the central city, the overconsumption of natural resources such as farmland and wetlands, the increased reliance on fossil fuels that pollute the air and enhance the greenhouse effect, the worsening of traffic congestion, and a widening gap in socioeconomic status between suburbanites and city dwellers. Nivola explores these purported outcomes and, relying on various data sources, suggests that low-density development may not be as inefficient as some critics claim.
Efforts to change urban land use patterns in the U.S. have been modest, at best, in their impact. For example, programs to revitalize downtown areas—whether urban renewal of the 1960s or enterprise zones in the 1990s—have produced disappointing results. These and other governmental policy initiatives have been minimal, misguided, and even contradictory. A metropolitan area’s effort to manage growth, for example, runs counter to federal tax and energy policy. Thus urban fringe land is being consumed at increasingly higher rates at the same time that concerns over sprawl have gained new urgency.
The failure of the standard package of remedies to produce desired results provides the platform for Nivola’s fresh alternatives. He offers a sweeping set of suggestions, some borrowed from relevant European policies, for reconfiguring the U.S. urban form. These are “big picture” reforms—for example, overhauling tax policy to emphasize consumption taxes, abolishing the highway trust fund, providing fiscal relief for local jurisdictions, improving public education, reducing inner city crime rates, encouraging small business development, and maintaining liberal immigration policies. Broad-scale policy changes are necessary to alter the urban land use logic.
Laws of the Landscape is a provocative book that will intrigue scholars and analysts alike. Its “myth-busting” is refreshing, although some readers will desire more systematic comparisons between the U.S. and a set of European countries. But Nivola is convincing in his effort to show that without fundamental changes in public policy, the American urban landscape will continue its outward push. Tinkering around the edges of public policy will hardly stall, much less reverse, land use patterns.
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