6. Underutilized infrastructure

Because of their loss of population over the past decades, most cities have underutilized infrastructure that could become the basis for a new collaborative, market-based approach to housing development.

       An interesting and relevant question for any region is how much of the expected growth can be accommodated by land that is already serviced? Analysis in Chicago was performed using the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission's digitized land use inventory. The results suggest that the region's communities can accommodate the entire expected growth (700,000 households over the next 20 years) within walking or shuttle distance of existing mass transit under current zoned densities.³⁶ At the national level, restructuring activities of entire industries such as utilities and railroads are creating newly orphaned land resources. One option for long-term metropolitan planning is to focus on these newly available lands. In some cases, already assembled rights-of-way could represent joint-stakes opportunities for coalitions of multiple municipalities and communities within regions along such corridors.

7. In-Place Infrastructure with Underutilized Carrying Capacity

These in-place investments include water, sewer, gas, electric, telecommunications, roads and mass transit systems. The Wharton Real Estate Center estimates the value of this infrastructure in the nine largest cities alone at $1.6 Trillion.³⁷ Disinvestment and underutilization result in the premature write-off of these valuable assets, while maintenance of over-built systems leads to excess customer charges and taxes. ³⁸

       The cost savings of new development in previously used lands also are worth considering explicitly. The costs of "hooking up" the "next" home developed can be defined as the "marginal costs" of new infrastructure to convert a farm or a ranch into a subdivision. This cost is approximately $60,000 per dwelling unit, while the associated cost in the same region to upgrade infrastructure to connect that same home to existing systems may be less than $10,000. The metropolitan areas of both Chicago and South Florida are each expected to grow by 2 million new persons over the next 20 years. In each case, the net saving which results from accommodating the expected new population where we can maximize existing infrastructure use is between $35 and $50 billion. ³⁹

Contents

• Part I The Tangible Assets of Cities
• Part II Barriers to Valuing the Assets of Cities
• Part III Intangible Assets: Social Capital and Place
• Part IV A Newer Geography of Hope
• Part V Conclusion: Making Community Count
• Endnotes