toledoblade.com --

Sweeping lawns, long, lonely roads, and golden rows of corn might be enticing for those wanting to escape the traffic congestion and noise pollution of the city.

But buyers beware: Today's green acres could be tomorrow's asphalt parking lot.

Already, neighborhoods in Maumee and Sylvania and swaths of Fulton and Wood counties are beginning to show signs of poor planning or over-development: sluggish tax bases, concentrated pockets of poverty, stressed infrastructure, and struggling schools, according to a new report by renowned urban researcher Myron Orfield.

"There's always a group of people in the suburbs who think that urban sprawl is something that only Toledo needs to worry about," said Sue Wuest, a researcher at University of Toledo's Urban Affairs Center.

"It's not. It's about them too," she said.

Like so many other parts of the country, the culprit is a tax system that encourages new development rather than redevelopment, said Mr. Orfield, who will present his report, Toledo Metropatterns, from 9 to 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Blessed Sacrament Community Center, 2600 West Sylvania Ave.

"One of the problems is that you've got these endless highways built to nowhere and the development, of course, follows them out to the end," he said.

Mr. Orfield's firm, Minneapolis-based Ameregis, has analyzed patterns of development in Lucas, Wood, and Fulton counties, using average family incomes, tax bases, school lunch programs, and census information.

With that data, Ameregis has delineated four types of communities around Toledo: at-risk developed areas, at-risk low-density, affluent areas, and developing bedroom communities.

Toledo itself remains the fifth category - core city.

Not surprisingly, the data show Toledo struggling with dwindling population and an increased demand on services. Conversely, Monclova, Waterville, and Sylvania townships are listed as affluent.

But what might be startling to some are the local communities identified by the study as "at risk." Among them are smaller cities and villages - a stretch from Northwood south to Luckey and into Pemberville, for example - to which some may have fled to escape problems inside Toledo's city limits.

Other "at-risk" places include Grand Rapids, part of Wood County from Weston to south of Custar, and York, Chesterfield, and Dover townships in Fulton County.

In a previous report earlier this year, Ameregis listed most of the east-west corridor just north of the Michigan-Ohio line in Monroe and Lenawee counties as "at-risk."

The findings aren't surprising for those in the business of urban planning. Within the outward, concentric circles of decay that are the side effects of sprawl, each inner ring will be the first to see the tell-tale stresses, such as school systems and local governments wresting with budget shortfalls.

For years, community leaders have lamented urban sprawl, speaking anecdotally about dilapidated neighborhoods in the inner city, traffic jams in the suburbs, and valuable farm land being lapped up for fast food restaurants, video stores, and strip malls in what had been recently rural acres.

Now, though, their concern has been assigned hard data.

"The suburbs are no longer the Leave It To Beaver prototype anymore," said Tom Luce, research director at Ameregis. "They're struggling. That really cuts across the grain for people."

Inside developed communities, like Maumee and Sylvania, families continue to move outward beyond the city limits, leaving older infrastructure and schools and a shrinking tax base.

In communities that are still developing, new residents expect smooth roads, water and sewer services, and a good school system to follow.

That, in turn, puts pressure on local governments to provide those services, pitting them against each other to lure new development, even though they speak about maintaining green space and peace and quiet.

When a business comes knocking with tax dollars in its pocket, officials get "wobbly knees," said John Nagy, a staff planner at the Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commission.

"Everyone feels good walking away from those [strategic planning] meetings, but when it comes to actually putting it into practice, there's a great deal of unease," he said.

And there's another problem. Though the suburbs may feel and appear to be healthy, a declining inner core eventually affects them too.

Economies these days are tied together, and a decaying central city doesn't attract new business, said Mr. Orfield, who also is a former Minnesota state senator.

"Think about it. That company that you work for [in the suburbs] isn't going to grow as fast now," he said.

"Maybe it doesn't stay. Maybe it doesn't expand. Maybe other companies it would do business with aren't going to locate in your region now."

Worse, the study warns, disparities in wealth between area communities continue to grow at an alarming rate, "faster than in any other major Ohio region."

That is most clear in the schools, where government-subsidized lunches are a "proxy" for poverty, according to Ameregis, which also considered sudden growth or decline in student enrollment in schools when ranking sprawl status.

During the 1990s, poverty within Toledo Public Schools swelled more than twice as fast as the rest of the region.

Schools in surrounding communities now find their budgets are no longer keeping pace with operating costs.

To contain sprawl, governments need to consider the long-term and regional effects of their decisions about development, Mr. Orfield warns. Moreover, they should share some tax revenues to minimize their competing against each other for new development.

They're not changes that would be easy, that's for sure. But the alternative isn't a pretty picture, either, Ms. Wuest said.

"Right now," said the urban affairs researcher, "we're competing ourselves right out of the competition."

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