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What does land use have to do with poverty?
Why are Ohio’s poverty rankings of interest to Greater Ohio, an organization intent on improving the state’s policies that affect how we use land?
Better land use alone won’t solve the problems of poverty. But, as with many issues, how we use our land contributes to the causes of poverty and can be part of the solution. Here are a few of the connections between poverty rates, especially in our larger cities, and land use:
- As new development has taken place on the fringes of cities, middle- and upper-income families have moved out of center cities.
- When the poor – more specifically, the family with an unemployed Mom or Dad who once lived in the same neighborhood with you – are no longer nearby, we aren’t as able or apt to lend a helping hand. We tend to give less to direct-aid charities and we aren’t able to provide the link to available work.
- With the movement of business and industry to edge cities and exurbs, low-income workers – who can’t afford to live nearby – also can’t afford to get to the jobs provided.
- When cities become centers of poverty, they are less attractive to the highly educated young workers we need to attract in order to draw the kinds of businesses that thrive in today’s economy.
- Cities, faced with lower tax revenues as well as growing social needs, are unable to keep up with maintenance and replacement of public infrastructure – let alone invest adequately in economic growth.
- A state that spends as much as Ohio does on growing duplicative new infrastructure – everything from roads to recreation centers – is not making the most economic use of its public dollars.
- In a larger sense, a society that spends as much as we do simply getting from place to place is not investing what it could in education, job training, research and development, and other efforts that would support job growth.
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