Recently, I have been thinking about sprawl and the economic forces involved. Where I live in North Texas, most voters are fairly conservative and when ranch land gets converted to more urban uses (residential and retail), local governments rarely set aside any land for public parks. As homebuyers are expressing a preference for parks, walking trails, etc, large builders respond with sprawl/enclave developments with parks that are only really accessible by people who live there. At the same time, none of my friends would ever want to live in one of these enclaves. I was just wondering if, perhaps, among the other more common reasons, if a lack of public parks might be one more contributing factor to typical modern development.
And, no I wouldn't expect a private firm to produce a non-excludable park. I do think that a lot of times, economists are hostile the the idea of a public good like a park if there is some way to make the good excludable (fenced parks in London, country clubs, etc.). In doing that, I think we underestimate the public good of "community." We live near a public park that is used by a couple of hundred people every weekend. I may be wrong, but I think this communal sharing by everyone in town generates some external benefit (perhaps, less littering and crime, better neighborly relations, etc.) that is hard to quantify. -Jeff >>> Stephen Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/30/04 11:09AM >>> Your question seems to be whether a pure commons can make money and the answer is no. There has to be some way of either taking advantage of high costs for free riders (not worth a trip to a suburb you don't live in) or there's some excludability (botanical garden with entrance fee, greens fee on a golf course, etc.). You ask if sprawl is the only option; it is not. You can build a park and charge people to use it, excluding non-payers. If your definition of a park is that there's no exclusion, then why would you expect anyone to voluntarily build one in a densely populated area? On Jul 30, 2004, at 10:57 AM, Jeffrey Rous wrote: > As a topic, I am more interested local parks and other local > greenspace rather than golf courses and Disney World. It seems that to > have parks provided by private developers requires the type of > sprawling enclave development that many city planners (and most of my > homebuying friends) are beginning to rebel against. This is because > one developer building 300 houses in a remote enclave can find > building a park profitable through higher prices for the houses > (remoteness creates excludability). In a more mixed use type > development with a grid street sytem and interconnectedness between > neighborhoods, the free rider problem becomes an issue and there is > little incentive to build parks (unless one developer develops the > entire city). > > So, it people want parks near where they live, is sprawl the only > private option? > > -Jeff > > > >>>> Ben Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/30/04 07:54AM >>> > Look at almost any condo complex, Disney World, or any > private development. Almost all provide some degree > of common greenspace mixed in. The large scale > private development best known for its green space is > Sea Ranch in California. > > Ben > > > --- Stephen Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> There are approximately 17,000 golf courses in the >> U.S. >> >> >> On Jul 30, 2004, at 5:50 AM, Hentrich, Steffen >> wrote: >> >>> Dear Armchairs, >>> >>> today I had a discussion with a friend about urban >> planing and the >>> necessity of public provision of urban green space >> (parks etc.). Do >>> you know cases of private provision of urban green >> space and in that >>> case, how do they make money out of it. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> >>> Steffen >> > > > ===== > Dr. Benjamin Powell > Department of Economics > San Jose State University > San Jose, CA 95192-0114 > 408-924-1371 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.sjsu.edu/faculty/powell > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
