Why is Springfield's economy proving so resilient?

Several reasons come to mind: You're a manageably sized regional hub. You've got a university and important hospital assets. And you stand at the brink of an enormously attractive natural area -- the Ozarks.

More and more in today's footloose economy, jobs and people flock to livable places with affordable housing, vibrant downtowns, cultural amenities and lots of close-by outdoor recreation.

And Springfield's got all that. Well, OK: Downtown hardly buzzes with "24-7" meeting and living as yet. But the university keeps students around, and meanwhile, nearby Branson remains one of the nation's foremost "drive-to" cultural attractions. Likewise, the beautiful "lake country" draws visitors and second-home buyers from all over the Midwest. In this case natural beauty really is natural capital: The famous Ozarks ambience continues to support a $1-billion-a-year tourist sector to cushion the blows of any national economic downturn.

No wonder the region paced the state's growth in the 1990s and now holds on better in bad times. Greater Springfield has service jobs, rolling hills, lakes, Andy Williams, retirees and their pensions, and reasonably priced new subdivisions. What's not to like?

But here's the harder question: Can Springfield stay attractive? Can it stay resilient? The worry is that signs of strain have now appeared after a decade of fast growth.

Many of these strains my colleagues and I detailed in a recent Brookings Institution report I co-authored, titled "Growth in the Heartland: Challenges and Opportunities for Missouri."

Springfield, we demonstrated, sprawled in the 1990s. Yes, the city proper grew by 8 percent. But mostly population moved ever outward during the decade, and that, we said, has brought problems.

Thousands of people flocked to smaller outlying towns like Willard, Strafford, Republic, Clever, Nixa and Ozark, which hit "hypergrowth" in the 1990s and struggled to keep up. Christian and Webster counties grew unsustainably by 66 and 31 percent, respectively. And even more disturbing some 28,000 people settled in unincorporated fringe areas ill-equipped to accommodate them with modern sewers and good services.

The result: Septic and fertilizer seepage from scattered new homes exacerbates the water-quality problems that have fouled Lake Taneycomo and Table Rock Lake. Taxes are increasing as local governments strain to provide the necessary roads, services or sewer lines in places that never needed them. And with more sprawl coming, more traffic and more mini-malls could cost the region its reputation as the heartland of rural America -- quaint, scenic and friendly. The bottom line: Highly dispersed, low-density development may well be undermining the durability of its growth.

In that sense, the real test of Springfield's resilience lies ahead and turns on its ability to manage its growth to make it sustainable. What is more, the best way for Springfield to continue to grow in high-quality ways would seem to be to continue to set the standard for land-use and environmental reform in Missouri -- a state that has lagged on promoting sensible land use and planning.

As a state, after all, Missouri needs to update its badly outmoded planning statutes to provide its regions more tools to manage change.

It needs to promote regional solutions among its many localities. And it needs to better align its transportation and infrastructure investment policies with the principles of sound land use and sensible planning.

In this regard, what the state does -- or doesn't do -- to manage growth matters for Springfield because, ultimately, it is the state that sets the rules for what type of growth occurs all over. By remaining virtually laissez-faire on growth and development topics, the state of Missouri may well be undercutting its future competitiveness.

Given that, Springfield should take seriously the fact that with its strong growth, fresh voice and signature environmental assets, it is well positioned to lead the state in promoting reform.

So Springfield should step forward on these issues -- as the state's new economic driver, and as its most progressive region.

Already southwest Missouri business leaders have come together to protect the lakes. Now the region should show the way in other ways, by hammering out a regional system for managing fast growth; rationalizing local government competition; and insisting on state action to allow all regions to make headway.

For that is the way for the Springfield region to prosper: To help itself, it must help nudge the entire state along. Only in that fashion will a distinctive region maintain its distinctive vitality.

Introduction

The post-World War II era has witnessed the nearly exclusive building of low density suburbia, here termed “drivable sub-urban” development, as the American metropolitan built environment. However, over the past 15 years, there has been a gradual shift in how Americans have created their built environment (defined as the real estate, which is generally privately owned, and the infrastructure that supports real estate, majority publicly owned), as demonstrated by the success of the many downtown revitalizations, new urbanism, and transit-oriented development. This has been the result of the re-introduction and expansion of higher density “walkable urban” places. This new trend is the focus of the recently published book, The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream (Island Press, November 2007).

This field survey attempts to identify the number and location of “regional-serving” walkable urban places in the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., where 138 million, or 46 percent, of the U.S. population lives. This field survey determines where these walkable urban places are most prevalent on a per capita basis, where they are generally located within the metro area, and the extent to which rail transit service is associated with walkable urban development.

The first section defines the key concepts used in the survey, providing relevant background information for those who have not read The Option of Urbanism. The second section outlines the methodology. The third section, which is the heart of the report, outlines the findings and conclusions of the survey.

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As every good teacher knows, education is not just about academics. It is about broadening horizons and discovering passions. (The root of education is the Latin e ducere, meaning “to draw out.”) From this perspective, extra-curricular activities count for a great deal. But as Robert Putnam highlights in his book Our Kids, there are growing class gaps in the availability of music, sports, and other non-classroom activities.

Fewer field trips?

Schools under pressure may also cut back on field trips outside the school walls to parks, zoos, theaters, or museums. In the 2008-09 school year, 9 percent of school administrators reported eliminating field trips, according to the annual surveys by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). That figure rose through the recession:

Just 12 percent of the administrators surveyed about 2015-16 said they had brought back their field trips to pre-recession levels. Museums around the country report hosting fewer students, from Los Angeles and Sarasota, to Minneapolis, and Columbia, Missouri. None of this is definitive proof of a decline in field trips, since we are relying on a single survey question. But it suggests a downward trend in recent years.

Museums help with science tests

If some children are missing out on field trips, does it matter? They may be nice treats, but do they have any real impact, especially when they take time away from traditional learning? There is some evidence that they do.

Middle school children with the chance to go on a field trip score higher on science tests, according to a 2015 study by Emilyn Ruble Whitesell.

She studied New York City middle schools with teachers in Urban Advantage, a program that gives science teachers additional training and resources—as well as vouchers for visiting museums. In some schools, the Urban Advantage teachers used the field trip vouchers more than others. Whitesell exploits this difference in her study, and finds that attending a school with at least 0.25 trips per student increased 8^th grade scores by 0.026 standard deviations (SD). The odds of a student passing the exam improved by 1.2 percentage points. There were bigger effects for poor students, who saw a 0.043 SD improvement in test scores, and 1.9 percentage point increase in exam pass rates.

Art broadens young minds

Students visiting an art museum show statistically significant increases in critical thinking ability and more open-minded attitudes, according to a randomized evaluation of student visits to the Crystal Bridges Museum in northwest Arkansas. One example: those who visited the museum more often agreed with statements like: “I appreciate hearing views different from my own” and “I think people can have different opinions about the same thing.” The effects are modest. But the intervention (a single day at the museum) is, too. Again, there were larger effects for poor students:

All this needs to be put in perspective. In comparison with the challenge of closing academic gaps and quality teaching, field trips are small beer. But schools create citizens as well as undergraduates and employees. It matters, then, if we have allowed field trips to become a casualty of the great recession.