By JOHN SULLIVAN of the Tribune’s staff

Published Sunday, December 8, 2002

Growth in the four smaller metro regions of Columbia, Springfield, Joplin and St. Joseph taken together outpaced that of St. Louis and Kansas City in the 1990s. Combined with the unprecedented development of the state’s rural land, the Missouri’s unique growth patterns could threaten the Show Me State’s quality of life, a recent study said.

"Growth in the Heartland" is part of a $350,000 study commissioned by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, it provides a comprehensive look at Missouri’s growth patterns.

Combining census data with hundreds of interviews of business owners, government officials, academics and local people, the study appears to validate calls for tackling the negative aspects of rapid growth.

Its major findings reflect much of what Missouri localities already know: The fastest growth is occurring around smaller metro areas and in rural counties, where people are rapidly moving from city and town centers to wide-open spaces. This trend has dispersed economic wealth but has also strained state and local tax revenues, threatened natural resources and eroded Missouri’s rural heritage.

The study also showed that minority residents accounted for more than half of the state’s population growth. Hispanics helped fuel the growth, doubling in number over the last decade as well as dispersing across the state in pursuit of jobs in poultry processing and the service industry in Branson. They were followed in number by blacks and Asians.

The study’s "wide-angle view" of development trends affecting the state could spark increased cooperation throughout the state, said Mark Murrow, a chief researcher of the Brookings Institution.

If "Missourians of all areas realize they are facing similar dynamics," they could "get some movement going on them," he said.

Planned development has helped Columbia and Boone County contain the type of sprawl hollowing out the centers of other rapidly growing regions, but the metro area is not immune to the negative effects of development, Murrow said.

Though growth remained mostly within city limits, Columbia’s downtown population shrunk by 20 percent during the decade. And like the three other fastest-growing cities in Missouri, most of the growth occurred three miles or more from the city’s center, threatening vulnerable natural attractions such as Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.

Characterized by people abandoning downtowns and city centers for "dream houses" in quiet rural settings, this leapfrogging growth hurts the state in various ways:

● Fringe and suburban communities require more bond and tax increases to build sewers and roads.

● Hunting and fishing spots disappear as traffic increases along country roads and strip malls appear on small-town main streets.

● Natural entertainment regions such as the Lake of the Ozarks experience reduced water quality.

● Minority and low-income groups become further distanced from employment and social centers as capital investments move away from their communities.

To contain these negative effects of growth, Brookings Institution researchers recommended Missouri:

● Create or coordinate research bodies to track and incorporate the growth trends in policymaking.

● Review the local tax and fiscal system to reduce high incentives to vie for retail establishments that scatter growth, as well as reform the state’s liberal tax increment financing statutes, which subsidize far-out, suburban and greenfield development rather than investments in truly distressed, established communities.

● Give counties and localities incentives for cooperation in planning while modernizing planning laws. As of 1998, only 21 of 114 counties had implemented planning or zoning, while the state’s basic planning laws have largely been unimproved since the 1920s. The state could develop planning tools to help these localities as well as offer priority in the allocation of funding for cooperation between city, town and county governments.

Reach John Sullivan at (573) 815-1731 or jsullivan@tribmail.com.