CAMPO's Activity Centers: Is the Region Promoting Balanced Growth Where it Needs To?

This issue of Data Points looks at the Activity Centers identified in the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (CAMPO) 2040 Plan and examines the balance between development that creates new jobs vs. new residents in those Activity Centers.
 
As the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Capital Area, CAMPO is required to produce a long-range plan with a 25-year time horizon. The 2035 plan introduced the concept of Activity Centers for the region, and the 2040 plan refined those Centers somewhat, arriving at the map shown below.

CAMPO's 2040 Activity Centers

Source: Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, CAPCOG, U.S. Census Bureau

s stated in the CAMPO 2040 Plan, “Activity Centers can increase the overall connectivity of the transportation system, particularly within Centers, and can increase choices among transportation modes and routes.” Put another way, the Centers concept aims to concentrate development in strategic locations in order to facilitate:

• Densities that enhance the efficiency of transit service

 

• Shorter commutes, as jobs are clustered but distributed more completely across the Centers in the region

 

• Minimization of sprawl, which is more costly (in terms of public sector finance) because of longer roadways, longer utility infrastructure connections, and so on.

Implicit in the Activity Centers concept is the idea that centers should feature a combination of development types, creating both jobs and residents and giving the Center as a whole a mixed-use functionality. Again, the argument in support of this idea is that if commuting represents the primary transportation activity for most Capital Area residents, locating more housing and employment in Activity Centers maximizes the efficiency of the transportation network that connects where people live and work.

Communities can support this kind of development through zoning designations. Tax incentives and density bonuses can be  offered to developers in order to encourage the desired development types within the Activity Center Area. The end result should be concentrated mixed-use development that is also aligned with transportation and transit plans, effectively marrying the planning of locations for home and work with the transportation network that connects them.

Analyzing Development in CAMPO's 2040 Centers

So, if that’s the theory behind the Activity Centers concept, it is worth examining how the region is putting that theory into practice. The following map shows the 2040 CAMPO Centers overlaid on top of Census Blocks that intersect the Center at some point. So, to examine trends in the CAMPO Center areas, we’re using the census data, with the orange census blocks shown in the map serving as proxies.

Source: Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, CAPCOG, U.S. Census Bureau

You’ll see that these proxy areas are a better fit with the Centers in some cases than in others. However, as the Centers can be assumed to reflect the bulk of development activity within the census block areas we’re using as proxies, there is reason enough to consider these proxy areas as instructive.

To examine development in the Activity Centers, this analysis focuses specifically on Jobs-Worker Balance. Jobs-Worker Balance compares the number of jobs located in a specific area  to the number of employed residents that live in that same area. The mathematical formula for computing the statistic is:

So what Jobs-Worker Balance tells you is, “how closely does the number of jobs in an area compare to the number of workers who live in that area?” Calculating the statistic using the formula above, a Jobs-Worker Balance of 1 indicates that an area is perfectly balanced between jobs and residents. A value of 0 indicates an area is composed entirely of either jobs or residents. This particular statistic does not differentiate between areas that are heavily job-centric or heavily resident-centric, but there are examples of both in the region, such as Downtown Austin or Austin Bergstrom Airport (heavily job-centric) or housing developments in largely rural areas (heavily resident-centric.)

Now, enough with context and methodology. Let’s get to talking about what the data show for our region, specifically, “What does the Jobs-Worker Balance look like for the Centers in the most recent data (2014)?” And, what can the data tell us about the trajectory of Jobs-Worker Balance in these Centers?”

Analyzing Development in CAMPO's 2040 Centers

The first of the two maps that follow shows Jobs-Worker Balance as of 2014 for each of the CAMPO Activity Centers. One point that stands out is the considerable variation in Jobs-Worker Balance across Centers. Some centers are near perfect balance, while others are nearly perfectly imbalanced. Many of the more balanced Activity Centers are in downtown areas of communities outside of Austin. For example, the crescent of communities in the eastern part of the 5-County region—ranging from Lockhart to Bastrop to Elgin to Taylor—all show very balanced Activity Centers. Communities along IH-35 to the south of Austin—Buda, Kyle, and San Marcos—also show very balanced Activity Centers.

Source: Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization; CAPCOG; U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Program

Those Activity Centers in the region that are very unbalanced (shown in red) tend to be locations with high levels of employment relative to residential development. Downtown Austin, for example, shows to be very unbalanced. The Centers roughly corresponding to The Domain (SH-183 & Mopac) and Jollyville (Mopac & SH-45), are also job heavy locations. The Centers along the SH-130 corridor also appear as unbalanced, though the low levels of development in these Centers relative to some of the others, allows for small changes to have dramatic effects on overall Jobs-Worker Balance in the Center.
 
The next map shows the change in Jobs-Worker Balance over the 2005-2014 time period. Change in Jobs-Housing Balance is shown in absolute terms, rather than percentage terms. So, for a Center showing a change of 0.3, the interpretation of that change is that the Jobs-Worker Balance statistic increased by 0.3 over that time, which is not necessarily the same as a 30% improvement in balance. And, as the formula for Jobs-Worker Balance has a maximum value of 1, all positive changes can be interpreted as moves toward a more balanced Activity Center.

Source: Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization; CAPCOG; U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Program

The prominence of Centers that appear in yellow (those showing improvements in Jobs-Worker Balance between 0.41 and 0.6) in the map is encouraging for numerous reasons:

• Large-scale shifts in Jobs-Worker Balance are hard, particularly for Centers that already have a great deal of development. Consider how difficult it would be, given the very low existing Jobs-Worker Balance, to dramatically alter the balance for the Downtown Austin Center. Improvements in balance in the range of 0.41 and 0.6 represent really significant shifts.
  

• Each county can claim Centers that are at least shown in yellow, indicating that this trend toward more balanced Activity Centers is taking place throughout the entire Austin MSA.
  

• Many of Centers that are less balanced than they were in 2005 have experienced massive population growth. If development· Many of Centers that are less balanced than they were in 2005 have experienced massive population growth. If development policies allow, it is reasonable to expect that, given the concentration of population that now exists in places like Hutto and Manor, more employment opportunities will follow the growth in population, eventually resulting in a more balanced Center.
  

On the whole, it would appear that the Austin MSA is doing a fairly good job of creating Jobs-Worker Balance within the CAMPO Activity Centers themselves. There isn’t uniform balance across all of the Centers— and there are Centers that are very unbalanced—but for a relatively young concept introduced in a planning document that doesn’t bind municipalities to any particular development pattern, the balance is encouraging.

Also, however, it’s important to note that these Centers are not necessarily indicative of whole communities. While the Center may represent the immediate vicinity surrounding the primary traffic point in a community, whether the community remains balanced beyond the Center is not shown on these maps. The Centers are an excellent start to smart growth policies in the region, but they are just that—the start of planning in order to effectively connect the region’s workers and employment locations.

As the population of communities surrounding Austin continues to grow, new regional job centers will emerge and grow as well. The best way for the Capital Area to remain on the fast economic growth trajectory it currently enjoys is to ensure that its workforce acts regionally, allowing workers to throughout the region to access their best job opportunities with minimal transportation constraints. Communities can support the development of that effective transportation system by taking a proactive role in managing development, encouraging development that is balanced in its creation of new jobs and residences, more densely concentrated in Activity Centers, and supporting regional transportation planning that connects these Centers through multiple transportation modes.