Archives of the Twelfth Headwaters Conference, November 2-4, 2001
"Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone": The Economic Significance of Beauty
by Laura McCall, Department of History
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Prepared for the 12 Headwaters Conference, Western State College
November 2-4, 2001. All Rights Reserved.
"We need beauty as well as bread." --John Muir
"There are two desires natural in man.
One of food for the sake of the body and one of beauty for sake of the soul." --Plato
"...wild nature [is] precious in itself--beautiful, quiet, spiritually refreshing, priceless as a genetic bank and laboratory, priceless either as relief or even as pure idea to those who suffer from the ugliness, noise, crowding, stress, and self-destructive greed of industrial life." --Wallace Stegner
In The Quiet Crisis (1963), Stuart Udall wrote: "America today stands on a pinnacle of wealth and power. Yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, [in] an overall environment diminished daily by noise, pollution and blight."
Thirty-eight years later, the mind-numbing and spiritually-degrading consequences of Udall's prophecies resonate. Nonetheless, one of the favorite mantras of developers is that without economic growth and high-paying jobs, a region will die. "It may be beautiful," they surmise, "but you cannot eat the scenery." For the sake of financial health, the aesthetic and spiritual health of the community must frequently suffer.
A growing number of town planners, elected officials, and academicians are attempting to fuse discussions of economic development with the non-material and aesthetic senses of place. A mounting body of evidence clearly indicates that physical design and artistic character constitute an important influence on community consciousness, commitment to locale, and economic prosperity.
To illustrate the importance of beauty, Winifred Gallagher describes how people take cues from what they see around them and modify their behavior accordingly. Behavior is indeed shaped by physical appearance:
In New York City, teenagers on their way to Riverside Park, who stride across Amsterdam Avenue blasting their tape players, usually turn them down once they cross Broadway and enter the bijou block. There, even small children intuit that a candy wrapper dropped on a sidewalk punctuated by blooming planters is anathema. [The] twinkling gas lamps, marble steps, and tidy, flower-decked curbs...radiate an almost palpable aura of the residents' concern with the social as well as the physical standards of civility.
A second study, conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, concerns the "broken window" experiment. Zimbardo parked identical automobiles in similar neighborhoods in Palo Alto, California and the Bronx, New York but removed the license plates from the Bronx vehicle and left the hood open. Within a day, the Bronx car was stripped while the Palo Alto car went untouched for a week. After Zimbardo broke one of the windows on the Palo Alto car, vandals soon stripped it. (Maguire et.al., p. 5)
Such projects indicate how appearance affects behavior. Researchers Meg Maguire, Ray Foote, and Frank Vespe expand upon these studies and support the contention that appearance also affects peoples' sense of happiness. "We feel most secure and content in pleasant surroundings....Ugliness, too, affects our sense of well-being, and we feel very little connection with, or responsibility for, places that have no visual consistency or harmony." (Maguire et. al., p. 319) Beauty nurtures, sharpens, and brings humans closer to their surroundings.
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In his Call For Papers, Headwaters Director George Sibley asked: "Are economic criteria (based upon the standardly- used economic-base model) adequate for evaluating the quality of a place?"
According to Thomas Michael Power, the "economic base model is predicated on two familiar assumptions: First, that job location is dictated by facts of economic geography, such as the location of natural resources, transportation costs, and proximity to markets; and second, that people have to move where jobs are located....[The economic base model] supports local economic development policies that seek to recruit new businesses or retain existing ones through tax breaks and subsidies."
Power argues that "these assumptions are not intuitively obvious. Stated differently, they are, in fact, quite counterintuitive: They imply that firms do not care about labor supply and that people do not care where they live. There is nothing in economic theory or economic fact to support these assumptions. Quite the contrary, both of them are wrong." (Power, "Wealth of Nature," p. 51)
Unfortunately, the model currently in place measures growth, regardless of how that growth is generated, and not economic quality or well-being. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States in a given year. Every serious automobile accident, every diagnosis of cancer, every crime, every oil spill and toxic waste dumpsite adds value to the GDP. The GDP counts pollution "at least four times--when it's produced, when it's cleaned up, when there are health care costs, and when there are legal fees to settle lawsuits." (de Graaf, Affluenza, p. 230) As Professor William Rees contends: "The current economic models and development policy are biophysically naive and inherently biased against both ecological and social sustainability." (cited in Parker and Rozzi, p. 283)
Spurred by the necessities of long-term pecuniary health, a growing number of economists and environmentalists are developing indices that more accurately gauge the "livability" of our communities. In their analyses, livability comprises not simply economic growth but safety, environmental quality, and beauty. Their evidence finds a strong correlation between the aesthetic value of place and economic hardiness.
One group has formed TOES (The Other Economic Summit), which meets at the same time and place as the G-7 Economic Summit. (Maguire et. al., p. 7 and 15) Another has formed COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Economics). Economist Roger Bolton recommends "contingent evaluation," which estimates "the value of landscapes such as parks, wilderness, endangered species, and other goods not priced in a private market setting. (cited in Rudzitis, p. 581)
The most-promising future gauge of the health of the economy as well as the happiness of its citizens can be found in the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The GPI evaluates the expenses which contribute to the economy and subtracts out the bad ones, such as the costs of automobile accidents and environmental catastrophes. Thus, whereas since 1950, the Gross Domestic Product has risen, the Genuine Progress Indicator has remained fairly steady. (de Graaf, Affluenza, pp. 228-230)
Growth does not guarantee higher salaries. Consider the fastest growing states. Between 1979 and 1989, Nevada jobs grew 156% faster than the national average but family income actually experienced a decline of 10% compared to the national average. Texas' job rate increased 21% but family income declined by 21%. Colorado's ratio was +28% and -18%. The slower or non-growing states in the East experienced a rise in their per-capita incomes. The Massachusetts employment rate remained steady but family income increased by 40%. Although New York state saw a 29% decrease in employment, incomes rose by 25%. (Power, 1996, p. 158)
Thomas Michael Power has quantified the economic value of beauty and quality. The combined valuation of clean air at the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Mesa Verde National Parks is at least 9 billion dollars per year. (Power, 1996, p. 100) The national recreation (use) and preservation (non-use) values of Colorado wilderness is $5.5 billion for the 2.6 million acres of existing and proposed wilderness and $10.2 billion for all 10 million acres of unroaded wildlands. (Walsh; cited in Power, 1996, p. 103)
Better air in Los Angeles had a per home market value of $410 per month in higher-income neighborhoods and $120 per month in lower-income neighborhoods. (Power, 1996, p. 98) Four-hundred and ten dollars each month translates into $4,900 each year and $147,000 over the course of a thirty-year mortgage, not to mention the opportunities lost in pursuing other ventures. An eleven percent reduction in air pollution commanded an $8,370 higher home value in Boston. (Power, 1988, p. 92) Clean air carries considerable economic value.
In Seattle, a home within 300 feet of Lake Washington cost $27,000 more than a similar house half a mile from the lake. Analyses of property values along Lake Michigan in Illinois revealed similar patterns. Shoreline land sold at prices twice as high as land a mere 500 feet inland. As distance from Lake Michigan increased to 1,500 feet, the land fell to one-fifth of the value of lakefront property. (Grimes; cited in Power, 1996, p. 97) The rental cost of apartments in Chicago with a view of Lake Michigan was 26% higher than identical apartments without views. "With people spending 20 to 25 percent of their income on housing, this represents a sacrifice of 5 to 6 percent of their income in the pursuit of this particular form of visual quality." (Pollard; cited in Power, 1988, p. 90) Aesthetically-pleasing views carry considerable economic weight.
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The data available for measuring the economic value of beauty in the Rocky Mountain West is extremely sparse and somewhat contradictory. A preponderance of the most-recent scholarship argues that the old economic model, which emphasizes the value of resource extraction--mining, grazing, lumbering--is now obsolete and that a new paradigm describing economic value is needed. Most studies agree the industrial economy is becoming uncoupled from the primary products economy (i.e., raw materials) and that the most valuable products in today's economy, like computers and biotechnology, require few natural resources. Technological unemployment (where machines replace workers) has lessened the demand for physical labor; and human resources are better spent in research, design, engineering, marketing and other knowledge-based fields. Finally, labor and capital have become "footloose," workers and money follow good ideas and beautiful surroundings wherever they are found on the globe. (Rasker, p. 371) Workers, particularly highly-skilled ones, do not have to live in urban areas in order to enjoy a decent standard of living. "Techno-yuppies" with portable computers and "modem cowboys" can hang their shingles anywhere and most prefer beautiful places. (Rasker, 396) Phil Burgess of the Center for the New West in Denver calls them the "lone eagles," a growing group of freelance professionals who are abandoning life in the cities for the countryside. Another phenomenon, "green fielding," refers to the migration of entire corporations away from the bustle of urban life. (Rasker, 379)
A second area where most studies agree is that the emphasis on commodity extraction, and particularly the reliance upon a single resource or business (including tourism), has simply not worked.
In a hard-hitting and highly-provocative essay on the dangers of tourism in the modern West, environmental historian Hal Rothman argues that tourism may not rescue a region's economy and may, in the process, destroy the community's culture, values, and natural beauty. He argues that "tourism promises much, but delivers only a little." Tourism's "local beneficiaries came from a small segment of the population, `the growth coalition,' the landowners, developers, planners, builders, real estate sales and management interests, bankers, brokers, and others. The capital that sustains these interests comes from elsewhere, changing local relationships and the values that underpin them, along with their vision of place....With tourism comes unanticipated and irreversible consequences, unexpected and unintended social, cultural, economic, demographic, environmental, and political consequences." (Rothman, in Wrobel, pp. 100-101; see also Rudzitis, p. 578)
As a result of findings such as these, regional policy experts urge economic diversity. The most successful communities support and maintain a variety of businesses so that instability in one sector of the local economy is counter-balanced by equilibrium in others. (Rasker, pp. 396-97) As Utah planning experts Brad T. Barber and Aaron P. Clark point out, "the region's community leaders see economic diversification as a means to minimize the cyclical booms and busts that have plagued them. Realizing that lower levels of diversification increase a community's vulnerability to swift economic changes, farsighted rural leaders have made economic diversification and labor force development primary objectives in promoting sustainable community and economic development." (Barber and Clark in Keiter, 100-101)
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A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
In 1991, the Louisiana Pacific wafer board plant in Kremmling, Colorado, closed permanently. Approximately one-third of the community's economic base was derived from the plant and both the people and the press believed the town would never recover.
Shortly after the mill closed, however, the population as well as the tax base in Kremmling actually began to increase. Many people, formerly discouraged by the air pollution belching from the plant, began moving into the town. The remarkably-enlightened Kremmling Economic Development Committee encouraged small-scale growth with an emphasis on diversity. They lobbied for designation of the upper-Colorado River as a scenic by-way, development of an assisted-living senior center, reopening their railroad depot, and recruiting light manufacturing.
A similar crisis struck Dubois, Wyoming. In 1987, the Louisiana Pacific lumber mill pulled out and the pundits predicted the demise of this tiny hamlet. Thirty-five percent of the residents derived their paychecks either directly or indirectly from the mill. Surprisingly, stores did not shut down and people did not leave. Dubois decided to "sell quality of life" as well as to capitalize upon its proximity to wildlife, including the largest herd of bighorn sheep in the United States. The town actively recruits retirees and "footloose" workers and pursues land-use planning that actually attempts to stem the tide of uncontrolled subdivisions. (Rasker, 382-384; see also Power, "Wealth of Nature," 50-51)
As these two examples indicate, the ideological combatants are not the environment versus the economy or the land versus jobs. The Kremmling and Dubois' approaches--attracting retired people, footloose workers, and those living off their investments--contain advantages because these people do not need jobs or job sites that consume land and require more transportation facilities. The new arrivals invest in the communities in which they live simply by living--they require food, housing, medical care, recreational amenities. They do not demand jobs.
On the other hand, they tend to push up the cost of living. Long-term residents may benefit from the influx of cash and the heightened values of their homes but people in the lowest sectors of the service industries may find it extremely difficult to afford a place to live. According to the Gunnison Country Times, until the construction of Crested Butte's Poverty Gulch development began in 1999, the County had not built affordable housing since 1982. (Ritchey, Gunnison Country Times, 9 August 2001, pp. 1 and 15.) As Thomas Power argues, more high-paying jobs do not automatically increase local per-capita income because they may multiply into low-paying, derivative jobs that result in a larger population. Wealthy people require more services, such as child care and lawn maintenance, which generally pay minimum wages. The final result can be a decline in public services and a drain on public sources of revenue wrought by the expanded population.
Selling the scenery can also lead to what Edward Abbey termed "industrial tourism" and historian Hal Rothman described as a "devil's bargain". (Abbey, Desert Solitaire, pp. 54-70; Rothman in Wrobel & Long, pp. 100-101) Tourism contributes to environmental degradation and therefore to the destruction of the beauty so many visitors came to see in the first place. That explains why so many of the experts argue for diversification of local economies--tourism is not the only solution to economic well-being.
Furthermore, many of the wealthy retirees and trust funders as well as developers are subdividing former open rangeland and building 35-acre fenced-in ranchettes, thereby preventing the migration or destroying the habitat of elk, deer, bighorns, owls, wolves, and grizzlies.
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These shortcomings pall in the face of what will occur if unchecked growth continues. Despite the naysayers, beauty matters and beauty counts.
The economic components inherent in beautiful places must never be casually dismissed. Most people know beauty when they see it, but the developers and other members of the growth coalition need convincing. The studies and statistics pouring forth should impact their development strategies.
Growth promises short-term benefits for a few but long-term nightmares for the rest: "While some few sectors (most notably construction and real estate) profit in the short term from the fact that the Rockies have become the fastest-growing region in the country, there is ample reason to believe that unplanned, uncontrolled growth that blights the West's natural beauty will do far more long-term economic harm than good." (Daniel Kemmis, "A Democracy to Match Its Landscape," in Keiter, p. 9) As Robert Parker and Joan Rozzi have written, "not all forms of growth produce positive outcomes, nor does a growing economic or population base spin off [into] equitably distributed benefits for all sectors of society. What is efficient and rational ("good") for developers is not necessarily beneficial for workers, consumers, and society as a whole." (Parker and Rozzi, p. 270)
In their study of the seven states comprising the Colorado River Basin, Parker and Rozzi discovered a number of startling consequences of growth. Four of the basin states have mortgage rates that exceed the national median. Most of these states have higher homicide, rape, robbery, and suicide rates than the national average. Health-care facilities and the criminal-justice system are strained. "All seven states in the watershed region are among the top twenty users of water in the U.S. (measured on a daily per capita basis)." Recreational and wilderness areas have become congested and overcrowded. (Parker and Rozzi, pp. 274-281)
Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Scant resources, however, have been too narrowly defined as those used only in commerce. Scholars must continue to expand the definition of economic well-being to include another scarce commodity--beauty--and evaluate its financial and spiritual significance as we expand our understanding of place. "To create and conserve communities we cherish, we must find ways to make the conservation of visual beauty one of the measures of our communities and our practices. If we do not, beauty will surely vanish, bit by bit. Gathering courage to say the word beauty aloud and to include it in our criteria for communities could do wonders for our quality of life. Indeed, it could even energize planning in new and exciting ways. Pleasant communities and access to unspoiled scenic and natural resources reaffirm people's affinity for a healthy environment and can undergird individuals' commitment to maintain the quality of the visual environment." (Maguire et.al., p. 7)
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