During the 1990s, MARYLAND Governor Parris Glendenning (D) promoted sweeping land-use changes, and with legislative support created the Governor's Office of Smart Growth, which won national recognition for its groundbreaking land-use protection strategies.
This past June, the newly elected governor, Robert Ehrlich, Maryland's first Republican governor in 36 years, dismissed the top two officers in the Smart Growth Office and folded the office functions into other agencies in an effort to streamline government operations, casting doubt on the future of smart growth initiatives in the state.
Down in Volusia, FLORIDA, at a Smart Growth summit in June, 2003 Michael Pawlukewicz, Dir. of Environment and Policy Education at the Urban Land Institute, lauded the virtues of an Austin, TEXAS smart growth program at the same time the Austin City Council was axing its Smart Growth Matrix for a more aggressive economic stimulus package.
These and other stymied or slowing efforts to curb urban sprawl have some smart growth proponents wondering if the movement is losing momentum during these tough economic times. The term "smart growth" continues to carry different meanings for varied constituencies, depending upon their environmental, political or economic perspective. For some it's a call for more open space; for others it's a focus on more dense development, and still others see it as a solution to urban sprawl. The common thread is development that seeks to revitalize downtown commercial and suburban areas, enhance public transit, promote walking and biking and preserve open space and agricultural land by increasing building densities in downtown areas.
The overall goal is to produce more livable communities by limiting urban sprawl at the boundaries -- an academic growth management concept with some real life challenges, according to those struggling with implementation in Texas, GEORGIA, and CALIFORNIA.
The Austin, Texas effort, born during the go-go 1990s to constrain growth, was overcome by new-millennium reality -- a declining economy and citizen concerns over traffic congestion generated by increased density in their older neighborhoods, neighborhoods from which citizens could see the visible failures of the last decade: unfinished projects and buildings that were sold as smart growth solutions to a more livable community.
The City Council approved approximately $5 million in fee waivers and other non-cash incentives for developers under the Smart Growth Matrix. All were designed to lure businesses downtown. Today the Computer Sciences Corp. building is only two-thirds complete, and the Intel building was abandoned before it was half built. The neighborhood grew concerned when their favorite bookstores, drinking establishments and music stores started disappearing, replaced by new office buildings, apartment buildings, new shops and new people.
These changes so far have failed to bring the promised pedestrian walkways, transit-oriented development and more livable communities, according to local smart growth critic Mike Blizzard, a political consultant with Grassroots Solutions, Inc In Atlanta, GEORGIA, developers planning to build apartments in business parks for employees who want to live near their jobs are being challenged by suburban neighbors who resent the higher densities and forecast traffic congestion. Downtown, mixed use development near the new MARTA Lindbergh Station is generating neighborhood concerns over increased traffic congestion. When smart growth removed a local strip club, it was an acceptable program, but when young people started moving into the high rise apartments that replaced it, creating traffic congestion in historically quiet neighborhoods, the planning strategy was questioned by the people living in these older neighborhoods. At issue, too, are boundaries smart-growth proponents are placing around cities, which critics say are driving up home prices.
In Contra Costa County, CALIFORNIA, city and county officials are sparring over smart growth strategies, including the placement of growth boundaries around cities within the county. The county is promoting infill development, but the cities say they are the ones faced with managing the traffic created by high density building projects and have to grapple with state-mandated affordable housing requirements. Smart growth critics claim these artificial growth boundaries have negative impacts on affordable housing when land is removed from the market for open space. Some of the states experimenting with growth management boundaries, where the impact on affordable housing has been evaluated, include WASHINGTON, California, and FLORIDA.
Dr. Samuel R. Staley, Ph. D. Senior Fellow at the Reason Public Policy Institute, looked at the consequences of local growth management on affordable housing in WASHINGTON and FLORIDA, which both have controlled housing based on density, household size, household income and geography. His study found in FLORIDA that 20% of housing price increases could be attributed to compliance with growth management legislation. In WASHINGTON it was 26%. In Ventura County, CALIFORNIA, another RPPI study found that growth controls will produce a shortage of 14,000 to 27,000 units by 2020, creating a huge market demand for existing housing.
But researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving public policy in the state, came to a different determination. They looked at growth controls in 300 CALIFORNIA cities and concluded that few cities have passed strict growth control measures. In a report, researchers wrote that a more compelling reason for the lack of housing for CALIFORNIA's growing population was "outright hostility to multifamily development." The authors, Paul Lewis and Max Neiman, concluded that while "growth controls may constrain some homebuilding ... broader market forces and state policies probably do more to explain California's housing costs and slow rate of production." While elected officials continue to debate smart growth's role in a struggling economy, former Maryland Gov. Glendening, who is now president of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, has vowed not to give up on the concept. The Institute plans to offer training courses across the country and serve as a clearinghouse for best practices, case studies, proven strategies and great ideas, according to an announcement on Smart Growth America's web site.
Smart growth is also getting a boost from other Internet sites; Gloria Gardiner, code assistance planner at the OREGON State Dept. of Land Conservation & Development, published a list of 140 smart growth-related web sites, including detailed plans and goals for communities currently pursuing smart growth initiatives. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also has an online smart growth data base which highlights policies and programs that states and localities nationwide have implemented. Whether or not smart growth can survive the sluggish economy and thrive in the next decade, policymakers can't forget that politics is part of the mix.
In the Sierra foothills of CALIFORNIA, for instance, a newly elected and more right-leaning Nevada County Board of Supervisors bowed to an electoral land use mandate andremoved all references to smart growth in the county's 1996 General Plan and replaced it with the words "traditional neighborhood design principles," indicating a policy shift away from growth boundaries and other smart-growth concepts toward traditional strategies addressing traffic and housing prices.
Smart growth proponents must come to grips with the political and economic reality that neighborhoods and voters want the final say. "None of these growth management programs have figured out how to repeal the laws of economics or politics," said Dr. Staley, now at the Buckeye Institute, in a luncheon presentation to the MICHIGAN Mackinac Center for Public Policy. "My biggest criticism of how growth management is being developed in many states, is they do not recognize the political nature of land use planning."
-- By State Net correspondent RUSS STEELE