States take action to limit sprawl

New Urbanism provides alternative vision for growth. A wave of recent anti-sprawl initiatives and legislation is intended to promote compact, infill development in a number of states, particularly in the Northeast. While the New Urbanism is generally not mentioned by name, conversations with state officials reveal that new urbanist principles provide the alternative vision of growth in just about every state that has taken a stand against sprawl. Most recently, New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman dedicated her second inaugural address January 21 to fighting sprawl, purchasing 300,000 acres of open space and spending $400 million redeveloping deteriorating cities. Whitman promised that the state would provide speedy plan approval to developments that meet the goals of the State Plan. “ That means goodprojects can get the green light in weeks instead of years, and quicker approvals mean lower costs,” Whit-man says. Amendments to the State Plan are currently in review, including a section on design which provides step-by-step instructions on how to create New Urbanism. New Jersey uses the term “Com-munities of Place” to refer to compact, pedestrian-oriented development that is built in orderly fash- ion according to design principles. I n M a r y l a n d, it’s called “smart growth,” a term which is gaining appeal among both public policy specialists and developers. Maryland’s Smart Growth legislation of 1997, which uses state funding as an incentive to promote better development, may turn out to be the most significant state initiative aimed at containing sprawl since Oregon’s urban growth boundaries, approved in the early 1970s. “Maryland’s program represents the first recognition that sprawl and irresponsible exurban growth are subsidized — not just with transportation dollars but with homeowner-ship, school construction and other programs,” says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Katz, whose organization tracks urban trends and formulates policy on urban issues, sees bipartisan support for the kind of program adopted by Maryland and proposed in New Jersey. “ A lot of governors are talking about sprawl and smart growth — and that is because they are feeling the pressure from a large array of constituents who realize that they are losing from current growth patterns,” he says. Smart growth has drawn the attention of policy makers nationwide. “We’ve been contacted by half of the states in the country,” says Ron Young, Maryland’s deputy director of planning. How does smart growth work? Maryland’s law, which takes effect in October, 1998, designates “priority funding areas” where state money will be spent to support growth. Out of the $15 billion state budget, $1.6 billion is covered by the Smart Growth legislation — including funding for transportation, housing mortgages, sewer and water utilities and economic development. The priority areas include all municipalities (which in Maryland essentially means older cities and towns), land inside the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. beltways, and other areas where counties want growth to occur and which meet water, sewer and density requirements. State funding that supports growth is prohibited outside of priority areas. In addition, state agencies have been told to redirect their policies to support the goals of smart growth. One example: state funding for school reconstruction has been shifted from new schools to rehabilitation and expansion of older schools. When Gov. Parris Glendening took office three years ago, 43 percent of school construction funds went to renovate and expand existing schools. That figure has risen to 82 percent, says John Frece, special assistant to the governor on smart growth issues. The beauty of Maryland’s initiative, politically, is that it requires no additional funding and is non-regulatory in nature. The state does not prohibit growth or intrude on local municipal land use sovereignty — a definite plus in the 1990s climate of skepticism toward government intervention. Design implications Although not explicitly mentioned in the legislation, The New Urbanism is seen by many Maryland planners as a way to attractively design higher density growth that they believe is required to achieve smart growth goals. “New Urbanism certainly is an important part of smart growth,” says Young. “If we are going to develop new communities that people want to live in and have the right feel — we have to deal with design issues.” From a new urbanist perspective, smart growth comes at a time when there is a clearly articulated alternative to automobile-dependent, single-use, low-density suburban sprawl. Maryland planners have latched on to the New Urbanism as the development outcome that they would like to see promoted by their legislation. Smart growth has attracted the attention of the development industry and environmentalists as well, as shown by a conference in December, 1997, sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), which attracted 750 attendees from all over the nation. ULI pledged to devote two years of policy and practice research to the smart growth concept. Smart growth genesis Like many Eastern states, Maryland is undergoing rapid and sustained development in the form of suburban sprawl. Maryland’s relatively small land area, two metropolitan regions (District of Columbia and Baltimore), Atlantic coastline and lack of barriers to growth (plentiful water and good land), make it more susceptible than most states to nearly complete suburbanization. A study determined that, at present growth rates, 500,000 acres of land will be developed in the next 25 years in Maryland. “In Central Maryland alone, if current development trends continue, we could use up as much land for development in the next 25 years as we have used in the entire history of the state,” Gov. Parris Glendening told participants of the ULI/EPA conference. The term smart growth was probably invented in Colorado, where Gov. Roy Romer announced the “Smart Growth and Development Initiative” in 1994 (see sidebar on other states’ initiatives). When Maryland passed its legislation — which has greater impact than Colorado’s nonlegislative program — smart growth gained national currency. Smart growth is a personal issue for Glendening, who served for two decades as a municipal and county elected official. Disappearing farmland and forests, traffic congestion, long commutes, deteriorating neighborhoods, costs of new public infrastructure and a declining civic realm all are fodder for his speeches. “I suspect that we agree that there are better, more cost-efficient and aesthetically pleasing ways to grow,” he told the EPA/ULI conference attendees. Supporting smart growth yields political benefits as well, says Frece. “Gov. Glendening has said, and I agree, that this is good policy and politics,” Frece explains. “There is a common sense element to this program that is appealing to people. This is an issue that is coming up all over the country — because people don’t like what they see around them.” Impact unclear In Maryland, as in other states, local municipalities have the ultimate power to make land use decisions. But $1.6 billion in state funding is a lot of money. Furthermore, the state has a lot of say as to how federal funds are spent. “A lot of what municipalities do depends on state and federal money,” says Young, who was a mayor for 16 years. “We’ve had 50 years of policies encouraging sprawl. The idea here is to change the policies, peeling them off like onion skins and lay them in another direction. The state’s power to educate and provide funds does make a difference.” In New Jersey, the details of Whit-man’s new initiative are sketchy. The $400 million dedicated to rebuilding cities sounds impressive, but there are no indications as to precisely how it will be spent, or the design criteria that will be used. The impact of these funds and the open space purchases depend on the effectiveness of the State Plan. If proposed revisions incorporating new urbanist principles make it through the review process, they will go into effect at the end of 1999. “That’s our boldest initiative, and we hope it can stick,” says Carlos Rodrigues, manager of special projects for the Office of State Planning.