Glendening: Smart Growth Leadership Institute will show ‘ how to do it’

America’s newly minted Smart Growth Leadership Institute says that to make smart growth the status quo, “You have to set a framework in which it is financially better to invest in existing communities than it is ‘out there,’ adding to the sprawl.” Parris Glendening told New Urban News that through reform of the processes by which state and local governments manage their infrastructure, and through the savvy application of tax credits and other incentives, “it is possible to change the system so that a builder working with an astute architect can build a very profitable infill or mixed-use or reuse or brownfield development in a community, and by doing so lessen the demand for this constant outward sprawl that’s destroying the farms and everything else.” Glendening comes to his new job after eight years as governor of Maryland, where he established primacy among his political peers in putting smart growth at the top of his agenda — creating a cabinet-level Special Secretary for Smart Growth and appointing his state planning director, Harriet Tregoning, to the post. Tregoning has joined Glendening in his affiliation with Smart Growth America. She will serve as the institute’s executive director, managing operations at its Washington, DC, headquarters. Glendening says the institute will pursue a dual mission as an advocate on smart growth issues and as a consultant to smart growth stakeholders in both the public and private sectors: “It’s an opportunity to be strong advocates, but also to tell people what’s working, how to do it.” He says the institute has already garnered six-figure support from businesses. “Builders talk to us about smart growth and they say, ‘Well, how do I do it? I can’t get approvals for mixed use,’ or, ‘I can’t get high densities.’ It is in their interest to have state and local policies geared more toward infill and reuse and so on than to have to go through these constant zoning battles.” Public sector support includes governors — “We’ve already had discussions with Ed Rendell in Pennsylvania, Jennifer Granholm in Michigan, Mitt Romney in Massachusetts ...” — and local officials who recognize that smart growth is a mandate in the making. “Historically, the environmental movement has been considered largely a Democratic issue, but smart growth has truly become a bipartisan issue,” Glendening says. “You can be a strong fiscal conservative and argue that we ought to be doing smart growth, especially in these tight financial times. You can be a Republican, business-oriented mayor and say, ‘This is crazy, what we’re doing right now, we’ve got to change our policies.’”