Maryland smart growth achievements limited, Washington Post finds

“A review of key state and local planning records” reveals “no significant shifts in Maryland’s development patterns since the passage of [former Governor Parris] Glendening’s smart growth package,” the Washington Post reported Aug. 10 in a detailed examination of development in the Washington-Baltimore region. “Leading up to 1997, when the program began, about 75 percent of the land consumed by home building in Maryland was cut from pastures, woods, and other parcels outside of the smart-growth areas,” Peter Whoriskey wrote as part of a three-part series on growth. “In 2001, the last year for which statewide data are available, the percentage was almost exactly the same, according to Maryland Department of Planning records.” Whoriskey found that home building “continues to consume roughly 25 square miles of Maryland landscape every year.” Development information since 2001 for the five fastest-growing counties in Maryland indicates little change in where building takes place, he said. The biggest obstacle to smart growth appears to be pressure from neighbors who oppose higher-density development near them. “Smart growth is something people want,” the Post quoted Howard County Planning Director Marsha McLaughlin as saying. “They just don’t want it in their own neighborhood.” Glendening, now at the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, acknowledged that sprawl has largely continued. But he noted, “The nation worked very hard for 60 years to develop the system that we’ve got…. So it’s like changing the course of the Queen Elizabeth. You can just barely see it start to move.” Douglas R. Porter, president of the Growth Management Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, concurred, saying, “It’s too early to see a shift. It takes too many years for projects to work through the system.” Glendening pointed out that his program was not devoid of accomplishments. Among them: The state spent more than $130 million to acquire and preserve 52,000 acres of rural land, and it shifted hundreds of millions of state school construction funds toward established cities and towns rather than peripheral areas. u