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Rapid Rural Growth Fuels Public Pressure for Smart Growth in Alabama
In a steady outflow from Birmingham to suburbs and rural areas,
Alabama's largest city lost another 3,000 residents, nearly one
percent, in the year ending July 2002, while Shelby County's
6.4-percent growth rate, to almost 154,000, remained the state's
fastest and its rural city of Calera became the state's
fastest-growing municipality, gaining 577 people, or 31.1 percent,
according to the first major update of the national 2000 census;
the redeeming factor is that the rapid expansion into the
countryside fuels public pressures for smart growth. While Calera
Mayor George Roy credits the residential and commercial influx to
the extension of utility lines to large tracts annexed over the
past five years and expects the fast growth to continue, reports
Birmingham News writer Troy Goodman, the city responded to
residents' concerns about discharges from a planned wastewater
treatment plant into Camp Branch Creek by relocating the future
$5-million plant to a less vulnerable area nearby. The writer adds
that besides Shelby County, three other counties of the
seven-county Birmingham statistical area -- Bibb, Blount and
St.Clair -- also placed among the state's ten fastest-growing, and
that besides Calera, two other Shelby County cities -- Pelham and
Helena -- ranked among the state's fastest-growing municipalities.
-- Birmingham News
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.al.com/news/birminghamnews
Shelby County Sets New Pedestrian-Friendly Development Standards
To ensure that future Shelby County development is more
pedestrian-friendly, the County Commission unanimously approved
amendments to the county's zoning ordinance and subdivision
regulations, mandating sidewalks both in planned shopping districts
and in residential neighborhoods with one acre or smaller lots.
Streets along smaller than 15,000-square-foot lots must have
sidewalks on both sides; streets along lots ranging from 15,000
square feet to one acre must have sidewalks on one side; and all
must include wheelchair ramps, reports Birmingham News
writer Nancy Wilstach, noting that subdivisions with larger lots
are exempted. The sidewalks must be five feet wide on minor streets
and six feet wide on major streets, with a mandatory five feet of
green space between their edges and the curb, unless the Planning
Commission grants the developer a variance due to land
characteristics. Also, in ecologically sensitive areas, builders
must lay sidewalks from more porous material than concrete. --
Birmingham News
7/29/2003
Resource(s): www.al.com/birminghamnews/
Florence-Tuscumbia Smart Growth Forum Highlights Importance of Conservation and Revitalization
Hoping that greater public awareness of smart growth will help
introduce conservation and revitalization principles into planning
for the Florence-Tuscumbia area's future, the Shoals Environmental
Alliance held a community Smart Growth/Green Space forum, during
which local historian, Heritage Preservation Inc. official Billy
Ray Warren, showed an 1818 Florence map by young Italian surveyor
Ferdinand Sannoner, who seemingly foresaw and tried to ease the
city's current traffic and growth worries by designing wide
streets, a circular road, a large park and a lot-farm grid system
-- an early feat of forward thinking and planning that should be
followed to absorb further population surges. Another speaker,
Neese Real Estate principal Jimmy Neese, credited for preserving
much of downtown Florence's historic character, reports
TimesDaily writer Emilio Sahurie, pointed to city
infrastructure, such as ''sewers, roads (and) sidewalks,'' saying,
''All these things are money saved.'' He also noted that the downtown
area, between the University of Northern Alabama and the Tennessee
River, remains a magnet for families looking for a better quality
of life and escaping suburban sprawl. After the forum, Colbert
County Historical Landmark Foundation chairwoman Ninon Parker and
others led groups of visitors from a touring riverboat throughout
the Shoals, finding the guests greatly interested in local history.
Noting that tourists usually prefer historic places to the
omnipresent shopping malls, she said, ''It's the sense of place.'' --
TimesDaily
8/26/2003
Resource(s): www.timesdaily.com/
Anchorage Mayor Drafts Agreement for Control of Coastal Trail Extension Project
Since Alaska transportation officials decided in June to give
Anchorage back the control over its long-planned and locally
disputed extension of the 11-mile Tony Knowles Coastal Trail
between downtown Anchorage and Kincaid Park for another 13 miles to
Potter Marsh, Mayor Mark Begich, who took the post last month,
asked them to do it as soon as possible so the city can finalize
the state-generated environmental report and move on with the
project. Sending the state Department of Transportation and Public
Facilities his proposed transfer agreement, the mayor also asked it
for full documentation and some $100,000 in unused planning funds.
The mayor and trail backers promise to trim millions from the
project's estimated cost of $37 million -- to be paid mostly in
federal and state money -- by route and other adjustments, reports
Anchorage Daily News writer Rosemary Shinohara, but the city
still needs about $500,000 to incorporate the last public input
into the environmental report and start the design work. But the
state's regional transportation director, Mike Scott, thinks there
is less than $100,000 left and the city may not get it, especially
since the five-member city-state Anchorage Metropolitan Area
Transportation Study (AMATS) committee, which controls the spending
of federal transportation aid, has downgraded the trail extension
project from 3rd to 11th place on the local trail list, with no
money for it in fiscal 2004. -- Anchorage Daily News
8/14/2003
Resource(s): www.adn.com/
Tempe Embracing Smart Growth With Plan for 3,500 Downtown Housing Units
About seven miles southeast of central Phoenix, ''Tempe has found
smart growth and is clinging to it with all the energy of a
religious convert,'' planning for 3,500 downtown lofts, condos,
dormitory rooms and apartments within the decade, reports
Arizona Republic writer Alia Beard Rau, quoting Tempe
community design and development director Steve Nielsen, who says,
''We are not a suburban city anymore, but an inner city'' and the
demand for ''this new type of urban environment ''seems to be greater
than anyone anticipated.'' Developer Grady Gammage confirms a huge
demand for downtown housing, but cautions against overexcitement
about ''the upscale lofts.'' He advises Tempe ''to be realistic'' and
''embrace the fact that it's a college town,'' with Arizona State
University campus housing lagging behind the student enrollment and
downtown multifamily rentals aging. The university's Arizona Real
Estate Center director Jay Butler stresses the need to answer
questions such as how deep is Tempe's downtown market and how the
city can match an urban lifestyle of San Francisco or Chicago. --
Arizona Republic
8/14/2003
Resource(s): www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/
Smart Growth Transit, Zoning Ideas Gain Popularity in San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley in the northeastern stretch of the Los
Angeles metro area -- ''predominantly a middle-class haven'' without
the extreme ''wealth or poverty'' seen to its south -- has become
increasingly receptive to dense, mixed-use, transit-oriented and
pedestrian-friendly ''urban villages,'' concludes a study by the
Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, Pepperdine University
and Cal State Northridge, with alliance president and CEO Bruce
Ackerman saying the area's increased population, land shortage,
high housing costs and traffic problems require new planning
approaches that make ''economic sense.'' He tells Los Angeles
Times writer Jocelyn Y. Steward that officials should revise
the General Plan for the Valley, update zoning to allow smaller
plots and such developer incentives as density bonuses, fee
discounts and expedited strip-mall conversion processing. Although
51 percent of respondents favor housing rather than business on
main streets and 40 percent don't like such a mix at all, 76
percent call for more single-family homes and 88 percent for
affordable housing for seniors and the poor, the study says, also
finding many businesspeople and developers confident ''that there is
a considerable market incentive to construct the kinds of denser,
more village-like environments -- the very kind that many residents
would like to see.'' Urban villages, the study notes, can help
''prevent the twin perils of barriorization and an increasingly
bifurcated community,'' attract some empty-nesters whose large
family homes would became available to middle-income families, and
instill in residents a sense of identity and cohesion. -- Los
Angeles Times
8/18/2003
Resource(s): www.latimes.com/
Bay Area Sustainability Compact Gains Strength as Solano County Endorses Plan
Slow-growing Solano County joined seven other San Francisco Bay
Area counties -- with only Napa County still on the sidelines -- in
endorsement of the ''Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area,'' which
offers a comprehensive vision of smart growth for the region.
Crafted over six years by the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable
Communities, reports Fairfield-Suisun City Daily Republic
writer Barry Eberling, the compact details 10 smart growth goals,
listing ways to expand varied-income housing, preserve open space
and natural resources, create a balanced transportation system,
reduce pollution and waste, strengthen the economy and revitalize
older neighborhoods. Supervisor Barbara Kondylis said the county
''is already ahead of the curve,'' but stressed the need to focus
public attention on the link between higher-density infill
development and preservation of farmland and open space. The writer
notes that the sustainability alliance's 46 members include the
Association of Bay Area Governments, the Sierra Club, Latino
Issues, Bank of America and the Homebuilders Association of
Northern California, along with the U.S. Department of Commerce and
Environmental Protection Agency. The sustainability compact is
available at www.BayAreaAlliance.org
-- Daily Republic
8/13/2003
Resource(s): www.dailyrepublic.com/
Denver's Pedestrian-Friendly Projects Spread from City to Suburbs
Hailed by Governor Bill Owens for its smart growth design, the
recently opened mixed-use Belle Creek development in Commerce City
exemplifies a new Denver area trend of spreading neo-traditional
pedestrian-friendly projects from the central city throughout the
suburbs, with smart growth activists, health experts and senior
citizen advocates expecting it to pick up momentum as the Front
Range population of over 55 -- more ready to shed car dependency
and walk or use transit -- will almost double to 1.22 million by
2020. Citing estimates that the national number of prospective home
buyers seeking ''dense, walkable neighborhoods'' will jump from 15
percent in the 1990s to 30-55 percent this decade, Denver
Post writer Trent Seibert finds others already completed or
under development in Englewood, Lakewood, Longmont and Westminster,
and more planned elsewhere. Englewood community development
director Bob Simpson, overseeing the transformation of the former
Cinderella City mall near a light-rail station into a
pedestrian-friendly complex of shops, offices and apartments, says
in most suburbs ''you have to drive one place to get a burger,
another place to buy a quart of milk, and another place to get dog
food,'' and ''(p)eople want a change from that.'' A push for change is
now also getting a boost from health experts, who found overweight
rates higher in low-density car-dependent suburbs than in dense
urban communities, the writer notes, quoting University of Colorado
Health Sciences Center human nutrition director, Dr. Jim Hill, who
hopes that developers recognize the demand for ''walkable
neighborhoods'' and adds, ''This is the beginning of how we can get
a handle on this obesity thing.'' -- Denver Post
7/17/2003
Resource(s): www.denverpost.com/
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
Commission's Tax and Land Use Proposals Aim to Break Sprawl-Producing Competition for Property Taxes
With 40 percent of a Connecticut taxpayer's dues now taken by the
local property tax, 29 percent by the state income tax and 20
percent by the state sales tax, and with its land consumed eight
times faster than the population grew over the past three decades,
the state Blue Ribbon Commission on Property Tax Burdens and Smart
Growth is readying proposals to reduce municipal reliance on
property taxes by shifting about $1 billion in K-12 educational
costs to the state and to modify its ''land use model ... to avoid
the costs generated under the current sprawl format,'' quotes New
Haven Register editor Mary E. O'Leary from the commission's
draft report. The commission's ''starting point,'' says Office of
Policy and Management representative W. David LeVasseur, was the
''Connecticut Metropatterns'' study by Oregon lawmaker and urban
expert Myron Orfield. Issued this spring, the writer notes, the
study found that ''competition for property tax base pits town
against town, produces sprawl, threatens the rural character of the
state and encourages patterns of inequality.'' Any property tax
relief would need to be offset by an increase in state income and
probably sales taxes, with some specifics likely to emerge from
public input before the final report goes to the General Assembly
in October, but actual implementation is expected to take several
years or a decade. In contrast, smart growth recommendations --
including better state-local coordination of land use, new planning
incentives and statewide data processing -- already match state
efforts to buy open space and spur urban development. Connecticut
Conference of Municipalities Associate Director James Finley says,
''Strengthening of councils of governments, giving them
revenue-sharing and land-use authority -- that can certainly start
sooner, rather than later.'' -- New Haven Register
8/3/2003
Resource(s): www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1281
New Castle County Smart Growth Project Hinges on Transfer of Development Rights Program
Hailed by Delaware officials as another example of smart growth,
developer Rick Woodin's two higher-density projects, involving the
creation of a transfer of development rights (TDR) program in
Middletown, New Castle County, have moved forward, as the Town
Council rezoned 484 acres from industrial to residential-commercial
use for his proposed neotraditional West Town, with about 500 homes
and townhouses near small shops, and 115 acres for a 310-unit adult
community. The developer says the TDR program would help him
preserve more than 500 acres on the town's rural edges, writes
News Journal reporter Melissa Tyrrel, noting that the
program lets developers build more densely since they pay farmers
in other areas for keeping their land intact, with the price per
acre roughly equal to what it would it be if sold for development.
Similar to his earlier-approved 286-acre, 500-home Parkside
project, the writer adds, West Town would cluster homes and
townhouses on varied-size lots, with shallow setbacks and
old-fashion alleys, while the adjacent commercial area would
include shops, a clubhouse, a day care center and possibly a
farmers' market. The project would also feature tree-lined
walkways, public gardens, a pool and a seven-acre lake. Since some
residents are concerned about the placement of townhouses, Mayor
Kenneth Banner promised further public hearings on the project
design. -- News Journal
8/5/2003
Resource(s): www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/
Smyrna Announces Plan to Annex 500 Kent County Acres
Although a plan by Kent County's town of Smyrna to annex about
1,200 rural acres in adjacent New Castle County met that county's
strong resistance and was subsequently rejected by Governor Ruth
Ann Minner as at odds with her Livable Delaware growth-management
initiative, Smyrna officials intend to annex no less than 500
acres, dismissing state Planning Director Constance C. Holland's
warning that this ''sets the tone for a lot of animosity between the
town and the state'' and may cost the town state funds for roads,
utility lines and open space. Smyrna Mayor Mark G. Schaeffer told
Dover Newszap service writer Drew Volturo that the loss of funds
might not be a problem since the new Del. 1 ''has a cloverleaf
dropping right in the middle'' of the targeted area and local
landowners seeking annexation know they would have to secure water
and sewer lines for any development project. Noting that the
annexation ''would not cost Smyrna taxpayers one red cent'' and could
generate enough revenue to cut the town's electric rate, he said
the land in question faces development regardless of jurisdiction
and annexation would let town officials influence its type.
Smyrna's planning and zoning commission, the writer adds,
recommended medium-to-low-density residential and business park
zoning for the land, likely to be annexed in late September or
early October. -- Dover Newszap
7/18/2003
Resource(s): www.newszap.com/dover
State Withdraws Aid to Smyrna in Light of 500-Acre Annexation Plan
In the first-ever Livable Delaware growth-management program
sanction, the state decided to withhold almost $2.9 million in aid
to Smyrna, Kent County, which is ready to annex 500 acres in
adjacent New Castle County for development in defiance of the state
land-use plan that leaves them rural, with Democratic Governor Ann
Ruth Minner saying the intent ''is not to hurt the citizens of
Smyrna,'' but ''Livable Delaware is about guiding growth to areas
where the state, county and local government have prepared for it,''
and Smyrna Republican Mayor Mark G. Schaefer calling the fund
withdrawal an ''unnecessary and foolish step that will not change
anything.'' Other towns ''have sat down with us'' and worked out
disputed growth issues, but in this case, the governor said, ''Kent
County, New Castle County and the state have serious concerns about
the town's ability to provide sewer and all the other services to
500 acres that our citizens were told would stay rural and require
little investment.'' The governor's former top adviser and architect
of Livable Delaware, economic development deputy director Lee Ann
Walling, said the sanction shows the rules and regulations ''have
teeth.'' Unless Smyrna forgoes the annexation, reports Dover Newszap
service writer Joe Rogalsky, it will lose a $1.95 million loan for
a water line extension and a storage tank replacement, $660,000 for
downtown street improvements, $250,000 for a transportation study,
and a $15,000 matching grant for community greenway planning.
Smyrna town manager David S. Hugg III blamed state officials for
''sending a very dangerous message'' that means ''do not make the
governor or her staff mad about anything.'' But other local
officials, including leaders of the Delaware League of Local
Governments and the Sussex County Association of Towns, support the
decision. The association's head, Dagsboro Mayor S. Bradley Connor,
wrote in a letter, ''(t)he action of one government should not be
allowed to cause problems for the other local governments of
Delaware.'' -- Dover Newszap
8/13/2003
Resource(s): www.newszap.com/dover/
Union Station ''Air Rights'' Proposal Receives D.C. Land Use Award
The Washington Smart Growth Alliance (SGA) presented its
prestigious land use award to the Akridge/Leucadia proposal for a
large mixed-use complex behind the historic Union Station, the
unique plan using the site air rights to put stores, offices, a
hotel and parking on a platform over the rail yard, and Akridge
senior vice president Joe Svatos saying, ''Smart growth is smart
business. The air rights parcel provides a terrific location for an
innovative development opportunity.'' As part of the project, his
company will also upgrade the station's intermodal components, with
a new passenger concourse, street access, pedestrian arcade and
evacuation passages. The SGA jury chairman, a partner in Squire,
Sanders and Dempsey, LLP, Sam Black, said the project fulfilled all
SGA criteria for location, density, design and use diversity,
transportation alternatives and opportunities, environmental
resources and conservation efforts, and community benefits. ''By
recognizing these and future projects, we are showcasing examples
of how to make smart growth work,'' he said. ''Through smart growth,
our area can reduce traffic congestion, retain top-caliber
workforce, attract new businesses, and enhance air and water
quality.'' Formed two years ago to promote smart growth in the
capital region, the alliance includes the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation, Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Greater Washington
Board of Trade, the Metropolitan Washington Builders Council and
the Urban Land Institute. -- PR Newswire
7/2/2003
Resource(s): www.prnewswire.com
Developer Leading Campaign to Preserve Kissimmee Area's Open Space
Combining family business interests and local activism, Kissimmee
developer Kevin Schoolfield of Schoolfield Properties Inc., is
leading a year-old SAVE Osceola conservation group in a countywide
campaign for a 50-cent per $1,000 of property value tax increase,
to raise about $60 million for open space preservation, because it
would enhance the area's quality of life and hence property values,
and because ''we value our community, and want to make sure it grows
smart.'' He told Kissimmee Reporter editor Michale W. Freeman
that the group is not seeking ''to slow down the growth,'' but to
locate parcels ''that can be preserved as a natural environment'' and
''pay market value to a willing seller,'' so the rural land to the
city's east and south can be ''within a bike ride from our homes'' in
the future. The idea won support from the Osceola County
Association of Realtors Inc., the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce,
the Kissimmee Utility Authority, the Kissimmee Valley Audubon
Society, the Nature Conservancy and other groups and agencies. They
all know that fast growth in the so-called Four Corners region of
Osceola, Orange, Polk and Lake counties will continue and that the
time to save the best open space is getting short. ''It's most
compelling to do it while the land is available, and do it while
the land is affordable,'' said Nature Conservancy state chapter
community relations manager Rob Dent, noting that land prices are
rising by 5 to 7 percent a year and that Floridians ''are very
strong advocates and stewards of our landscape.'' He added,
''Although there are competing needs out there -- such as social
services and schools -- these competing needs will always be there
as long as the population grows. Those needs will never go away.''
-- The Reporter
7/24/2003
Resource(s): www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=REPORTER
Tallahassee's Infill Plans Keeping Sprawl in Check
Encouraging development in their ''urban service area,'' and
especially ''infill'' as a remedy for sprawl, Tallahassee and Leon
County growth policies are showing results -- the number of
residents outside the service area has increased by only 1.6
percent in the past decade and builders have responded to the
market change by putting homes on small lots in any empty pocket of
urban or suburban land they can find, a trend still difficult to
quantify, says City Growth Management Department director Bob
Herman, but indicative of ''a maturing of the community.'' New homes,
reports Tallahassee Democrat writer Bruce Ritchie, ''are
being slipped onto lots between existing homes'' and new small-lot
subdivisions ''are being slipped into the nooks and crannies of
undeveloped land within two or three miles of downtown.'' Confirming
the increased demand for homes near the downtown area, developer
Pete Rosen of Benchmark Construction of Tallahassee Inc., sees
simple reasons, ''You drive a half-hour, 47 minutes or an hour every
day each way to work. You get home -- you are exhausted at night.
You pull into your garage without meeting any of your neighbors or
knowing who the kids are playing with.'' But closer in, ''(y)ou sit
on your porch, wave at your neighbors and interact with other
people. Its more fulfilling than being in the 'burbs on your hunk
of land.'' With some homeowners and neighborhood groups considering
higher density a threat to their open space and property values,
County Commissioner Bob Rackleffs points to the quality of four
side-by-side ''infill'' homes build by Benchmark Construction on
Ninth Avenue and says, ''When people see that and understand that is
the possibility with high-density housing, they will be less likely
object to density.'' -- Tallahassee Democrat
8/10/2003
Resource(s): www.tallahassee.com/
Settlement Weakens Alachua County's Growth Management Plan
Blocked in court by the Builders Association of North Central
Florida and several rural landowners since April 2002, the new
Alachua County comprehensive growth management plan is no longer
among the strongest in the state, as county commissioners voted 3-2
for a settlement -- reached through a state-requested mediation --
which brings an additional 2,500 acres within Gainesville's urban
service boundary for future development, removes a clustering
requirement for rural subdivisions of fewer than 25 lots and drops
the ban on gated communities and cul-de-sacs. It also reduces
wetland setbacks in crucial habitat zones from 300 to 100 feet;
exempts small poor-quality wetlands from strict regulations; and
eliminates several conservation area maps that identified almost 90
percent of the county's land as ecologically significant.
Nevertheless, reports Gainesville Sun writer Janine Young
Sikes, county growth-management director Rick Drummond believes the
settlement still secures ''a much stronger plan than the one that is
currently in effect,'' and Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, who voted
for the compromise together with Commissioners Rodney Long and Lee
Pinkoson, calls it ''fair and just.'' Landowners' lawyer Ron
Carpenter agrees, saying his clients preferred the old plan, ''but
that's not what compromise is about.'' But nothing is really settled
yet, since several residents already filed a suit to nullify the
settlement and some conservation groups -- Sustainable Alachua
County, Women for Wise Growth and the Suwannee-St. Johns Sierra
Club -- feel they were excluded from negotiations and also promise
legal action. Voting against the settlement together with
Commissioner Penny Wheat, Commissioner Mike Byerly blasts the
negotiations for an ''arrogant disregard'' of the public
policy-making process, while environmental consultant Dave Bruderly
says, ''We don't need to continue chewing up our open space. There's
lots of land in the city of Gainesville that can be redeveloped.''
-- Gainesville Sun
7/16/2003
Resource(s): www.sunone.com/
Gwinnett Task Force Wants Potential for School Overcrowding to be Factor in Denying Residential Rezoning
Appointed by the Gwinnett County Commission, the school board and
the Chamber of Commerce, the citizen County Commission-Board of
Education Task Force wants officials to lobby the area's state
lawmakers for a change in the Georgia law that lets jurisdictions
consider school overcrowding as an argument against residential
rezoning, to let them make it the sufficient single reason for a
project denial or delay, with task force member Bill McCargo
stressing the need to give the community some ''way to control
growth so it can catch up with building new schools.'' In its draft
recommendations due for presentation next month, reports Atlanta
Journal-Constitution writer Doug Nurse, the task force explains
that jurisdictions could set specific overcrowding thresholds for
residential zoning denials or delays, looking perhaps at schools
with 35-50 percent enrollments over their capacity and relief
planned within three years. School district planning director Greg
Stanfield thinks 20 to 25 area schools could reach such a threshold
by 2008. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
8/13/2003
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Population Swells in Atlanta's Suburban Ring
In contrast to Augusta, Macon and Savannah, which lost population
last year, Atlanta gained 7,318 residents, almost two percent, and
its suburban ring now includes 12 of the state's 15 fastest-growing
cities, two of them -- Canton and Woodstock in Cherokee County,
with 18.7 and 14.5 percent growth, respectively -- becoming the 5th
and the 15th fastest-growing in the nation. With 3,168 new
residents within a year, Canton is readying a long-range
development plan, expecting its population of 11,338 to reach about
40,000 by 2015, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer
Christopher Quinn, noting that on the way to becoming a regional
shopping destination, the city is also working on a 700-acre
office-industrial park, its first big project. Last year's
placement of eight Atlanta satellite cities among the 100
fastest-growing nationwide by the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't
surprise Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Research Division chief
Bart Lewis, who says, ''You are looking at one of the
fastest-growing (metropolitan) areas nationwide. It stands to
reason that areas on the edge of that region are suddenly coming
into the growth path.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Gov. Perdue Calls Northern Arc Road Project ''Dead''; Fate of Purchased Right-of-Way Unclear
Obliged by a campaign promise that helped secure his surprise
victory last year, Georgia Republican Governor Sonny Perdue told a
transportation town hall meeting hosted by the grassroots Northern
Arc Task Force in Cumming, Forsyth County, what its members
especially wanted to hear -- that the 59-mile toll route through
Gwinnett, Forsyth, Cherokee and Bartow counties north of Atlanta is
''dead,'' with the first step in the funeral taken two weeks earlier,
when he ordered the state Department of Transportation to withdraw
an environmental impact statement for the $2.2 billion project.
Still, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Brian
Feagans, asked about his plans for the 750 acres bought with $38
million in federal dollars for the Arc right-of-way in Gwinnett
County, the governor said he is considering County Commission
Chairman Wayne Hill's idea of a 12.6-mile cross-county connector
between Ga. 316 and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to relieve the
area's mounting traffic. He is also open to the idea of using the
land for a greenbelt, although the federal purchase grants would
have to be returned. Days earlier Atlanta
Journal-Constitution writer Duane D. Stanford reported that
Northern Arc Task Force president Jeff Anderson -- his group now
numbering about 5,500 members in the four counties -- would like
the state to repay the grants and preserve the right-of-way stretch
of land as a greenbelt. Disclaiming any ''not-in-my-back-yard''
(NIMBY) motive in the fight against the Arc, Anderson says he and
group current vice president Bob Charles found data on state
government web sites to be outdated and deceptive, with the
project's cost far greater than the benefit. Now the group may
change its name to the Northern Alliance Task Force and involve
other counties in more consistent planning and zoning throughout
the region, Anderson says, ''so it's not just concrete and
billboards to the Tennessee border.'' -- Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
8/15/2003
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Pro-Growth Cherokee County Commissioners Set to Rewrite Land-Use Plan
Having felt since 1999 as if a Cherokee County Commission hearing
''was a trial,'' developers put their money last year behind
pro-growth candidates Mike Byrd and Derek Good -- the first ousting
staunch anti-sprawl chairwoman Emily Lemcke, the other taking an
open seat -- and with a shift by swing-vote commissioners J.J.
Biello and Ilona Sanders, they isolated slow-growth commissioner
Harry Johnston and now feel ''welcome again'' in this northern metro
Atlanta county. New commission chairman Mike Byrd tells Atlanta
Journal-Constitution writer Christopher Quinn developers ''just
want a fair hearing'' and their donations buy them no favors, noting
that he recently convinced a developer and Commissioner Johnston to
split the difference in their insistence on the county's
one-home-per-acre rural zoning and a much higher density for a
residential project, with a stipulation that over half of the site
will be kept as green space. Commissioner Johnston grants that the
chairman ''is not airtight pro-development,'' but says should the
county -- population about 165,000 -- lose its rural zoning
standard, not much would keep it from becoming like adjacent
Gwinnett County, with its 660,000 residents,
''(w)all-to-wall-subdivisions'' and ''the ultimate in sprawl.'' County
Zoning Board of Appeals member Roy Taylor believes the other four
commissioners' ''desire'' for ''balanced'' growth, but he doesn't ''see
it in their actions.'' The commissioners replaced Planning
Commission chairman Garland Steward, critical of giving a developer
greater density than planners recommended. They intend to rewrite
the land-use plan that was rewritten under Commissioner Lemcke, who
wanted to halve future growth. Instead, they have cut in half the
road-targeted portion of her court-upheld impact fees that also pay
for parks, sewers and emergency services. They also formed a task
force to find ways of attracting growth with such incentives as
impact fee waivers for businesses with high-paying jobs. Without
fee reductions and other incentives, worries Commissioner Good,
developers who in 1999-2002 bought almost 4,900 acres near cities
with no impact fees and asked for annexation will continue to erode
the county's tax base and ''there's nothing we can do to stop it.''
Getting denser zoning than planners recommended for his project, a
developer sought no city annexation and put aside money for nearby
roads, the commissioner says, adding, ''We saved the county half a
million in road improvements.'' -- Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
8/11/2003
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Trolley Belt Line Would Use Old Rail Beds for Transit in Atlanta's Intown Neighborhoods
Anticipating another 2 million people in the Atlanta region by
2025, many officials, activists, developers and residents see a new
potential for its long-term prosperity in the proposed 22-mile
trolley Belt Line upon old rail beds around intown neighborhoods,
with City Council President Cathy Woolard stressing that the
project ''has more constituencies'' than any other she has ever done,
Atlanta Housing Authority officer Tony Picket saying the vacant
industrial land along the line can seat ''mixed-income, mixed-use
development,'' and developer Kim King calling it ''a jewel of an
opportunity.'' Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein architect Ryan
Gravel, who first proposed the intown trolley loop during his
graduate studies at Georgia Tech., tells Atlanta
Journal-Constitution writer Julie B. Hairston, ''It's a great
transit project, but it's also a land-use framework'' with ''a huge''
quality of life importance for the neighborhoods, since the
question isn't ''whether there will be development'' but ''whether
there's going to be a transit line to serve it.'' MARTA director of
transit-oriented development Bill Martinez also considers the Belt
Line project ''a unique opportunity to decide where growth and
change will go and how it will go,'' pointing out that revival of
depressed city neighborhoods will also benefit other areas, because
''As Atlanta grows, so does the region.'' Its technology relatively
inexpensive, the line -- with either electric or rubber-tire flex
trolleys -- would cost between $250 million and $450 million, the
writer reports, noting that Council President Woolard thinks the
city could follow its Atlantic Station funding strategy and issue
construction bonds that would be repaid by property taxes from
development along the line. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Boise Ponders Future of Barber Valley After Developers Halt Work on Harris Ranch Mixed-Use Project
Apparently frustrated by city planners' decision to reduce the
master-planned, mixed-use Harris Ranch project on 1,800 acres of
the partly settled Barber Valley, within minutes of central Boise,
from 3,100 to 419 homes because of the traffic impact, developers
suddenly abandoned the work three months ago and now officials and
residents keep wondering what's next for the area, but one thing
remains certain, says Councilman Alan Shealy, the valley ''is a very
precious piece of property, and the mayor and council will not roll
over on their vision for it in the hope for quick and easy
development.'' Crucial for the area's development, reports Idaho
Statesman writer Michael Journee, is the long-sought East
ParkCenter Bridge over the Boise River, which would give east bank
residents the necessary new access to the city center, as the
two-lane Warm Spring Avenue from the Barber Valley to the old
bridge already handles traffic above its capacity. The abandoned
Harris Ranch project was to provide the new bridge, along with
shops, offices, parks, bike paths, walking trails and other urban
amenities eagerly awaited by area residents. Without the bridge,
some nearby projects -- approved before the Warm Spring Avenue
traffic became a development issue in the early 1990s -- can move
forward, as long as their total lots don't exceed about 130. This
affects developer Homer Wise, who has long planned 228 homes in the
hills above the Barber Valley, but now can build only 55, while
waiting with the rest until the bridge comes. This may also drive
up the area's property values, the writer adds, quoting other
developers, including San Francisco-based Larry Vosti -- not
affected by the restrictions, but preferring to phase in his
128-home Fallingbrook subdivision anyway -- who mentions ''supply
and demand'' and says the demise of Harris Ranch ''reduces the
choices people have.'' -- Idaho Statesman
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.idahostatesman.com/
Higher Density Homes Planned for Next Phase of Boise Smart Growth Development
Hailed by smart growth advocates for its commercial village center,
houses with big porches, narrow streets and ample green space, the
neotraditional Hidden Springs development in the Foothills north of
Boise offered only 298 choice homes above $400,000 in the first two
phases and sales were sluggish over four years until developers
announced the third phase a few months ago, now getting Ada County
commissioners' permission to build 102 less costly homes on 21
acres, with another 48 acres left as open space. But this higher
density bothers current Hidden Springs residents, reports Boise
Idaho Statesman writer Joe Kolman, quoting homeowner Royce
Chigbrow, who calls the new marketing a ''fire sale'' and adds that
quality of life is no less important than the ''bottom line.''
Representing 25 like-minded residents, Boise attorney John McCreedy
says since they were initially told the third phase's homes would
be scattered on bigger lots, they may appeal its approval.
Developers stress they always planned higher density, with on-site
manager Frank Martin telling the writer that Hidden Springs ''is
anti-sprawl at its best.'' Commissioners Fred Tilman and Rick
Yzaguirre express concern about the marketing, but point out that
developers comply with regulations -- which allow plan changes for
reasons including a new market climate -- and may exercise some
flexibility provided that the total number of Hidden Springs lots
does not exceed 1,035. -- Idaho Statesman
7/28/2003
Resource(s): www.idahostatesman.com/
Computer Model Helps Planners Simulate Long-Term Effects of Development Decisions
Started as a University of Illinois proposal to Kane County for a
computer simulation of future urban growth effects in its Mill
Creek watershed and tested since in Peoria by the governor's Smart
Growth Task Force, the Landuse Evolution and Impact Assessment
Model (LEAM) will help planners and the public visualize the
potential long-range impact of specific development decisions on
soil erosion, water quality, job market, school accessibility and
other community prospects, with LEAM creator Brian Deal saying, ''We
can simulate what might happen in an area in the next 30 years.''
Running on the University's supercomputer, reports Daily
Illini writer Smita Krishnaswamy, the model divides a target
area into 30 by 30 meters (about 100-square-foot) cells, with each
cell assessing itself and its probability of change, depending on
a set of input variables, including roads, utilities, schools, jobs
and other growth elements. A LEAM contributor, urban and regional
planning associate professor Kieren Donaghey said, ''By changing
specific aspects of the model, we get a real sense of changing the
outcomes,'' which will let the average person easily grasp all
implications of planning and development decisions. Geography
professor Bruce Hannon stressed that with LEAM ''we can show the
dynamics of urban sprawl on a map, right before our eyes.'' He also
pointed out that city leaders, who seek growth for its expected
revenue but often get insufficient revenue to cover the cost of
growth, can avoid the problem by using LEAM to calculate ''if growth
at the (city) fringe does pay.'' -- Daily Illini
7/28/2003
Resource(s): www.dailyillini.com/
It's Not Too Late to Control Clark County Growth
''Quality of life is not an automatic byproduct of the free market.
You don't just get it. You have to plan for it. You have to care
for it,'' said Smart Growth Leadership Institute executive director
Harriet Tregoning at a Clark County event sponsored by the Smart
Growth Outreach Project of Main Street Jeffersonville, advising
officials crafting a new subdivision ordinance to encourage
development in designated service areas and establish impact fees,
but also to educate the public about the benefits of ''infill'' and
greater density to change the ''Not-In-My-Backyard'' (NIMBY)
attitude. Speaking after a tour with County Commission President
David Lewis through mostly rural areas where developers plan to
build subdivisions of 700 units and 729 units along narrow roads
without ''the capacity'' to handle more traffic, director Tregoning
was equally emphatic about the need for traffic studies to prevent
potential gridlock. She also noted, reports Louisville
Courier-Journal writer Harold J. Adams, that the lack of strong
planning hasn't yet let the county's growth go ''out of control.''
And pointing out that the expected construction of two Ohio River
bridges makes the time right for planning how to guide the certain
increase of growth pressures from Louisville along the county's
chosen paths, she urged the county to coordinate its plans with
adjacent jurisdictions; otherwise developers could simply go
wherever controls remain weak. -- Louisville Courier-Journal
8/13/2003
Resource(s): www.courier-journal.com/indiana/
Clark County Commissioners Looking North for Strategy to Manage Growth Pressures
Alarmed by waves of development pushing from Louisville (KY) across
the Ohio River and along I-65 into Clark County, Clark
commissioners visited Hendricks County some 120 miles further north
-- with similar demographics and an already 20-percent growth rate
-- to learn its ways of handling strong development pressures from
adjacent Indianapolis and apply the lessons in their search for
smart growth. Clark County sees ''a lot of development spotted
around like measles,'' with ''no real clear-cut suburban area,''
Commissioner David Levis told Danville Flyer reporter Brian
Kern. ''We'll have a 700-lot subdivision crop up in a real rural
area and we may have a 100-lot subdivision crop up just adjacent to
the city,'' he continued, stressing that the farmland disappears,
rural roads suffer from excessive traffic and the county is ''in a
crisis right now.'' A new Louisville bridge over the Ohio River, the
reporter notes, is expected to boost Clark County's growth rate to
about 20 percent, too, and compound its financial and service
problems. Hendricks County Commissioner Steve Ostermeier said Clark
County guests ''picked up a lot of ideas'' they would like to use,
such as increasing their zoning and planning staff from just three
to perhaps 17 as in Hendricks County and introducing developer
impact fees. Clark County will also send observers to a joint
session of the Hendricks County Board of Commissioners and the
County Council on July 30. -- Flyer
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.flyergroup.com/index.html
Smart Growth Strategy Fuels Popularity of Australia's Liverpool
Liverpool, population 150,000 -- the nation's fastest-growing city
in the past two years -- is emerging as a major regional center
some 15 miles southwest of Sydney thanks to affordable land prices,
an integrated radial transportation network reaching the whole
metropolitan area and the City Council's Smart Growth strategy,
which won the Urban Planning Achievement Award from the Royal
Australian Planning Institute (New South Wales) in 2001 for
striking ''a balance between accessible urban living space, modern
facilities and environmental sustainability.'' The city will pursue
balanced residential, commercial and industrial development,
expecting another 80,000 people in the area by 2010, with Mayor
George Paciullo saying at a recent regional business forum, ''A key
component of the Smart Growth concept is accessibility to public
transport and community facilities.'' An American guest, New York
University urban policy professor Ed Blakely, told the forum, ''We
live in an urbanising world and an urbanising society. Simply
trying to stop urbanisation won't get us anywhere. Instead, we must
be smart about it. It's crucial we strike a balance between
development, endangered species and agriculture.''
7/24/2003
Resource(s): www.sydneybusinessreview.com/
Ontario Smart Growth Network Gaining New Members
Formed in Toronto last month to curb urban sprawl and promote
compact development, the Ontario Smart Growth Network (OSGN) has
already brought together more than 20 organizations and expects to
sign on about 30 others, its newest member, the Simcoe County-based
People Advocating Intelligent Development (PAID) group fighting a
plan to extend Highway 427 from Toronto's western suburbs further
to the north. ''Residents of Simcoe County are not unique in
battling the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and the provincial
government on proposed super toll highways, said PAID president
Sandy Kursis. ''Working together, we create a much bigger and more
powerful voice that can penetrate the layers of bureaucracy and get
our elected officials to listen.'' PAID is also eager to present its
concerns directly to the Ontario government's Smart Growth
Secretariat.
7/31/2003
Resource(s): www.simcoe.com/sc/barrie/
Anti-Sprawl Coalition Outlines Agenda at Ontario Conference
''It's time for citizens from across the province to come together
and take action to elect men and women who are serious about
stopping sprawl,'' said the chairman of the ''Kyoto and Sprawl:
Building Cities That Work'' conference, Terry Fowlers, with more
than 150 officials, experts and activists forming a coalition to
press for changes in Ontario's transportation and environmental
policies, and federal New Democratic Party (NPD) leader Jack Layton
observing, ''You can't have smart growth without smart government.''
Promising a campaign to influence the coming municipal and
provincial elections, the anti-sprawl coalition wants to reverse
the proportion of road and transit funding, currently $10 billion
and $1 billion, respectively; ensure impact assessments for all
expressway projects; and reform the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB),
by overhauling its planning process, giving local councils more
decision-making power and clarifying province-wide development
rules. The conference was held at York University's Glendon
College, and its workshop themes included ''Dollars and Sense,''
''Build it and they will come,'' ''Healthy cities'' and ''Liberation
from the car.''
7/29/2003
Resource(s): www.newswire.ca/
Toronto Coalition Targets Developer-Backed Candidates in Upcoming Municipal Election
Formed at Toronto's ''Kyoto and Sprawl: Building Cities that
Work'' conference last month, a group of area officials and
activists is targeting developer-backed candidates in the
forthcoming Greater Toronto municipal elections, building a
coalition of anti-sprawl contenders and planning to focus on
campaign contributions to incumbents and their voting record. The
coalition's platform, said one of its organizers, Oakville
Councilor Allan Elgar, will expound the Kyoto global warming themes
and the anti-sprawl conference's recommendations, which include an
urban growth freeze, urban boundary reviews every ten years, a ban
on corporate and union donations to municipal campaigns, and other
land use reforms. The Greater Toronto Home Builders Association
cautions that a growth freeze would drive up housing prices in this
already densely developed metro area. But the eastern chapter of
the Sierra Club of Canada reports that continuation of the current
growth pattern would burden taxpayers with billions of dollars in
service and infrastructure costs by 2025, much of it for the
planned extension of two major highways. Report author Janet Pelley
said, ''Solving problems with (more) highways is like putting out a
fire with gasoline.'' -- Stouffville Sun Tribune
8/9/2003
Resource(s): www.yorkregion.com/
Street-Cars a Smarter Choice for Vancouver Transit Funds
''Vancouver is a street-car city that has lost its streetcars,'' says
University of British Columbia Professor Patrick Condon, advising
the city planning commission to cancel the proposed ten-mile
Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) elevated train line, and make
better use of the expected $1.7 billion in local, provincial,
federal and private money by restoring street cars along three key
north-south streets and expanding the current SkyTrain system, a
view shared by Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST)
executive director Marion Town and local Smart Growth group
director Shane Simpson. In his written analysis, Professor Condon
noted that Portland, Oregon is expanding its successful street-car
(light-rail) system at one-fifth of the per-mile cost of the
controversial RAV line, which likely makes it ''the smartest public
infrastructure investment in Portland's history.'' Director Town
pointed out that some RAV money should fund a bike-route system
since one-third of the area's work commutes don't exceed three
miles, ''a journey most cyclists would find convenient and
enjoyable.'' Director Simpson suggested making the bus system more
practical and also more attractive to tourists, by linking it with
a system of ferries, adding that north-south city rail lines ''would
be a catalyst for development'' in some neighborhoods.
8/5/2003
Resource(s): www.canada.com/vancouver/
Southwest Ireland's Housing Sprawl ''A Visual Mess''
Welcoming the ''belated'' and rather timid County Kerry
planners' proposals to restrict ''the housing sprawl'' in this scenic
southwestern corner of Ireland, Dingle resident Sean Brosnan warns
in The Irish Examiner that ''building one house after another
along the roadside'' results in ''a visual mess,'' along with ''social
and cultural problems,'' as many people move from towns and villages
to the outskirts, which has ''a deadening effect'' on human relations
and worsens traffic congestion, noise, health risks and quality of
life. ''How many people do you see cycling any more,'' he asks,
offering six ideas for ''a landscape policy'' as vital to ''our
economic and environmental wellbeing.'' Landscape, he writes, should
be viewed ''as a whole and not as a series of sites; hedgerows along
roads shouldn't be ''knocked down and moved backward;'' housing
should be encouraged in designated ''farm villages/clachans''
(hamlets); streets should interconnect and ''be built in our towns
rather than the isolated estates;'' the ''dominant rights of
motorcars'' should be curtailed; and the practice of lining roads
with houses ''should end.'' -- The Irish Examiner
8/14/2003
Resource(s): www.examiner.ie/pport/web/index.asp
Urban Services Straining as Migrants Flock to Africa's Cities
In contrast to the U.S. and Western Europe, where city populations
diminish, stagnate or only sightly increase, almost everywhere else
cities have been rapidly swelling, the related problems most severe
in Africa, where waves of backcountry or even poorer foreign
migrants are straining services, failing to find jobs and housing,
fueling racial tensions, and living mostly in slums or
ever-spreading shanty towns. According to South Africa's census,
reports Reuters writer Toby Reynolds, the once all-white
Johannesburg, together with Soweto and satellite towns, grew by
600,000 in 1996-01, to 3.23 million, while the nation's three other
main cities gained a total of almost one million. According to the
United Nations, no African city had 10 million residents in 2000,
but Lagos, Nigeria and Cairo, Egypt together will have more than 24
million by 2010, and many smaller cities will also spread, with
Nairobi, Kenya gaining more than 100,000 a year. The United Nations
Population Division estimates that Africa's city population of 295
million will grow by 3.3 percent a year until 2030 -- in comparison
to European cities 0.04-percent annual growth -- and that the
world's urban population will equal its rural population for the
first time in 2007. -- Reuters
8/13/2003
Resource(s): http://asia.reuters.com/
NIMBY Resistance Thwarts Baton Rouge Smart Growth Projects
Most developers ready for smart growth, mixed-use or dense infill
development in Baton Rouge have met stiff ''Not In My Back Yard''
(NIMBY) opposition, which usually forces project delays, costly
changes or rejections by the East Baton Rouge Parish (County)
Planning Commission or the Metro Council, both susceptible to
claims that such projects would hurt property values, worsen
flooding, intensify traffic and otherwise diminish local quality of
life. Developer Mike Wampold, who wants to turn a weed-filled lot
and a blighted vacant building on Stanford Avenue near the LSU
campus lakes into ''the ultimate'' infill mix of apartments, condos
and small shops, with sidewalks and landscaped green space, faced
hostile area residents pressing officials to buy the site for a
park, won approval only through a legal settlement and didn't yet
break ground, reports Greater Baton Rouge Business Report
writer JR Ball, with the developer saying NIMBY people ''show up in
force to impose their will on any proposed development.''
City-parish public works director Fred Raiford says ''try to build
a so-called smart growth project'' and you'll get the idea ''beat out
of you by the residents already out there,'' adding that the
definition of smart growth is ''(w)hatever the neighbors around it
want it to be.'' Reviewing the most frequent complaints at project
hearings, the writer finds that residents want single-entrance
subdivisions separated from adjacent residential areas; homes away
from apartments, shops or offices; and low-density neighborhoods
without sidewalks. Thus, the routine zoning and development code
waivers are explained by pro-infill planning commissioner Herb
Gomez this way: ''If you're on the Metro Council, and 50 people from
your district show up to say they don't want streets to connect,
then you're looking at losing 50 votes if you follow the rules and
force those streets to connect.'' Consequently, many developers
prefer the easier single-use projects on open land, but each such
project, notes national smart growth expert Ben Starett, expands
the NIMBY zone, taking developers farther and farther into the
countryside. To free officials from NIMBY coercion, Dallas
architect and urban planner Paris Rutherford proposes replacing the
current case-by-case development review rules with design and use
guidelines that would determine the future look of a wider area.
Sprawl ''reflects the path of least resistance,'' with the system
''well-honed and orchestrated, to create sprawl,'' he says. ''The only
way to stop it is to retool the system.'' -- Greater Baton Rouge
Business Report
7/23/2003
Resource(s): www.businessreport.com/index.html
Editorial Cites Need for Infill to Revitalize East Baton Rouge
As fast growth in East Baton Rouge Parish (County) expands the
city's suburbs to the north, east and south beyond the parish line,
and some older neighborhoods have lost many residents, city-parish
officials should focus more on filling holes in the city fabric and
on ''the revitalization of the urban core'' with new complexes of
homes, apartments and shops that would also boost downtown growth,
opines the Baton Rouge Advocate, applauding Mayor-President
Bobby Simpson for his urban blight task force. The daily expects
the task force to take advantage of the National Vacant Properties
Campaign just launched by several smart-growth advocacy groups in
Washington, D.C., and to act rather than only deliberate. The
campaign, funded partly by the U.S. EPA, will help educate
communities nationwide about vacant site reclamation and other ways
of erasing urban blight, the daily says, urging Baton Rouge
officials to study such cities as Flint, Mich., and Richmond, Va.,
already singled out for their successful revitalization efforts,
and to apply the lessons locally. This would help them address
other urgent Baton Rouge problems, including population loss, the
daily adds, noting that a ''smaller population in the urban core
results in decisions about the allocation of public services that
have the consequences of making blight worse.'' -- Advocate
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.2theadvocate.com/index.shtml
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
Anne Arundel Closes Zoning Loophole That Allowed New Homes on Undersized Lots
Anne Arundel Closes Zoning Loophole That Allowed New Homes on Undersized Lots
Backed by Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens and Planning
Officer Joseph W. Rutter Jr., the County Council voted to stop the
ever more frequent practice of tearing down old homes that straddle
small lots -- permitted before the county's 1952 zoning -- and
squeezing a home on each, with the law's long-time proponent,
Councilwoman Barbara D. Samorajczyk, pointing out that building new
homes on lots smaller than allowed since then ''defeats the very
purpose of trying to manage your growth.'' In many older
neighborhoods -- especially in the increasingly popular Chesapeake
Bay waterfront communities like Bay Ridge, Cape St. John or Severna
Park, reports Baltimore Sun writer Amanda J. Crawford --
residents resented the tightly packed, ill-fitting homes, often
blocking water views. The Greater Severna Park Council's planning
and zoning committee chairman, Albert M. Johnston, said, ''A builder
comes in and maximizes his investment and leaves the community with
an eyesore.'' Simpler than its two previously proposed versions, the
new law eliminates that old zoning loophole by following a 1999
Court of Appeals decision in a Baltimore County case, in which the
court ruled that ''lots with overlapping structures should be
considered a single merged lot.'' The new law, the writer adds,
doesn't automatically merge adjacent undersized lots having such
accessory structures or features as sheds or driveways, but owners
adding them in the future will have to consolidate lots. --
Baltimore Sun
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/
Developer Explains Why Sprawl Is Bad for Business
''There will never be enough money or concrete for us to pave our
way out of the traffic congestion,'' said veteran developer Steward
Greenbaum, funding partner of Greenbaum-Rose Associates in Owings
Mills, at a Baltimore County Planning Board speaker series forum,
admitting that after years of ''conventional development'' he
realized it ''doesn't work'' and found hundreds of reasons ''why
sprawl is bad for business,'' which turned him toward mixed use,
high density and other Smart Growth principles as the only
effective remedy for road gridlock, loss of open space and a wasted
sense of community. Impressed by the widely acclaimed
neotraditional Kentlands in Montgomery County, he built the
award-winning, 118-home Cobblestone neighborhood in Pikesville,
Baltimore County, and launched the mixed-use, varied-income,
507-acre Maple Lawn development in Howard County, telling the
audience, ''The CEO can live in Maple Lawn, and so can the secretary
and the fireman.'' The problem, reports Towson Jeffersonian
writer Bob Allen, is that Cobblestone required 1,200 zoning
variances and Maple Lawn 32 zoning hearings, facing strong local
opposition and splitting environmentalists -- with the Sierra Club
against and 1,000 Friends of Maryland for the high-density project.
The developer urged Baltimore County planners to visit Kentlands to
fully understand ''the significance of the change'' in development
patterns and the need to revise county zoning and make such
projects easier. Noting that housing prices in Kentlands and
similar developments ''have gone up faster than in conventional
communities,'' he said his Maple Lawn will be successful, too, and
the only mistake for any buyer would be to buy just one house,
because ''(t)hey're going to go up in value dramatically.'' --
Jeffersonian
7/24/2003
Resource(s): http://news.mywebpal.com/index.cfm?pnpid=811
County Executive Faults Maryland Governor on Transit Improvements
A day after hitting Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in a
Baltimore Sun op-ed piece for ignoring the city's request
for ''a first-rate subway system'' and ''condemning the region to
perpetual gridlock,'' Montgomery County Democratic Executive Douglas
M. Duncan continued the attack in his own county, reminding radio
listeners that the governor ''campaigned on solving our
transportation problems,'' but cut the transportation budget,
calling him ''a disaster'' and urging his Transportation Secretary
Robert L. Flanagan to put more money in projects statewide -- all
this brushed off by the secretary as ''political noise.'' Noting that
the executive may run for governor in 2006, Washington Post
writer Matthew Mosk quotes political experts Keith Haller and Blair
Lee IV, who think he could have a problem attacking the governor's
transportation record locally, since both backed the long-debated
Intercounty Connector (ICC) across Potomac to Virginia, with the
governor taking ''critical steps to get the project moving.'' The
executive gives the governor his due for spurring the projects, but
says, ''With this governor, every other transportation improvement
can fall by the wayside besides the ICC.'' To highlight their
differences further, the writer reports, the executive's ally,
Montgomery Democratic Delegate Peter Franchot, asked Secretary
Flanagan for a joint Friday morning rush-hour ''Ride On Route 15''
bus trip, during which the delegate stressed the need for new
revenue to keep the county's transit lines in business, while the
secretary argued that despite the budget constraints, the
administration is ''not sitting still.'' -- Baltimore Sun
8/10/2003
Resource(s): www.washingtonpost.com/
Smart Growth Comes to Baltimore County's Hunt Valley
In a win for smart growth in Baltimore County's Hunt Valley, the
three-decades-old business-industrial hub, with light-rail links to
Baltimore and BWI Airport, has recently received a 400-unit
apartment complex and now bulldozers level much of a failed mall
for the future $70 million Towne Center's shops and restaurants,
applauds a Baltimore Sun editorial, while sounding a ''sprawl
alert'' and telling county officials to stand firm against the
inevitable developer pressures to breach the adjacent urban-rural
demarcation line. Drawn just north of the mall, the demarcation
line has long ''contained large-scale development in an area with
public water and sewer, safeguarding the rural one third of the
county from sprawl,'' the editorial observes. It urges County
Executive James T. Smith Jr. and the County Council to match their
predecessors' resolve in keeping Hunt Valley redevelopment ''from
leapfrogging into currently protected rural areas'' and to be ''on
guard against infringement attempts when a new rezoning cycle
begins in September.'' -- Baltimore Sun
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/
Developer Scales Back Kent Island Project to Meet County Growth Guidelines
Heeding the Queen Anne's County Commissioners' push for Kent Island
growth curbs and courting community support, local developer John
Wilson scaled down his 140-acre neo-traditional Gibson's Grant
project from 750 to 417 homes, along with 65 small resort homes, a
60-room inn, a six-court tennis club and a general store, reserving
50 acres for public use and a 300-foot-wide buffer on Macum Creek
for a nature trail, and promising to build only 45 homes a year to
fit into the proposed 400-home annual countywide construction caps.
Glad that builders are ''listening,'' but concerned about the
county's wastewater treatment capacity, Democratic Commissioner
Gene Ransom III said, ''(t)hey still have a ways to go, but they are
heading in the right direction.'' On the other hand, reports
Annapolis Capital writer Earl Kelly, Republican Commissioner
Michael Koval voiced his preference for homes on one-acre lots,
explaining, ''I am not a fan of smart growth because I don't like
the density. I don't like being crowded.'' The writer also quotes
local activists who have fought other big area projects with
ballots and suits. Kent Island Civic Federation president Jack
Broderick thought the scaled-down project is ''more reasonable,''
with the general public able to use its waterfront and other
amenities. Kent Island Defense league president Rick Moser noted
that developers are planning about 4,000 homes for the area, saying
he has no ''reaction to the specific project, but when you combine
that one project with everything else going on Kent Island ... (it)
is outrageous.'' -- Capital
7/9/2003
Resource(s): www.hometownannapolis.com/
Gov. Ehrlich Urges Unity at Summit to Curb Nutrient Runoff into Chesapeake Bay
''The sooner we get past the politics and (the notion) that because
you're pro-environment, you're anti-agriculture, and if you're
pro-agriculture, you're anti-environment, the better off we'll be,''
said Maryland Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., setting
the tone for a day-long state summit on ways to curb nutrient
runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, a sentiment shared by Chesapeake
Bay Foundation President William C. Baker, who stressed, ''We want
to bring the temperature down, stop the finger-pointing, work
together. These solutions really should be mutually beneficial for
agriculture and the environment.'' The 300 farmers, poultry growers,
environmentalists, consultants, researchers and state officials in
the audience gave the governor a standing ovation for his unity
call, then split into forum groups that produced 80
recommendations, some redundant, some contradictory, reports
Associated Press writer Gretchen Parker. Many reflected the
frequent farmers' complaints about the burden of regulations, and
the wish to make nutrient control plans voluntary and offer
incentives for their implementation. With more than 500 million
chickens grown on the Eastern Shore each year and much of nitrogen
and phosphorus from the billions of pounds of manure running off
into the bay, many farmers hope the governor remembers they voted
for him last year, and will revise the state's 1998 Water Quality
Improvement Act and ''help them keep their industries viable,'' the
writer notes. But she also quotes a cautionary Chesapeake Bay
Foundation news release that says the state won't reach its goal of
halving nutrient runoff by 2010 if it relaxes regulations and
warns, ''Now is not the time to find ways around taking
responsibility for this pollution.''
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.newszap.com/dover
Baltimore's ''Smart Commute'' Program Adds Incentives for Home Purchases Near Transit Stations
In another expansion of its ''Smart Commute'' initiative, which
increases affordable housing choices and eases traffic congestion
by linking housing and public transit, Fannie Mae partnered with
Maryland and with Baltimore area banks, groups and agencies, to
offer qualified buyers of homes near transit stations ''greater
mortgage financing flexibility,'' including a three-percent down
payment from their own funds and assumed additional income of up to
$250 a month from savings on less car use. In addition to these
special mortgage-eligibility considerations, reports Baltimore
Times writer Ginger Williams, the home buyers will receive four
free weekly MARC Train passes, also valid on the city's buses,
light rail and subway. Fannie Mae's Southeast Region vice president
David Elam said his company ''is working with this project to lower
homebuying costs and the barriers to homeownership'' in the city.
Calling this a ''common sense approach,'' Baltimore's Housing
Commissioner, Paul T. Graziano, announced ''a major new initiative''
to revitalize the Reservoir Hill area by selling the first 16 of
its vacant homes to prospective occupants or investors through
private Realtors starting in September and putting more than 20
others on the market later. Fannie Mae's Maryland partners in the
''Smart Commute'' program include the state Department of
Transportation, the Department of Planning, the Greater Baltimore
Board of Realtors, the LiveBaltimore Home Center, the Municipal
Employees Credit Union and Chevy Chase Bank/B.F. Saul Mortgage
Company. -- Baltimore Times
8/29/2003
Resource(s): www.btimes.com/news/default.asp
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
New Development Council to Bring Sustainable Development, Smart Growth to Massachusetts
Although Massachusetts lawmakers disappointed Governor Mitt Romney
by refusing to fund the Executive Office of Commonwealth
Development proposed for former Conservation Law Foundation
president Douglas Foy -- giving him instead the chair of a
specially created seven-member Commonwealth Development
Coordinating Council -- the change doesn't affect the scope of his
responsibilities, with the governor's communication director Eric
Fehrnstrom stressing, ''Doug Foy is not a Cabinet secretary de jure,
but will continue to operate as a de facto member of the Cabinet,''
and with Foy asserting, ''We're going to do sustainable development
and smart growth.'' The reason for the change, finds Boston
Globe writer Anthony Flint, lies in ''a mix of politics, policy
and personality,'' with some lawmakers reluctant to ''give the
governor everything he wanted'' and others wary about formalizing a
super-secretary post, to oversee secretaries of environmental
affairs, transportation and construction, and other departments.
Therefore, lawmakers reached a compromise to seat all those
departments on the coordinating council chaired by Foy, explains
Senate Ways and Means Committee Democratic Chairwoman Therese
Murray, adding, ''we (also) didn't feel the governor went far
enough'' to coordinate housing, transportation, energy and the
environment. The result is fine with Environmental League of
Massachusetts president James R. Gomes, who observes, ''If we
weren't so focused on who's up and who's down, we would be saying
that Massachusetts for the first time passed legislation calling
for smart growth.'' -- Boston Globe
7/3/2003
Resource(s): www.globe.com
Detroit Counties Cry Foul Over State Reps' Housing Density Proposal
Disturbed by suburban sprawl and high home costs on the fringes of
Detroit, state Republican Representatives Jack Hoogendyk and Marc
Shulman introduced a bill that would require townships in the
metro's Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties to allow density of up
to eight homes per acre on at least 50 percent of their residential
land with water and sewer services, a move decried by township
officials as a blatant assault on local control. Representative
Hoogendyk told Detroit News writer Amy Lee that he favors
local control, but the three-county region's rapid growth warrants
state action to concentrate development in urban areas and to help
young families that often must move ever farther from cities to
find affordable housing. ''If you're able to build eight homes on
one acre, obviously those homes won't be $500,000 mansions, they'll
be affordable homes,'' the representative said, pointing out that
developers will also have more flexibility, because ''if they buy an
eight-acre parcel, they could put eight homes on one acre and save
the other seven for open space.'' Representative Shulman's chief of
staff Todd Harcek called the bill ''a starting point to talk about
the much larger issue of land use,'' with Governor Jennifer
Granholm's Land Use Leadership Council ready to release its
comprehensive report on August 15. Still, Lyon Township Supervisor
Joe Shigley said the bill ''takes all control away from local people
and puts it in the hands of the developers;'' Shelby Township
Supervisor Skip Maccarone argued townships already face lawsuit
threats for any rezoning denials and ''a statute that commands
density greater than a master plan is an insult to the intelligence
of local elected officials;'' and Northville Township Manage Chip
Snider doubted this ''completely unreasonable'' bill would ''go
anywhere.'' -- Detroit News
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.detnews.com/
State Will Focus on Urban Revitalization and Purchase of Development Rights to Reign in Sprawl
With six of the state's eight largest cities still losing mostly
young people in the past three years and development claiming more
than 10 rural acres each hour, Governor Jennifer Granholm's
bipartisan Michigan Land Use Leadership Council concluded its
six-month series of deliberations and public hearings convinced
that more must be done to revitalize urban cores, help towns save
local character and stem farmland loss -- the ways to make it
happen outlined through more than 150 specific growth-management
recommendations, some easy to implement by executive orders, others
needing legislative or voter approval. ''State laws inadvertently
have promoted going out and finding green space (for development)
rather than revitalizing urban areas,'' said council member, state
Republican Senator Patti Birkholz, while Public Sector Consultants
vice president Bill Rustem, whose firm helped the council draft its
report, added, ''If we have more traffic jams, if the cost of
infrastructure goes up, if we lose the vistas that define Michigan,
the agriculture, the forestry land, that diminishes the quality of
life.'' Consequently, reports Lansing State Journal writer
Chris Andrews, the council recommended investing more state and
federal money in urban infrastructure and transportation, with a
focus on cities, towns and counties seeking regional cooperation;
encouraging denser development, including small-lot zoning and
multifamily housing; and spurring purchases of farmer development
rights (PDR), possibly by issuing agricultural conservation bonds.
In the past few years, farmers offered to sell development rights
for 125,000 acres, but the state could afford only about 14,000
acres, the writer notes, quoting Michigan Farm Bureau president
Wayne Wood, who said a PDR funding program is desperately needed,
because it ''allows units of government, farmers and agribusiness to
plan with the security that there will be a block of agriculture
for further business.'' Governor Granholm asked her Consumer and
Industry Services director David Hollister to follow the council's
report with suggestions for policy changes and Republican
legislative leaders also promised serious consideration, writes
Detroit News Lansing correspondent Gary Heinlein. He quotes
Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, who said, ''Any comprehensive
land use policy will focus heavily on making Michigan's core cities
and urban areas more appealing places to work and live.''
Nevertheless, the writer thinks ''the report's future is an open
question,'' asking, ''Will the 100-page document be used as a guide
to channel growth or join previous land use reports that are
gathering dust on Capitol shelves?'' -- Lansing State Journal
8/20/2003
Resource(s): www.lsj.com/ ; www.detnews.com/index.htm
Michigan Suburban Growth Boom Spurs Urban Redevelopment, Sprawl-Control Plans
''One man's sprawl is another man's paradise,'' writes Detroit
News senior editor Luther King, commenting on the newest U.S.
Census Bureau estimate that the loss of almost 23,000 residents
within the last few years lowered Detroit's population to 925,000
-- with Flint, Grand Rapids, Warren, Lansing, Livonia and other
cities also suffering losses -- while the farthest parts of Wayne,
Washtenaw, Livingston, Oakland and Macomb counties around Metro
Detroit gained residents. Noting especially high growth in the
southwestern Oakland County townships of Commerce, Milford and
Lyon, the editor points out that since ''dollars for road expansion
and repair haven't kept pace with the population boom,'' the area
pays the price in ubiquitous traffic gridlock. He finds ''a growing
recognition that there is a cost for this 'pursuit of
happiness' '' in the suburbs. This recognition is reflected in
the work of Governor Jennifer Granholm's Michigan Land Use
Leadership Council. A draft of its forthcoming report includes a
recommendation to create ''agriculture security zones'' and issue
state bonds to spur multi-jurisdictional land protection and urban
redevelopment initiatives in Wayne, Oakland, Macom, Kent and
Genesee counties. Still, even those trying to curb sprawl differ on
details, the editor writes, citing Oakland County's research paper
and digital land use map for its 61 communities. While Oakland
community and economic development director Dennis R. Toffolo would
like communities to use the map for individual plans and business
recruitment, Ferndale city manager Tom Barwin expects it to ensure
better regional planning. He warns, ''We have to fix what we have
and make what we have here livable and desirable instead of chewing
up thousands of acres of farmland. Every dollar we spend on fixing
a sewer or building a library in Macomb Township is a dollar that
can't be used in Detroit.'' -- Detroit News
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.detnews.com/metro/index.htm
Property Rights Movement On the Rise in Michigan
Set back during the late 1990s, the private property rights
movement has reasserted itself in Michigan's local and state
politics, defeating a widely backed construction ban for a fragile
Lake Michigan bluff in Emmet County, helping Great Lakes shore
landowners win the enactment of a state law that lets them mow and
bulldoze the shores, inciting Republican-sponsored legislation to
weaken the state's Natural River Act, and getting ready to hit the
growth-management recommendations expected from Governor Jennifer
Granholm's Michigan Land Use Leadership Council (MLULC) in
mid-August. Its banner the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which reads ''nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation,'' the property
rights movement posits it as ''the foundation of all other
liberties,'' writes Michigan Land Use Institute news desk intern
Sarah Morris, quoting House Republican Speaker Rick Johnson and
MLULC member Brian Warner. The first warns, ''If you don't protect
private property rights, you're going to have a hard time in a lot
of the other areas;'' the other argues, ''The recognition of private
property protects other freedoms. Having the right to enjoy our
property is an important barrier against an abuse of police power.''
But this clear tilt ''in favor of self-interest'' lacks legal basis,
the writer observes, citing a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that
limiting development at California's Lake Tahoe is not a taking
because it doesn't diminish ''all or 'essentially' all of the value
of the property,'' and because landowners who may feel a regulation
burden also share a ''reciprocity advantage'' with others, which
serves the common good. ''Since the economic value of Lake Tahoe
property is based on the lake's natural beauty,'' the writer
explains, ''regulating development on the lake protects property
values in the long run.'' Environmental and legal experts stress
other key points. University of Wisconsin (Madison) urban and
environmental studies professor Harvey M. Jacobs points out that
the private rights movement is ''tapping into a real sentiment of
dissatisfaction'' with the government, while its moneyed industry
supporters can gain from weakening natural resource safeguards.
Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute (Washington,
D.C.) Executive director John Echeverria says, ''The founding
Fathers recognized that reasonable regulations applied across the
entire community produce not only burdens but corresponding
benefits that help all landowners,'' adding, ''There is a very large
and well-organized, well-financed effort to push the takings clause
beyond what the drafters of the Constitution ever intended.''
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.mlui.org/
Census Numbers Show Marked Growth for Twin Cities Suburbs
Fed mostly by commuters from the Twin Cities, the small town of St.
Michael, some 25 miles northwest, saw its population grow by more
than 11 percent to 11,615 between July 2001 and July 2002, with six
other metro area cities within daily driving distance seeing
smaller but still marked increases and state demographer Tom
Gillaspy expecting the sprawl trend to continue. St. Michael
Administrator Bob Derus says commuters settle in his city because
of its easy access from I-94, small-town feel and nearness to the
northern woods. According to new U.S. Census estimates, the Twin
Cities population decreased slightly, due mainly to a drop of about
one percent in Minneapolis -- to 379,513 -- but the state
demographer says his department and the seven-county Metropolitan
Council are checking whether that number is accurate. Explaining
that the Census Bureau's computer model used a greater number of
housing units slated for demolition in Minneapolis than the city
actually demolished, he promises to release the revised estimate
soon. -- Brainerd Dispatch
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.brainerddispatch.com/
Transit Budget Cuts Hit Twin Cities: Highway Expansion Gets Funding, But Light Rail in Jeopardy
Minnesota lawmakers resolved to borrow some $900 million for
highway expansion and safety over the next four years, that is to
''buy a lot of asphalt,'' while cutting funds for the Department of
Transportation (MnDOT), local governments and transit, which has
already affected the Twin Cities Metro area bus service and will
increasingly delay street repair, road maintenance and snow
removal, but especially commuter train and light rail projects,
with Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin expressing the
prevalent local reaction: ''It was a disastrous session for
transit.'' Hit by the cuts, reports Pioneer Press writer Toni
Coleman, Metro officials had to increase express bus and
door-to-door paratransit fares, planning service reductions on 40
routes, many of them in September. Deprived of seed money for the
proposed St. Cloud-Minneapolis Northstar commuter line, slated to
start in 2007, planners are revising ridership and capital cost
estimates, while St. Cloud Democrats, and also suburban developers
preparing sites along its route, are deliberating how to help the
project happen. The north-south Hiawatha Avenue light-rail line in
Minneapolis, the writer continues, will open next April, but
lawmakers agreed to cover only half of the operating costs in
excess of fares, with Hennepin County having to pay the other half
from property tax revenue, which will reduce its $19.2 million
reserve for other rail projects by $6.7 million within two years.
They also refused the promised $2 million for planning the
east-west St. Paul-Minneapolis Central Corridor light-rail line,
putting the onus on Ramsey and Hennepin counties, which are using
$573,000 in property tax money just to keep the plans for the $840
million line afloat. ''The next step,'' says Ramsey County
Commissioner Sue Haigh, ''will be for the rail authorities to
determine if they want to make an additional commitment in the
absence of the state's investment.'' And Hennepin Commissioner
McLaughlin adds, ''Some people are trying to create a poison pill
for future rail projects, because what locality is going to pay for
a share of the capital cost and run the risk of the state running
back on its commitment of operating costs?'' -- Pioneer Press
8/4/2003
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/
Jefferson County Master Plan Seen as Smart Growth-Property Rights Compromise
With most of Jefferson County's 200,000 people crowding its
suburban northern third, just off St. Louis, and its major highway
corridors, the County Commission has finally broken a years-long
growth-management impasse and approved a state-required master
plan, seen by new Presiding Commissioner Mark Mertens and other
officials as a good compromise between smart growth and property
rights. Unlike an earlier-drafted plan, which would have set a
five-acre lot minimum outside major cities and highway corridors
and whose rejection in 2001 impelled most county planners to
resign, notes St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Matthew
Hathaway, the just-approved plan will simply steer most development
into ''a primary growth area'' -- including the county's northern
third, major highway corridors and all municipalities -- and allow
some suburban development in a ''secondary growth area'' and only
limited construction in a ''rural reserve.'' As Commissioner Mertens
predicted, the plan doesn't ''make everyone happy.'' The county's
former planning director and some residents fault it for too many
concessions to residential builders and expect development in the
primary and secondary growth areas to outpace road and utility
needs. Others, like county Economic Development Corporation
chairman Dan Govero and Grandview R-II School District
superintendent Michael Brown, consider the plan ''a little too
restrictive,'' afraid it basically creates ''a no-build zone'' in the
rural reserve area, which needs an economic boost most and whose
rugged terrain creates a natural barrier against rampant growth. --
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/
Bush Names Utah Gov. Leavitt to EPA Post
Three-term Utah Republican Governor Mike Leavitt was selected to
lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said President
Bush, ''because he is a trusted friend, a capable executive and a
man who understands the obligations of environmental stewardship,''
and also ''the importance of clear standards in every environmental
policy,'' and who ''respects the ability of state and local
governments to meet those standards, (and) rejects the old ways of
command and control from above.'' The nominee confirmed his belief
in ''an inherent human responsibility to care for the earth,'' but
also in ''an economic imperative ... in a global economy to do it
less expensively'' and pledged his best efforts to improve the
environment. If confirmed by the Senate sometime after the
congressional break ends in September, note Washington Post
writers Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, Governor Leavitt could use the
EPA post to promote his 1998 ''Enlibra'' cooperative dispute-solving
principles, adopted by the Western Governors' Association, which
involve shift of power to lower levels, the separation of
policymaking from data-gathering, the use of financial incentives
rather than regulations and the reliance on cost-benefit analysis.
Welcomed by business groups, the nomination drew mixed reviews from
environmentalists. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised it as
evidence of the president's commitment to balanced environmental
policies, calling the nominee ''a recognized consensus builder.''
Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp credited the governor
with successful efforts to protect Western national park from haze,
but like others, faulted him for recent federal land and
''wilderness'' deals, reports New York Times writer Katherine
Q. Seelye, also quoting National Environmental Trust president
Philip E. Clapp, who ''can't think of too many governors more
hostile to government regulations.'' The critics also note the
governor's push for his 1996 Legacy Highway project -- challenged
by Sierra Club-led opponents and halted in late 2001 by the 10th
Circuit Court of Appeals pending further route and environmental
assessments -- with his Quality Growth initiatives and support for
Envision Utah overlooked in initial press reports. Senate
Democrats, including presidential candidates, Connecticut Senator
Joseph I. Lieberman and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, view the
future confirmation hearings as a crucial opportunity for a
presenting a detailed case against the president's environmental
policy. Anticipating such tough hearings, Governor Leavitt cited
his work to make 13 Western states, 13 Indian tribal nations, three
federal agencies, the industry and environmental groups agree on
ways to improve the Grand Canyon's air quality, saying, ''There is
no progress polarizing at the extremes, but there is great
progress, there's great environmental progress, when we collaborate
in the productive middle.'' -- Washington Post, New York
Times
8/11/2003
Resource(s): www.washingtonpost.com ; www.nytimes.com
Land Use Groups Launch Abandoned Properties Reclamation Campaign
With more than 12,000 empty acres in any average large city marring
its socioeconomic potential, while sprawl erodes open land, Smart
Growth America (SGA), the International City/County Management
Association (ICMA), the Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(LISC), the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the
Brookings Institution launched the National Vacant Properties
Campaign to prevent abandonment, speed up redevelopment and advance
urban revitalization. Funded partly by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and backed by the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), the campaign will focus on homes, stores,
factories and vacant lots ''that are not legally occupied, show
signs of neglect or pose a public nuisance,'' with SGA executive
director Don Chen saying, ''Now is the time to create a national
forum that will allow policy makers, builders, government officials
and residents to deal with this issue.'' EPA Office of Business and
Community Innovation director Charles Kent said, ''As a nation, we
cannot afford to use our land and discard it as though it were a
used candy wrapper,'' and HUD Economic Development Deputy Assistant
Secretary Don Mains noted that urban site reclamation can spur home
ownership, small business expansion and downtown revival. Pointing
out that cities like San Diego and Las Vegas have already taken
steps to prevent abandonment, while Baltimore, Philadelphia,
Richmond (VA), Flint (MI) and others are aggressively pursuing
reclamation, campaign organizers stressed the need to publicize
such efforts, to make all communities aware of redevelopment
benefits, stir civic leaders to action and help policy makers craft
reforms to ''bring vacant abandoned properties back to life.'' --
Smart Growth America
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.smartgrowthamerica.org ; www.nytimes.com/
Sprawl Taking its Toll on Elderly and Children
''We really are in an environmental health crisis,'' warned National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Research Triangle Park,
N.C.) deputy director Dr. Samuel Wilson at the ''Sprawl: The Impact
on Vulnerable Populations'' workshop at the University of
Cincinnati's Kettering Laboratory, where many experts stressed the
need for smart growth -- with its mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly
and socially diverse communities -- to promote more active
lifestyles instead of car dependency, and reduce the risks of
respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, obesity and traffic
accidents, most pronounced for the elderly and children. The
workshop's key speakers, reports Cincinnati Enquirer writer
Steve Kemme, focused on the predominant suburban growth pattern as
responsible for road congestion, air pollution, green space loss,
psychological stress and a lack of neighborhood interaction, all
contributing to health problems and having many other side effects.
Air pollution is especially harmful to the elderly and children,
said Dr. Wilson, pointing out that epidemic-proportion asthma
already costs the nation $12.7 billion in annual health care.
Car-dependent and sedentary suburban lifestyles contribute to
general obesity, which causes more than 300,000 premature deaths a
year, he said, observing, ''We're eating a lot more cheeseburgers
and taking fewer walks.'' Heavy road congestion combined with scarce
sidewalks in most suburbs makes it more dangerous to drive and to
walk, with a high rate of traffic-related injuries and deaths.
University of Cincinnati's Environmental Policy Center director
Joyce Martin said that although Greater Cincinnati's sprawl
problems haven't reached the disastrous proportions found
elsewhere, ''it's important for us to look at these things before
we're at a crisis.'' -- Cincinnati Enquirer
7/9/2003
Resource(s): www.enquirer.com/
Home Buyers Ready to Trade Large Lots for Shorter Commutes
Although floor areas of single-family homes sold in the past 10
years have slightly increased, the median lot size slid from 9,750
to 8,612 square feet (1 acre = 43,560 sq ft), with National
Association of Home Builders research vice president Gopal
Ahluwalia saying many buyers ready to ''give up a large lot if it
saves them an hour of commuting time,'' a trend aided by brisk sales
of zero-lot homes, usually build on lot edges, with
Coolhouseplans.com Web site owner Walt Raczkowski finding them
''especially popular around coastal communities where land is at a
premium.'' Their sales driven by ''baby boom empty nesters seeking to
simplify their lives'' and first-time buyers, including single
parents and young professionals, the zero-lot homes -- also known
as garden or patio homes -- range from one to three stories, and
often stand closer than 10 feet apart, separated by ''a thin strip
of turf for side yards'' or just a ''party wall,'' writes bankrate.com
expert Steve McLinden for the Scripps Howard News Service.
Nevertheless, ''their design and demographics vary greatly from
neighborhood to neighborhood,'' with some having ''large patios for
entertaining'' and others ''neighbor-friendly front porches that
almost touch the street,'' the writer observes, adding that the
Coolhouseplans.com Web site offers about 800 designs of homes under
30 feet in width. -- Scripps Howard News Service
8/28/2003
Resource(s): http://204.78.57.12/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=home
Landmark Study Describes Link Between Sprawl and Obesity
Although most discussions about sprawl and Smart Growth focus on
the loss of open space or the huge public cost of sprawl subsidies,
the ''most fundamental aspect is health,'' since ''with sprawl, we are
designing obesity and high blood pressure and heart attacks and
asthma right into our lives,'' said Smart Growth Leadership
Institute president, former Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening,
as the American Journal of Health Promotion published a landmark
study, ''Relationship between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity,
Obesity, and Morbidity;'' the Surface Transportation Policy Project
(STPP) and Smart Growth America (SGA) issued a companion report,
''Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl''; and the American Journal
of Public Health added a score of related articles. The study and
the companion report are the first to establish a direct link
between community forms and inhabitants' health, documenting that
in spread-out, car-dependent areas people walk less, weigh more and
often suffer higher blood pressure. Conducted by public policy
expert Barbara A. McCann and University of Maryland's National
Center for Smart Growth research professor Reid Ewing -- and widely
reported nationwide and internationally from Canada to Australia
and Singapore -- the analysis of the health characteristics of more
than 200,000 residents of 448 urban counties found that adults in
the most sprawling areas walk 79 minutes less for recreation each
month and weigh about six pounds more than those in high-density
areas and are also more prone to hypertension. ''They're driving to
work, driving to lunch, driving to school, just about driving
everywhere,'' observed Professor Ewing, while SGA executive director
Don Chen added, ''It shows why we should work harder to create great
neighborhoods and cities that invite walking, bicycling and other
physical activity as a part of everyday life.'' The same idea is
implicit in a separate study by Rutgers University researcher John
Pucher and European Commission expert Lewis Dijkstra, who found
American street and neighborhood design a factor in a two- to
six-times higher rate of death and injury from hits by cars among
American pedestrians and cyclists than among Germans and Dutch,
even though the latter walk and bike more. Accordingly, the
SGA-STPP study and report advise communities to invest in sidewalk,
bike lane and street safety improvements; make it safe for children
to walk and bike to school; calm traffic with speed bumps and by
other means; promote walking instead of driving; focus development
around transit stations to facilitate walking; retrofit sprawling
suburbs with sidewalks, pedestrian cut-throughs and small shops;
and revitalize older walkable neighborhoods. Noting that inactivity
and obesity contribute to more than 200,000 premature deaths each
year and that high health care costs threaten state budgets, the
authors write, ''Getting decision makers to consider how the
billions spent on transportation and development can make
communities more walkable and bikeable is one avenue to improving
the health and quality of life of billions of Americans.'' STPP
president Anne Canby said bluntly, ''We urge Congress to remember
this when voting on the transportation appropriations bill in
September: a vote to restore critical funds for bicycle and
pedestrian facilities is a vote for public health.'' --
www.smartgrowthamerica.org; www.healthpromotionjournal.com; www.ajph.org
8/29/2003
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/; www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/
More Funds Sought for Transit Projects at National Parks
As traffic congestion at national parks turned many tourists away,
the number slipping from 287 million in 1999 to 277 million in
2002, the National Park Service asked Congress to increase funds
for park transit projects from $11.5 million to $60.5 million a
year -- which the administration reduced to $30 million in its
request for reauthorization of Transportation Equity Act (TEA-21)
expiring in September -- and now Maryland Democratic Senator Paul
Sarbanes is leading 14 others in a push for their proposed ''Transit
in Parks Act'' (TRIP), to invest $540 million over six years in park
and other public land transit improvements. TRIP would fund
planning and construction of light rail, bus systems, bike trails
and walkways, freeing the National Park Service and U.S. Forest
Service from competition with other agencies for federal
transportation money, writes columnist Candus Thomson in The
Baltimore Sun, quoting Senator Sarbanes, who stresses that
national parks ''desperately'' need such dedicated funding to build
transit and off-site parking, let people leave their cars, make
their visit more enjoyable, protect the environment and shield
local communities from loss of tourist revenue. ''If these parks are
forced to close their gates because of congestion,'' the senator
says, ''the economic vitality of the surrounding region would be
jeopardized.'' So far, only Utah's Zion National Park has banned
cars, ferrying most of its 2.6 million visitors a year by free
propane shuttle buses. In Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park,
whose projected $200-million light rail may not materialize this
decade -- since the state congressional delegation thought
visitation decline doesn't warrant the cost and asked the National
Park Service to study less expensive options three years ago --
Superintendent Joseph Alston likes the car ban idea. Worried about
6,000 cars on a summer day vying for the 2,400 parking spaces on
the Grand Canyon South Rim, he says, ''We can have more people here,
but we can't have more cars. If people are going to bring their
cars, we're going to have to limit the number of people in the
park.'' He adds, ''I personally believe that the visiting public is
getting used to using mass transit systems. At Zion the feeling is,
'we have our park back again.' We think we can have the same
success here.'' -- The Baltimore Sun
7/3/2003
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Revitalization, Funding Concerns Determine EPA's New List of Active Superfund Cleanup Sites
Having completed assessments of 20 Superfund toxic waste sites, the
Environmental Protection Agency announced the $49-million start of
long-term cleanups at ten sites and a delay for the other ten, with
EPA Acting Administrator Marianne L. Horinko stressing she has made
revitalization one of the ''key themes'' in her tenure, but there is
''not enough money to start everything we want this year'' and she
must ''prioritize based on risks to human health and the
environment.'' Other factors in selecting the ten priority cleanup
sites included their economic development potential, their
prospects for reimbursing the government and their environmental
injustice impact, the Acting Administrator said, pointing out that
after cleanup, most of these sites will ensure added community
benefits, such as higher property values and more jobs. Established
by Congress in 1980, Associated Press writer John Heilprin reminds
readers, the Superfund program currently lists 1,233 sites -- only
eight added this year. About 70 percent of the program's $3 billion
annual cost is paid by companies found responsible ''for creating
some of the nation's most hazardous waste sites,'' the rest financed
by ''a fast-diminishing trust fund'' and congressional
appropriations. Critics of the White House argue that starting only
ten cleanups this year reflects its low emphasis on site
reclamation, the writer notes, quoting U.S. Public Interest
Research Group (PIRG) environmental health expert Julie Wolk, who
says the inadequate Superfund program funding ''unacceptably puts
more and more Americans at risk of toxic exposures in their own
communities.'' The list of Superfund sites awarded or denied money
to start cleanup is available at www.epa.gov
7/17/2003
Resource(s): www.enn.com/
Wisconsin Realtors Outline How Smart Growth Protects Property Rights
With Wisconsin's 1999 Smart Growth law criticized since last year
mainly in the north-central areas as a threat to property rights
and local control or a United Nations-hatched script for a ''one
size fits all'' planning approach, Wisconsin REALTORS Association
Land Use and Environmental Affairs Director Tom Larson holds it
REALTORS' professional responsibility ''to distinguish fact from the
fiction,'' which he does in a concise exposition of 10 myths about
the law, focusing on the most common myth among all
growth-management foes everywhere, namely that Smart Growth is
against property rights. ''One of the primary objectives of
Wisconsin's Smart Growth law,'' he writes, ''is to protect private
property rights by making the planning process more accessible to
property owners and other members of the public.'' Reversing
prevalent practice, he points out, the law expands public
participation in local planning; offers property owners greater
certainty about the scope of their land use entitlements; makes
local officials more accountable for plan content; secures
comprehensive planning by addressing at least nine quality-of-life
issues, including the often neglected housing, transportation and
economic development; and affirms property rights as ''one of the
state and local planning goals'' by requiring communities to spell
out how they will ''balance individual property rights with
community interests'' if they seek state aid for devising their
plans. Wisconsin's Smart Growth, the writer continues, doesn't give
the state any authority ''to control'' local plans, limiting its role
to awarding planning grants. It is not designed to stop growth in
rural areas and steer it to cities, upholding communities'
prerogatives to ''grow (or not grow) any way they wish.'' It is not
''an unfunded mandate,'' with the state providing $3.5 million in
planning grants in 1999-2001 and $6 million in 2001-2003. It was
not conceived by the U.N., but put forward and supported ''by an
extremely broad coalition of major stakeholders,'' including
associations of Wisconsin REALTORS, builders, towns, cities,
municipalities, counties and planners, along with 1000 Friends of
Wisconsin. It doesn't mandate urban growth boundaries, mass transit
or high density, leaving all growth choices to communities. It
doesn't set the plans in stone, but requires properly executed
amendments and timely updates. It doesn't leave small communities
with the sole prospect of hiring costly planning professionals,
since help is available from the University of Wisconsin-Extension,
regional experts and county planners. It doesn't impose planning
standards, because it recognizes ''that each community is different,
with its unique history, values and resources.'' And its repeal
would solve no controversial issue, because far from being
responsible for shoreland zoning debates, sprawl, restrictive
development policies, open-space protection initiatives or other
problems ''people have with local authorities and state agencies'' --
problems that started long before the law's enactment and will
likely continue without it -- ''Smart Growth in Wisconsin is about
balanced, more informed planning at the local level.'' -- Wisconsin
Realtors Association
8/15/2003
Resource(s): www.wra.org/government/land_use/wr_articles/wr0703_land_use.htm
Health of Older Suburbs Vital to Stability of Urban Areas
In the current growth-management debate, focused mostly on the need
to curb sprawl at the urban fringe or to boost the urban core, the
popular term suburbs usually obscures their different ages,
socio-economic diversity and varied challenges, with an investment
and conservation policy blind spot most unfair to the early
suburbs, although they, decayed or affluent, ''are the true anchors
for metropolitan stability,'' writes Brookings Institution Vice
President and Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy Director
Bruce Katz in a foreword to a new book by former Indianapolis Mayor
Bill Hudnut, ''Half Way From Everywhere: A Portrait of America's
First Tier Suburbs,'' complimenting the author for telling ''a
coherent and compelling story about those communities that came
first.'' The book shows the older, first-tier suburbs through their
daily coping with some of the nation's crucial issues --
''educational reform, immigration and diversity, economic
restructuring, neighborhood planning, social exclusion'' -- their
''vitality and enthusiasm'' undiminished and the desire to stay or
became strong always alive. Recognizing that the path to keep first
suburbs ''economically competitive, socially vital and fiscally
sound'' will require a fundamental remake of ''the complex web of
federal and state policies that currently undermine older
communities and unfairly support newer communities,'' Katz writes,
Hudnut's book ''is ultimately a call to action.'' The first suburbs
must secure their future by forming ''political and legislative
coalitions,'' which will, ''by necessity, reach across spatial,
partisan, ideological and disciplinary lines.'' Older suburbs'
location, condition and demography make them ''uniquely positioned
to exert a positive influence on future growth and development in
metropolitan America,'' as their coalitions could align themselves
with central cities on such issues as education or economic
development, but with new suburbs and rural areas on such issues as
land preservation or reclamation, Katz stresses, pointing out that
''first tier suburbs could help reset major spending, tax and
regulatory policies in favor of existing communities,'' which
account for the bulk of the metropolitan population. He concludes,
''That would be nothing short of a policy revolution and could, if
implemented vigorously, ultimately shape metropolitan communities
that sprawl less, preserve more and offer all citizens greater
access to employment and educational opportunities.''
7/20/2003
Resource(s): www.brookings.edu/default.htm
Highway Construction Legislation Could Put Historic Sites at Risk
Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966
forbids ''highway construction at historic sites 'unless there is no
feasible and prudent alternative','' writes National Trust for
Historic Preservation president Richard Moe in The New York
Times, alarmed that this ''strongest federal preservation law on
the books,'' often successfully invoked to save ''countless historic
places from being sacrificed to America's seemingly insatiable
appetite for asphalt,'' will be eviscerated if Congress passes the
administration's proposal to require developers only ''to conduct
procedural reviews that 'take into account' any historic resources
that might be affected by their projects.'' The message to
road-builders, ''try to avoid destroying America's heritage unless
it's just too much trouble,'' leaves ''a loophole big enough to drive
a bulldozer through,'' the trust's president writes, dismissing
repetitive claims that natural and cultural preservation efforts
cause major delays in road projects. Last year, he notes, the
General Accounting Office discounted key studies behind such claims
as based on anecdotal evidence and the Federal Highway
Administration attributes the delays to many factors, the lack of
money the most common and environmental requirements down the list.
Preservationists are ready to work with transportation planners to
speed up the road approval process, but ''weakening or eliminating
parts of the 1966 transportation act won't gain us anything -- and
could cost us a great deal,'' he cautions. Stressing that ''nobody
wants to see more communities torn apart by transportation projects
that are supposed to knit them together,'' he concludes, ''Bulldozing
America's past is not the way to build roads to its future.'' --
The New York Times
8/9/2003
Resource(s): www.nytimes.com/
New ULI Chair Pledges Smart Growth for Suburbs
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) ''has done a phenomenal job in
facilitating urban revitalization -- in re-energizing urban areas
-- over the past several years. But, we need to recognize that 50
to as much as 90 percent of the new growth is going to occur in the
suburbs. ULI should be more involved in ensuring that suburban
growth is smart growth,'' said new ULI chairman Harry H. Frampton,
III, pledging his two-year term to a push for smart growth in the
suburbs and for sustainable development and energy-efficient
''green'' buildings, while expanding the role of 38 ULI district
councils, with thousands of involved residents nationwide, in
shaping responsible local land use, to make ''a difference in their
own home towns.'' An innovative and successful real estate developer
and co-founder of East West Partners in Beaver Creek, Colorado,
with a more that $1 billion portfolio of environmentally conscious
residential, recreational and resort projects in the past 20 years,
Harry Frampton traces his drive for livability 30 years back to his
first sales job at the Sea Pines Company, whose owner Charles
Fraser taught developers to ''build a way of life, not a
subdivision.'' Asked by Denver Post interviewer Jason Blevins
whether the current municipal budget shortages may ''impact the
planning process,'' the new ULI chairman called the problems ''part
of the normal cycle,'' saying he's lived through the 1974, 1982,
1991 and 2001 downturns and, ''(e)very time we come out of these
recessions, we come out stronger.'' And in response to the question
whether he will press from his ULI post for urban growth
boundaries, he stressed his fundamental belief that ''we in the
state and throughout the country need to spend more time and be
more reflective on planning for the future;'' that ''planning should
be local,'' but that each community ''has a responsibility to
reflect'' on how it wants to look in the future. ''We need to do that
because if we don't, we will be overtaken by actions that, in some
way or another, will be inappropriate.'' he said. ''That's what smart
growth, to some degree, is all about.'' See www.uli.org --
Denver Post
7/20/2003
Resource(s): www.denverpost.com/
Study Finds Union Leaders Well Acquainted With Land Use and Growth Management Issues
Having long sought urban reinvestment and worked with
conservationists on environmental and political campaigns, union
leaders have keen understanding of broad land-use issues and great
interest in equitable growth-management policies, concludes the
''Labor Leaders As Smart Growth Advocates: How Union Leaders See
Suburban Sprawl and Work for Smart Growth Solutions'' study by the
executive director of the nonprofit Good Jobs First research center
in Washington, D.C., Greg Leroy. Based on categorized interviews
with 50 metro and state labor federation leaders, representing 23
unions and holding top office for an average of nine years, the
study found 82 percent concerned about a mismatch between jobs and
affordable housing; 80 percent about the increased threat of air
pollution to public health and about exclusionary zoning that keeps
lower-income families out of some suburbs; 76 percent about
infrastructure neglect in older areas; and 74 percent about unfair
regional property tax systems. Also, 88 percent of respondents have
lobbied lawmakers in the past five years to increase funds for
urban school repair and rehabilitation; 66 percent to protect or
expand mass transit operating budgets and to spend more for
rebuilding of aged infrastructure; and 42 percent to increase
brownfield cleanup funds. Noting that 66 percent of respondents
seek help for contacting environmental groups involved in regional
smart growth efforts, the author attaches a resolution, unanimously
passed at the 2001 national convention of the AFL-CIO, which reads,
''the AFL-CIO authorize and direct its leadership to actively engage
in the emerging public and political debates surrounding urban
sprawl and smart growth, asserting labor's rightful role in the
national debate about the future of America's cities for the
benefit of all working families.'' -- Good Jobs First
8/27/2003
Resource(s): www.goodjobsfirst.org/
First Leg of Las Vegas Monorail Scheduled to Open in 2004
Concerned about Las Vegas traffic congestion, air pollution and
flat downtown business, area officials and activists put their best
hopes in the monorail, the Clark County Regional Transportation
Commission's most expensive transit project -- its $650-million
first segment between casinos and convention centers scheduled for
completion early next year and the $1 billion second segment
between the Strip and the downtown area likely to open in 2006 --
with Sierra Club conservation organizer J.J. Straight expecting
this great ''innovation for tourists and workers'' to eliminate 4.4
million car trips a year, increase property values along the route
by 30 percent, and ''revitalize downtown and invigorate smart
growth.'' Enthusiastic about the monorail, reports Las Vegas
Mercury writer Larry Wills, Straight and her husband are
planning to buy a house near the downtown line, while a local
businessman already bought a Main Street bar near a future transit
station. Noting that the old MGM Grand-Bally monorail carried 5
million passengers a year, Las Vegas Monorail Co. communication
director Todd Walker thinks the new system should quickly pay its
cost by capturing the 4 million convention guests a year and
average tourists, 75 percent of whom are visiting at least three
hot spots a day, much of their time spent on crowded sidewalks or
in rental cars at traffic stops. Its resort segment paid for by
business contributions and state-backed bonds, and the downtown
segment by federal matching funds, the highly advanced monorail,
the first of its type in the world, will have seven to nine
remotely operated trains running at 25-45 mph every four minutes
and stopping for less than 30 seconds, each car seating 72 of 300
riders, with plenty of room for their luggage. Planning a possible
west spur, along with the McCarran International Airport line
delayed by the federal environmental impact study until 2008,
officials are also envisaging greater transit expansion, including
construction of light rail between the monorail southern terminus
and Henderson a few miles farther to the southeast. Director Walker
notes that the monorail ''will not end or solve all transportation
problems,'' but says, ''if we can get visitors out of their cars, we
can continue to make the city more exciting in the 21st century.''
-- Las Vegas Mercury
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.lasvegasmercury.com/
Newly Created Clark County Redevelopment Agency Identifying Priority Revitalization Areas
Encouraged by examples of Las Vegas and Henderson, whose
redevelopment agencies facilitate renewal in their depressed areas,
the Clark County Commission created its own redevelopment agency,
chaired by Commissioner Myrna Williams, and began the process of
identifying older county areas for prospective revitalization.
Noting that increased property taxes in designated redevelopment
areas are invested in further economic development and
revitalization projects, The Las Vegas Review-Journal says
the county Comprehensive Planning Department's interim director,
Alan Pinkerton, expects the commission to finalize the list of
redevelopment areas in December, after more staff and consultant
work. -- The Las Vegas Review-Journal
8/6/2003
Resource(s): www.reviewjournal.com/
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
NJDEP Revokes Milligan Farm Housing Project Under New Water Protection Rule
Enabled by the recent gubernatorial designation of six more New
Jersey waterways as Category One (C1), which protects them from
anything bad for water quality, the Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) revoked a 1999 wastewater discharge permit for K.
Hovnanian Cos.' 292-home Milligan Farm project near Sidney Brook in
Union Township. Milligan Farm's treatment plant, reports Easton
(PA) Express-Times writer Peter Hall, would discharge 88,000
gallons of wastewater a day into Sidney Brook, a threatened and
endangered specie habitat and a tributary of the Raritan River,
which provides water to about 1.8 million people in the
northeastern part of the state. The DEP informed the company it can
apply for a new permit after gathering data on current Sidney Brook
water quality and pollutants. Instrumental in the designation of
the stream as C1, Rutgers University Environmental Law Clinic
attorney Tom Borden welcomes the ''long overdue'' permit revocation
as a victory for conservationists and local activists, including
Concerned Citizens of Union Township and the Clinton Township
Community Coalition. New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel
and Clinton Township Community Coalition founder Nick Corcodilos
agree. Tittel now expects the project to meet sound environmental
criteria or its delay to give area officials time to buy Milligan
farm for open space. With the New Jersey Builders Association
claiming in court that C1 rules contravene a constitutional builder
mandate to provide affordable housing, Corcodilos says, ''While
builders like Hovnanian go around crying crocodile tears about
providing affordable housing, they need to step back and realize
that people they are building affordable housing for also need
clean water.'' -- Express-Times
7/17/2003
Resource(s): www.nj.com/
New Affordable Housing Requirements Unveiled in New Jersey
In response to municipal complaints against New Jersey's affordable
housing law as favoring developers, the state Council on Affordable
Housing (COAH) unanimously replaced the controversial 1975 ''fair
share'' provision -- which forced towns to accept specific
low-income unit numbers set every four years since 1987 by the COAH
-- with a ''growth share'' requirement, which will oblige them to
approve one affordable unit for every 10 market rate units and one
for every 30 new jobs. ''The formulas in the past were overly
complicated, easy to avoid and cumbersome to implement,'' explained
COAH chairwoman, former Cherry Hill mayor, now state Community
Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass Levin, adding later, ''This is a new
COAH ... that will be flexible and accommodating and get the job
done.'' The COAH also will encourage towns to work closely with
nonprofit groups that build affordable housing, reports
Star-Ledger writer Steve Chambers, noting that the state
League of Municipalities feels vindicated by the change, while some
developers and housing advocates voiced concern and frustration.
The state's largest residential developer, K. Hovnanian Cos.
president Joseph Riggs said although the ''growth share'' concept
isn't bad, it should clarify where to house the 1 million new
residents expected by 2020; otherwise there is a question about
towns' motivation ''to zone for any growth.'' One of the top industry
lawyers, Steve Eisdorfer, said the change ''does mean another round
of chaos'' and more court battles, while Cherry Hill's Fair Share
Housing Center official Kevin Walsh added, ''It's a new day for
exclusionary zoning.'' The writer points out that the COAH will
publish the new regulations in October, but implementation must
wait at least till January. -- Star-Ledger
8/26/2003
Resource(s): www.nj.com/starledger/
Revisions to Green Acres Land Purchase Program Expected to Bring More Funds to Populated Areas
Responsive to long-standing criticism of New Jersey's Green Acres
land purchase program by urban lawmakers, who consider its grant
cap unfair to their constituencies, Governor James E. McGreevey
decided to calculate the grant amounts based on county or
municipality population size, saying in a written statement, ''This
more strategic approach to open space acquisition bolsters my
administration's smart growth priorities and ultimately ensures
that New Jersey's children grow up next to parks, not parking
lots.'' Announcing that the program will focus on watershed land
purchases in more developed areas, Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) Commissioner Bradley Campbell stressed, ''This
policy brings fairness to densely populated communities that have
been shortchanged by Green Acres in the past.'' For example, reports
Star-Ledger writer Steve Chambers, a grant for Essex County
could now jump from $500,000 to $3 million. In addition, the state
will hold public hearings on any proposal to rezone parkland for
development and will impose new fines for any Green Acre rule
violations. Still, state Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel asked,
''Why doesn't DEP start the discussion by introducing regulations,
rather than releasing a policy statement that is nothing more than
a press release?'' -- Star-Ledger
8/1/2003
Resource(s): www.nj.com/starledger/
N.J. Clean Air Council Endorses Gov. McGreevey's Smart Growth Initiatives
To the surprise and satisfaction of environmentalists, the state's
business-oriented Clean Air Council endorsed Governor James E.
McGreevey's Smart Growth initiatives in its annual ''Moving
Transportation in the Right Direction'' report, saying they can help
improve air quality and ease other growth-related problems through
such means as reduced car use. Council chairman Jorge Berkowitz
represents the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, and
vice chairman Michael Egenton lobbies for the state Chamber of
Commerce, both groups that campaigned vigorously against the
governor's anti-sprawl proposals, reports Newark Star-Ledger
writer Alexander Lane, quoting state Sierra Club spokesman Jeff
Tittel, who is astonished ''that they had anything positive to say
about smart growth.'' But they also had reservations, the writer
notes. Vice chairman Egenton wants ''to see the cities revitalized,''
but is concerned that ''some of these cities that we're targeting
for development are the same cities that complain about air quality
issues.'' Chairman Berkowitz said the council neither backed the
recently rejected bill to adopt strict California-type emission
standards nor mentioned it in its report, because such a law would
join the state ''at the hip with a regulatory program in
California.'' Grateful for the council's endorsement of smart
growth, Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley
Campbell criticized its stance on the bill, saying, ''We have to do
more to address pollution from the transportation sector if we're
going to address air pollution.'' -- Star-Ledger
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.nj.com/starledger
Camden Plan Would Turn Rail Parking Lots Into Transit Villages
''The highest and best use of any land downtown is certainly not a
parking lot,'' says Collingswood community development director John
Kane, helping other Camden County officials promote the idea of
turning big parking lots at four PATCO Hi-Speedline rail stations
along a three-mile stretch of Haddon Avenue into
pedestrian-friendly transit villages, with homes, shops and
offices, which would transform the corridor into ''a Camden County
Main Street'' and help reduce sprawl. Collingswood and Camden have
already asked the New Jersey Department of Transportation to
designate their PATCO station areas as transit villages, which
would bring them state financial aid and agency expertise, reports
Courier-Post writer Jim Walsh, with village planning
consultant Lou Bezich hoping that Haddonfield and Haddon Township
will seek the designation in the future. The conceptual
Collingswood plan envisions a six-story block-long parking garage
with stores and apartments across the rail station and another six
lower mixed-use buildings along a ''bland'' street leading to the
nearby business district. The Camden village plan calls for 15
mixed-use buildings near the station, with a link to the nearby
medical center. The writer notes that eight communities statewide
have obtained the transit village designation so far, and that a
2002 California Department of Transportation study identified
transit villages, or Transit-Oriented Developments (TOD), as an
''effective strategy'' for managing growth and improving quality of
life, although implementation may be hindered by lack of funding,
especially for affordable housing, and by neighbors' fears of
increased traffic and density. -- Courier-Post
7/28/2003
Resource(s): www.courierpostonline.com/index.html
Buffalo Urged to Create Detailed Parking Blueprint Before Allowing More Demolition for Garages
With more than 200 parking lots and ramps or underground garages
already shading almost half of their downtown Buffalo map, young
professionals from the lobbying New Millennium Group, accompanied
by Councilmen David A. Franczyk and Joseph Golombek Jr., held a
news conference on one of the ramp expansion sites, to be the first
to congratulate managers on their apparent goal of turning the
whole downtown area into one big parking lot. Millennium member
Patrick McNichol drove the point deeper, saying, ''If our master
plan is to demolish all of downtown, then we're only halfway there.
If you look very closely, there are still some buildings that are
standing in the way of parking progress.'' Irony aside, writes
Buffalo News reporter Brian Meyer, the New Millennium Group
wants officials to impose a demolition moratorium until they draw
a detailed parking blueprint; tie any new parking construction to
new ''large scale'' downtown investment; require all new parking
structures to allow commercial or residential use, including
''street-front'' retail; and expand other transportation options,
including park-and-ride programs. City Parking Board consultant
Thomas A. Gallagher acknowledged an overall downtown parking
surplus, but noted its shortage in two of the city's busiest
business corridors and pointed out that to compete with suburban
office space, downtown Buffalo needs accessible and inexpensive
parking. Planners also defended the current ramp expansion, saying
a worker waiting list for downtown parking contains about 1,000
names. Speaking for their nonprofit Buffalo Place corporation that
manages the downtown business district, Chairman Keith M. Belanger
and Executive Director Michael T. Schmand stressed that planners
work hard to ensure more parking without new lots or ramps, that
1,400 downtown workers joined a park-and-ride program, and that
efforts to expand on-street parking and public transit use are
under way. -- Buffalo News
7/10/2003
Resource(s): www.buffalonews.com/
Builder Urges Buffalo Officials to Refurbish Old Homes, Build Small-Lot Housing
In their search for urban revival, Buffalo officials, activists and
business leaders should avoid tearing down old homes for oversized
structures with big parking lots and focus on rehabilitation and
new small-lot dense housing, advised former Mississippi State
University professor-turned builder Dan Camp, who has helped
transform entire neighborhoods in his state ''by refurbishing old
homes and practicing good urban design principles,'' writes
Buffalo News reporter Stephen Watson. A guest at the
''Architectural Revival Buffalo'' lecture series held by the Campaign
for Buffalo's History, Architecture and Culture, the builder
spotlighted his work in Starkville's historic district, near an old
cotton mill and the state university, where he buys, renovates and
rents homes mostly to students. Influenced by home designs he
admired in Alexandria, Virginia, but also in Great Britain, Italy,
Russia and other countries, he put together a model for home,
cottage and even garage rehabilitation, including new roofs,
balconies, columns, windows, doors, fences and other features. His
homes are small, attractive and as close to the street as possible,
with cars hidden from view. -- Buffalo News
8/30/2003
Resource(s): www.buffalonews.com/default.asp
Editorial Urges Regional Master Plan to Map Charlotte Growth
The coming growth will change the Charlotte area ''whether or not
local governments have a sensible plan for managing it,'' states a
Charlotte Observer editorial, stressing that besides ''a
strong local vision coupled with sensible planning,'' the area
within the city's 40-mile radius needs ''a regional planning
authority,'' for laying out prospective infrastructure, and a
central transportation planning agency instead of the current four,
''each with its own priorities,'' which is ''a prescription for
disaster.'' If the area's old towns, now ''in danger of being swamped
by newcomers who know little about the communities except that
taxes are low and the commute to Charlotte is tolerable,'' are to
remain ''something more than just suburban Charlotte by another
name,'' they need a regional master plan. Under such a plan, the
editorial says, communities could ''develop a vision that encourages
sensible relationships of open space, recreational opportunities,
jobs, single- and multi-family housing and retail opportunities,
all linked by a transportation system that encourages free flow of
traffic and offers a mass transit option.'' Some towns, including
Davidson, Huntersville and Rock Hill, the editorial concludes, are
trying to do just that on their own, but they and all the others
need a regional framework soon. -- Observer
7/24/2003
Resource(s): www.charlotte.com/
Rapid Growth Threatens Old-Time Ambiance of Small Towns in Charlotte Metro Region
Small towns in the 13-county Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury metro
area -- already one of the fastest-growing in the nation and still
expecting its population of about 2 million to nearly double by
2035 -- enjoy economic benefits of rapid growth, but scramble to
save the identity and old-time ambiance that make them so
attractive in the first place. The border between
Charlotte-Mecklenburg County and the adjacent counties is
''blurring'' and in 200-year-old Concord, some eight miles northeast
in Cabarrus County, residents ''are shocked to see farms and trees
bulldozed for new subdivisions,'' reports Charlotte Observer
writer Jennifer Talhelm, quoting Concord Mayor Scott Padgett, who
says downtown ''is more prosperous and vibrant'' than it has been in
many years, but people ''are scared of what's happening'' on the
outskirts. The metro growth, traffic and pollution also spill into
South Carolina's York County just a few miles southwest, with
County Councilman Rick Lee saying, ''We have what people are looking
for now. And we are rapidly converting it into what people left.''
To save its rural heritage, the county is considering ways of
protecting open space and encouraging development in cities like
York and Rock Hill, which are enhancing their centers with better
sidewalks and old-fashioned street lamps. North Carolina's Gastonia
in Gaston County is doing the same and Weddington in Union County
is trying to manage growth with new zoning rules that require
setting aside half of its developable land as open space. Some
residents, the writer notes, consider the rules too restrictive for
their property rights, taking their campaign against Mayor Ed Howie
and council members to the Internet. -- Observer
7/24/2003
Resource(s): www.charlotte.com/
Affordable Housing Gets Boost in Oregon with $15 Billion Investment Program
With the three-block mixed-use and mixed-income Museum Place
development in downtown Portland as their backdrop, Governor Ted
Kulongogoski, Urban League of Portland president and CEO Vanessa
Gaston, Fannie Mae's Oregon Partnership Office director Dick
Anderson and Fannie Mae board member Molly Bordonaro unveiled a $15
billion Fannie Mae investment strategy to spur affordable
homeownership and rentals in the state within the next five years.
With Museum Place developer Doug Obletz od Shields Obletz and
Johnson also present, director Anderson said, ''This five-year
affordable housing strategy will focus on community development and
neighborhood revitalization, smart growth initiatives, and
increasing minority homeownership.'' Accordingly, Fannie Mae will
provide lender partners with such financing solution as mortgages
with low down payments and flexible qualification criteria, and
will work with local nonprofit groups to help more working families
buy homes. -- Portland Business Journal
8/4/2003
Resource(s): http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/
Pay-As-You-Drive Auto Insurance Gets Green Light in Oregon
Working with the Environmental Protection Agency and various groups
throughout the country to help auto insurance companies introduce
Pay-As-You-Drive (PAYD) coverage, the Oregon Environmental Council
(OEC) scored a win at home by securing a law that provides
companies ready to test a cents-per-mile premium with a limited tax
credit, to offset the cost of a new mileage-tracking system. The
OEC makes a strong common sense case for PAYD coverage. Its web
page reads, ''You live close to work and usually walk. Your spouse
commutes by bus most of the time. In fact, you put only 8,000 miles
per year on your car. Your neighbor commutes 40 miles a day on the
busiest roads at the busiest times of day and drives about 16,000
miles per year. You own similar cars, are roughly the same age, and
pay about the same annual rate for car insurance. Why isn't your
rate significantly less? You drive much less and are at much less
risk of an accident.'' With a portion of a driver's annual dues
converted into a per-mile fee, the OEC explains, the driver would
likely pay in advance for a given mileage, paying later for any
excess miles or getting a rebate for driving less. This helps
drivers control car costs and constitutes a strong financial
incentive to reduce car use. Noting that per-mile premiums could
make drivers cut driving by about 10 percent, which would reduce
their insurance by as much as 25 percent and car crashes by 17
percent, the OEC stresses reduced driving benefits to lower-income
families and to the environment. ''By driving less,'' its web page
reads, ''we mitigate our impact on the climate, improve air quality,
reduce toxic runoff from roads, and reduce the need to build
expensive new roads.'' -- Oregon Environmental Council
8/29/2003
Resource(s): www.orcouncil.org/Index.htm
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
Court Rejects Charleston County's Sales Tax Increase for Funding Open Space and Transit Projects
The South Carolina Supreme Court invalidated the 2002
voter-approved Charleston County half-cent sales tax increase,
which would raise $221 million over 25 years for parks and open
space and $845 million for roads, bridges and transit, with
conservationists pointing out that the tax's potential preservation
benefits would have been heavily outweighed by the loss of farmland
and the environmental damage triggered by development surges along
the projected regional highways. They also note that last year's
ballot left county officials too much leeway in future spending and
expect them to bring together many interest groups to present
voters with more precise referendum wording, possibly next year,
reports Charleston Post and Courier writer David Quick. He
quotes S.C. Coastal Conservation League executive director Dana
Beach, who says ''We had some serious concerns about the level of
detail we felt should have been in the ballot'' and especially about
''the lack of detail in the green space plan.'' Sierra Club's Robert
Luntz Group chairwoman Christine von Kolnitz called the court
ruling a ''victory for democracy,'' adding, ''You want to make sure
the money isn't spent on fluff projects or a strip of green in the
middle of a freeway as your green space.'' -- Post and
Courier
8/26/2003
Resource(s): www.charleston.net/
Neighborhood Schools Get Boost from Bill Rescinding Space Requirements
In line with his first state-of-the-state speech's pledge to ''bring
back smaller community-centered schools'' where no child is ignored
and many live within easy walking or biking distance, Republican
Governor Mark Sanford signed a neighborhood-school bill, which
rescinds school acreage requirements and allows square footage
waivers, at the small Moultrie Middle School in Mount Pleasant,
telling guests, teachers and students -- a fourth of the latter
coming on foot or bike -- that the new law ''makes sense from a
learning standpoint, an economic standpoint, and it makes sense
if you want to have schools that are part of a community's fabric
as opposed to part of its sprawl.'' The rescinded requirements,
reports Charleston Post and Courier writer Allison L. Bruce,
set minima of 10, 20 and 30 acres for elementary, high and high
schools, respectively, plus one acre for every 100 students. Thus,
notes Charleston County School Board Chairman Gregg Meyers,
sufficient acreage for the new Wando High School was eventually
found several miles from Wando, along Highway 17, although planners
worried it would increase traffic and sprawl. But Wando Principal
Lucy Beckham thinks less acreage would have curtailed students'
athletic opportunities. ''As cities and communities develop,
available land close to the population is not always there,'' she
says, hoping school districts will avoid buying ''the least possible
amount,'' because ''(t)hat's not in the best interest of students,
not having adequate space for a full school program.'' On the other
hand, S.C. Coastal Conservation League executive director Dana
Beach hails the new law, calling it ''the perfect example of how
needs as broad and diverse as education, conservation and fiscal
responsibility can be advanced by a single innovative regulatory
reform.'' -- Post and Courier
7/17/2003
Resource(s): www.charleston.net/
Memphis Zoning Regulation Overhaul Seen as Move Toward Smart Growth
With an overhaul of the Memphis area's zoning regulations ''surely
overdue'' to help neighborhoods control ''what they consider the
latest outrage by developers,'' a Commercial Appeal editorial
applauds Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and Shelby County Mayor A.
C. Wharton for their willingness to move the issue forward,
stressing that together with ''such innovations as impact fees,
which would help shift more of the cost burden of growth to those
who create it and benefit most from it, new development and zoning
rules could be part of an overall shift to 'smart growth'
policies.'' For decades, many area residents have leapfrogged to the
latest suburbs, stayed until these deteriorated, then moved again,
with the county accumulating $1.5 billion debt for schools, parks,
sewers, roads and other infrastructure, the editorial observes,
quoting Mayor Wharton, who says, ''We've got to stop that. We simply
cannot afford to keep going the way that we are going.'' The
editorial notes that the current inner-city redevelopment projects
and infills help reverse the trend and reduce pockets of
concentrated poverty, but urges more efforts ''to keep Memphis'
inner core from eroding further and to create a greater sense of
order in suburban development.'' -- Commercial Appeal
8/26/2003
Resource(s): www.gomemphis.com/
Transport Officials Prepare to Overhaul Tennessee Road and Transit Planning Guidelines
Although Tennessee VMT (vehicle miles traveled) have more than
tripled within three decades to 64.7 billion in 1999 and Nashville
commuters saw their average time wasted in traffic jump from 27 to
44 hours a year between 1994 and 2000, the Tennessee Department of
Transportation (TDOT) stuck to outdated road-focused plans and
failed to address new needs for environmental safeguards, compact
growth and public transit, with grave results in road congestion
and air quality, says a state Comptroller's report, with senior
legislative research analyst Greg Spradley noting long-overdue
changes initiated by Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen's
administration after two-term Republican Governor Don Sundquist
left office in January. New transportation officials told Nashville
Tennessean writer Bonna de la Cruz they already held several
community meetings on mass transit and began work on a long-range
plan to ''change the way we do business.'' TDOT Commissioner Gerald
Nicely said the plan will guide investment in roads and transit,
including rail, bicycle and pedestrian trails, aviation and
waterways. Defending his record, former Governor Sundquist said
Tennessee air, land and water were the cleanest in 25 years during
his tenure. He called the idea of transit as a solution to
air-quality problems ''pie-in-the-sky stuff,'' arguing that even if
the state had enough money to build mass transit systems, it would
also have to clean up stationary pollution sources such as coal
plants and change public attitudes toward buses and trains.
According to the writer, the comptroller office's report found that
TDOT cared little how residents of ever farther-flung subdivisions
will reach their jobs, disregarded federal environmental standards
stricter than the mandatory ones and spent less than one percent of
its discretionary federal funds on transportation alternatives that
could help ease congestion and improve air quality. Calling that
amount ''really pathetic,'' Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe praised
Commissioner Nicely for offering a ''breath of fresh air.'' --
Tennessean
7/25/2003
Resource(s): http://tennessean.com/
Austin's New Growth Program Draws Fire on First Project
Less than five years after a well-publicized national Smart Growth
conference in Austin, everyone in the city says its ''Smart Growth
is dead,'' even if city staff think it's ''not really'' so,
since the city ''may still give incentives to projects that
exemplify intelligent and sustainable planning and design, but only
if those projects first meet more pressing needs -- like creating
jobs and spewing forth tax receipts,'' writes Austin
Chronicle urban design writer Mike Clark-Madison, calling the
first such project, ''the Domain mixed-use urban neo-mall,'' just
awarded up to $37 million ''in real money'' rather than fee waivers,
''a good old-fashioned boondoggle.'' Sorry about the harsh public
judgement of the city's Smart Growth program only because its basic
premise of aiding projects ''that would have been built anyway, but
in less attractive places'' was seen as giving money to rich people,
the writer points out that ''(o)n that score, the Domain is six
times worse.'' He believes that residents didn't previously backed
the Smart Growth initiative merely to have ''benches and awnings
around high-priced Downtown condos.'' Before more Domain-type deals
get done, he writes, ''we need to decide: Do we care what gets built
here, and how? Are we willing to let the market to take its course
and supply Central Texas with one big-box mall after another, in
the interest of 'economic prosperity'? Or will we say, again, but
louder this time, no to wasteful sprawl that treats land as
disposable, no to growth that daily makes a mockery of our
'comprehensive plan', no to land use that forces us
to build groaningly expensive highways, and no to income-
segregated, ill-built housing that forces citizens to burn up good
money in their gas tanks instead of investing it in their homes?''
Stressing that these are not only planning but social justice
issues, the writer adds, ''Many would be less inflamed by the very
words 'Land Development Code' if they saw proof that City Hall
cares in deed, not just in word, about protecting the environment
on both sides of town, building more housing and less redundant
retail, or making sure everyone, and not just suburban drivers, has
a 'choice' of where and how to live.'' -- Austin Chronicle
7/4/2003
Resource(s): www.austinchronicle.com/current/index.html
Community Groups Needed to Focus Growth and Resources on Isolated Houston Area Neighborhoods
Annexed by Houston in 1957, the rural Minnetex area stretching from
10 to 20 miles south of downtown remains a low-income, sparsely
populated, two-thirds-vacant fringe with spotty city services,
while development leapfrogs everywhere else and two recent studies
by the City Department of Planning and Development point out that
improving access, expanding services and directing growth to this
and other isolated neighborhoods -- with a total of 148 square
miles, or 94,720 acres, of empty land -- would boost their quality
of life and the city's tax base. The Land Use and Demographic
Profile and the Southern Houston Sector Study, both available
online, urge creating such community groups as the city's Main
Street Coalition to oversee development in the neglected areas,
reports Houston Chronicle writer Mike Snyder, doubtful that
market forces alone would change the leapfrog development pattern.
He quotes JP Morgan Chase Bank executive Algenita Scott Davis, who
says, ''it will take a commitment to devote a significant portion of
the Capital Improvements Plan to underserved areas, and that means
denying some of the squeaky wheels the grease they're asking for,''
referring to influential developers pressing for city investment in
a more lucrative market, mainly on the westside. City Planning
Director Bob Litke says he is working with the City Council, the
mayoral office and other departments to revise the capital
improvements plan with an eye on the long-term future of the city's
undeveloped areas, but he adds, ''I have to keep pushing them until
a lot of people say, 'Let's think ahead a little bit'.'' The problem
lies in the low density of these areas, the writer finds, with 284
people per square mile in Minnetex, in contrast to 13,346 per
square mile in the southwestern Gulfton neighborhood -- mostly
Hispanic immigrants ''packed in into sprawling apartment complexes''
-- and the Department of Public Works and Engineering explaining
that connecting each of the widely scattered Minnetex homes to
municipal utilities is not ''economically reasonable.'' -- Houston
Chronicle
7/13/2003
Resource(s): www.chron.com/
San Antonio Developer Toolkit to Include Smart Growth Scorecard
In another move to streamline San Antonio's development process,
the City Council approved a developer ''incentive toolkit''
containing a fine-tuned smart-growth scorecard, which quickly tells
developers whether and what incentives their projects could
receive, with Assistant Economic Development Director Trey Jacobson
saying this ''simple, accessible, quantifiable'' system will let
everybody avoid lengthy negotiations. The scorecard specifies
incentive-earning points for various project features, reports
San Antonio Express-News business writer Adolfo Pesquera,
citing examples of 15 points for 300 new jobs and 35 points for
market-rate housing on the South Side. After city agencies review
the toolkit, the Economic Development Department will be offering
it to real estate groups, builder associations and chambers of
commerce this fall, gradually working out further smart growth
incentives. They will include an incentive to make affordable
housing as durable and energy-efficient as is market-rate housing
that begins to incorporate the emerging green-building
technologies. The Metropolitan Partnership for Energy is working
with the Greater San Antonio Builders Association on the
Greenbuilding Methods incentive for affordable housing, hoping to
have it ready by the end of the year. -- San Antonio
Express-News
7/25/2003
Resource(s): www.mysanantonio.com/
Editorial: Rural Utah at Risk for Unplanned Sprawl
Although long talked about, ''smart growth'' hasn't helped rural Utah
much and ''(t)he fear today is that rural Utah will repeat urban
mistakes and allow unplanned sprawl to erode its quality of life,''
observes a Salt Lake Tribune editorial on Governor Mike
Leavitt's new ''Quality Growth Communities Initiative,'' which
encourages small cities and towns to plan together for open space,
water, housing and transportation, an ''essential first step toward
'smart growth','' but like all previous efforts badly ''underfunded.''
In the early 1970s, the editorial recalls, Governor Calvin
Rampton's proposal to follow Oregon's success and overhaul land-use
planning was trashed by adversaries, claiming the state wanted ''to
dictate the color of house paint.'' In December 1995, Governor
Leavitt ''shifted growth-management talk into high gear'' with a
three-day series of televised ''growth summits'' that showed
consensus on the need for ''open space, better transportation and a
stable water supply,'' but the legislature did nothing. In early
1999, the nonprofit Envision Utah group found two-thirds of Utahns
''favored urban zoning to reduce sprawl,'' after which the
legislature ''paid lip service'' to the problem by passing the 1999
Quality Growth Act and creating the Quality Growth Commission
without sufficient funds and authority. Envision Utah stresses that
localities must decide for themselves how to implement smart
growth, but they ''can't do it alone,'' the editorial say, noting
that the state's open space fund received only $480,000 this year.
Pointing out that communities with growth plans can apply for other
agency funds, the editorial concludes, ''After 30 years of
discouraging fits and starts on and around the Wasatch Front, it is
rural Utah's chance to do it right.'' -- Salt Lake Tribune
8/10/2003
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Salt Lake City Light Rail Success Has Officials Scrambling for Priority on Future Extensions
Having greatly surpassed the Wasatch Front Regional Council's
(WFRC) projections of 18,700 daily riders, TRAX light rail carries
31,000 passengers along the 15-mile Sandy-downtown Salt Lake City
main line and its first University of Utah spur, making former TRAX
foes among area officials scramble to put their communities on a
priority list for future extensions, with West Valley City
Councilwoman Barbara Thomas now saying TRAX's popularity and
west-side growth pressures have ''taught us that we must rely on
forms of transportation other than automobiles.'' With the
university spur's extension scheduled for September 29 and also
likely to attract more riders than previously thought, Utah Transit
Authority (UTA) rail program director Mike Allegra recalls he
''could hardly breathe'' at a WFRC session in the mid-1990s as mayors
and county commissioners squeezed light rail into a regional
transportation plan by just one vote, reports Salt Lake
Tribune writer John Keahey, stressing that now public support
for transit is growing and the only question is when the four
planned TRAX extensions through Salt Lake Valley will get built.
They include routes from South Lake City to West Valley City; from
Midvale both to West Jordan and South Jordan; from Sandy to Draper;
and from downtown Salt Lake City to the International Airport.
Noting that since the TRAX inauguration in late 1999, Salt Lake
County's bus ridership declined from about 63,000 to an average of
55,000 a day, the writer quotes director Allegra, who says this let
the UTA reorganize the bus system, by combining or eliminating some
least used routes and increasing service for TRAX stations. -- Salt Lake Tribune
8/18/2003
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Report Outlines Steps for Improving Land Use Strategies in New England
''Sprawl is neither the ordained nor the inevitable outcome upon the
New England landscape,'' but the necessary public-private steps to
''improve land use patterns and reduce the cost of local government''
must begin with legislation to eliminate gaps between land use laws of
the region's six states and with incentives for municipal cooperation,
asserts the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University
of Southern Maine's Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service in its
just-posted online ''Model State Land Use Legislation for New England.''
The 97-page study proposes the creation of municipal service districts,
an outcome-based comprehensive planning law and omnibus model
state-level land use control legislation. It points out that in the face of
growing sprawl costs, ''it is incumbent upon all levels of government to
respond in a comprehensive, forceful, and effective manner.''
Specifically, the states and municipalities should acknowledge that they
share land use authority; that the state can and will assert its authority
to fulfill its financial, social, environmental and other responsibilities
when they are jeopardized; that primary land use decision-making
authority can and should reside at the local level, with state review
warranted if state interests and responsibilities are at stake; and that
''when the state asserts authority over municipalities, it must be done
equally and fairly across the state.'' To help the six states ''enact all or
a portion'' of the proposed legal framework, the study organizes the
material in three increasingly specific parts, entitled ''A mechanism to
create a form of regional governance tailored to New England,'' ''A
far-reaching set of amendments to the state-level, comprehensive
land-use planning statutes of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont''
(since Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire lack such
statutes), and ''A set of 10 individual provisions which, taken together,
represent omnibus land use legislation.'' The study also defines or
clarifies definitions of impact fee; implementation program;
moratorium; rate of growth, or ''cap'' ordinance; capital budgeting;
cluster development; floating or unmapped zoning; high density
development; infill development; locally unwanted land use (LULU); Not
in My Back Yard (NIMBY); overlay zoning; planned unit (mixed use)
development; and transfer of development rights.
7/18/2003
Resource(s): http://efc.muskie.usm.maine.edu/pubs.htm
Loudoun Election Shaping Up as Battle Between Pro-Growth and Slow-Growth PACs
Led by Republican-turned-Independent board chairman Scott York,
slow-growth Loudoun County supervisors are vigorously backed for
reelection by the grassroots Voters to Stop Sprawl political action
committee (PAC), instrumental in their 1999 landslide victory, and
by other civic and conservation groups, while the opposing
Affordable Shelter PAC of the Northern Virginia Building Industry
Association gained help from the newly formed Voters for
Responsible Government PAC, which buys newspapers ads calling the
incumbents ''Tax Collectors'' and declaring ''Smart Growth = Higher
Taxes.'' The new PAC, reports Washington Post writer Michael
Laris, is run by Citizens for Property Rights activist Joseph L.
Bane Jr. and another family member, the former fighting officials
and residents of the tiny town of Hillsboro over his development
plans nearby. Independent Supervisor James G. Burton confirms that
the county's public information department increased expenses by
225 percent, but says the PAC is wrong claiming in its ad that
under the Smart Growth plan county spending ''has gone up on average
170%.'' He attributes the 94% county spending increase since 2000 to
services for 55,000 new residents, stressing that per capita
outlays, excluding school funding and debt payments, are lower than
they were 10 years ago. Noting that the county's new rural zoning
adopted in January complicates the Bane family plans for building
''on mountainsides outside of Hillsboro,'' the supervisor adds,
''That's what this is all about.'' -- Washington Post
8/14/2003
Resource(s): www.washingtonpost.com/
Lawsuits, Electoral Challenges Mount Against Loudoun County's Slow-Growth Board of Supervisors
Swept into office by a broad anti-sprawl wave in 1999, all eight
Loudoun County slow-growth supervisors kept their pledges despite
slights from the other side, and passed one of the nation's
toughest rural zoning ordinance last January -- increasing the
three-acre lot minimum in western Loudoun to 10, 20 or 50 acres,
dependent on location and home clustering -- but they now face more
than 200 landowner lawsuits and strong electoral challenges for
this November, due to the cutback of some 80,000 homes from the
county's long-term plans and the ''tens of billions of dollars'' at
stake. The deluge of suits, with perhaps 300,000 pages of documents
for use by plaintiffs, has overwhelmed court staff, reports
Washington Post writer Michael Laris, presenting three cases
that ''offer a glimpse behind the political theatrics of Loudoun's
growth debate and show a range of interest stirred into action.''
Small Waterford area cattle rancher Donald Virts, who ''turned down
big money'' for his 346-acre farm 20 years ago and kept farming
against all odds, may now divide his land into 33 lots instead of
114 and would no longer be able to sell any three-acre lots ''to pay
off creditors.'' Washington architect George Calomiris, who retreats
for three days a week to his 21-acre farm at the foot of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, says he bought the land in 1995 thinking of
investment and building perhaps six houses in the future, but now
he can build nothing, since officials ''absconded with a portion of
my estate because people around me had done such a lousy job of
developing.'' Foreign-born, U.S.-educated and naturalized
Palestinian entrepreneur Ahmad Abdul-Baki, who weathered the 1980s
real estate crash in Texas, saw ''a new frontier'' in Virginia and
joined local developer Jeffrey Sneider in forming Greenvest LC,
which has became Loudoun's biggest landowner, with 5,500 acres
under contract, a vision of dividing them into some 1,000 lots
annually over 15-20 years and 22 suits against supervisors for
harming its business opportunities. Loudoun officials point out
that they have given a substantial bonus to farmers like Virts, who
can always cash out on ten-acre or larger lots, letting them launch
such businesses as spas, nurseries and pet farms without a special
county permit. They stress that the new zoning will protect the
county from such threats to its character as the 1,100-home project
around the town of Round Hill, population 500, a few miles from
Calomiris' farm. As to Greenvest complaints, Independent Supervisor
James G. Burton has little sympathy for ''land speculators,'' saying,
''Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.'' A
week after the Post article, Loudoun reader Valerie Kelly
asked the editor why the paper focused on ''three unhappy''
plaintiffs and didn't ''tell the story of the many residents of
Loudoun who are simply thrilled that their brave supervisors passed
the new laws.'' -- Washington Post
8/17/2003
Resource(s): www.washingtonpost.com/
Group Outlines Plan for Citizen Leadership in Community and Economic Development
Addressing resident complaints that officials ignore public input
on road projects and seeking coordination of area transportation
plans, the Identity Clark County (ICC) group, involved in community
and economic development, issued a draft action plan ''to turn the
tables and have the community take a leadership role, and the
jurisdictions act as resource and audience,'' an idea quite feasible
for County Commission Chairman Craig Pridemore, who noted that ''the
future of the community should be decided by the community'' and
that planners should not be visionaries. Founded by former
commissioner and legislator John McKibbin, currently heading the
Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, and led by business and
community representatives, reports Oregonian writer Bill
Stewart, the ICC group held more than 40 public forums last year,
to gather input on future transportation projects and their
funding. The resulting draft action plan proposes educating
residents about transportation planning and funding, the linkage to
land use and jobs, and the relatively new ''design/build'' process,
to be followed by setting up a private system of feedback for
government planners and administrators. Working on the plan since
last month, JD White Co. land-use consultants will start weekly
electronic reports, identify key participants of previous forums
and run monthly meetings of a design committee, after which a
technical think tank will outline three cost-based transportation
scenarios, with a zero, moderate or ''full revenue increase.'' --
Oregonian
7/18/2003
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/
Seattle's Light Rail Project Highlights Challenges of Building New and Preserving Old Urban Neighborhoods
''There is a deep confusion in Seattle about what it means to be an
environmentalist within a city -- to be an urban environmentalist,''
writes King County Councilman Dwight Pelz -- Sound Transit Board
member and ''a big supporter of light rail -- in a Seattle
Post-Intelligencer guest column, shocked that an old friend,
who considers himself ''a radical environmentalist,'' doesn't want
the planned Columbia City light-rail station and its adjacent
housing density in his neighborhood and fails to see this stance as
''fundamentally anti-environment.'' The greatest challenge for urban
environmentalists in Seattle and King County, he writes, ''is how to
build a community that does not sprawl into the hills, that reduces
the use of the private automobile while increasing the use of mass
transit, that reduces air pollution and gasoline consumption, that
provides a high quality of life in livable communities with ready
access to parks and open space.'' Stressing the county's need to
absorb 120,000 new residents over the next 10 years within its
present urban boundary, and defining the nation's urban
neighborhoods as ''those built before the car and the freeway,''
mature neighborhoods as ''those built after the car but before the
freeway,'' and suburban neighborhoods as ''those built after the car
and after the freeway,'' the councilman specifies, ''Our challenge as
urban environmentalists is how to build more urban neighborhoods,
while preserving mature neighborhoods and serving suburban
neighborhoods with more mass transit options.'' -- Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
7/17/2003
Resource(s): http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
Gov. Doyle Expects State Smart Growth Law to Remain in Force
Asked during his visit in northwestern Price County, whose board
has recently dissolved the Smart Growth Committee, if the state
will rescind its 1999 Smart Growth law, Governor Jim Doyle said, ''I
don't think it's going to go away,'' because many counties see Smart
Growth differently and the law is backed by a broad range of groups
as a tool for transferring much of the state planning tasks to
local communities. He also pointed to the long tradition of zoning,
noting that it can limit some property rights, but it enhances
them, too. On an eight-day tour through the Northwoods to promote
job creation, tourism, environmental protection and efficient
government, the governor told Price County officials and residents
that his Department of Natural Resources is conducting a
comprehensive review of planning and zoning rules. -- The Bee
8/28/2003
Resource(s): www.phillipswi.com/
WFBF Urges Farmers to Get Involved in Rural Land Use and Planning Discussions
The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation (WFBF) is encouraging farmers
to work through their county bureaus and other groups for a broad
consensus on rural land use zoning and to get organizationally
involved in discussions on Smart Growth, with WFBF governmental
relations director Roger Cliff testifying recently at a Smart
Growth hearing in the Assembly Property Rights and Land Management
Committee that ''(i)f farmers aren't in the planning process,
someone else will do it, and they may not like the outcome.''
Pointing out that farmers' ''livelihood is at stake because their
current income, future income, and retirement income is all tied up
in what happens with their property,'' director Cliff called land
use planning ''absolutely vital'' for economic growth in agriculture,
and stressed that it's much easier ''to be involved up in front and
develop and guide that plan along than it is to come in after the
fact and change things.'' The WFBF will hold a Smart Growth workshop
at its annual meeting this fall. -- Wisconsin AgConnection
7/8/2003
Resource(s): www.wisconsinagconnection.com/
Wisconsin Realtors Outline How Smart Growth Protects Property Rights
With Wisconsin's 1999 Smart Growth law criticized since last year
mainly in the north-central areas as a threat to property rights
and local control or a United Nations-hatched script for a ''one
size fits all'' planning approach, Wisconsin REALTORS Association
Land Use and Environmental Affairs Director Tom Larson holds it
REALTORS' professional responsibility ''to distinguish fact from the
fiction,'' which he does in a concise exposition of 10 myths about
the law, focusing on the most common myth among all
growth-management foes everywhere, namely that Smart Growth is
against property rights. ''One of the primary objectives of
Wisconsin's Smart Growth law,'' he writes, ''is to protect private
property rights by making the planning process more accessible to
property owners and other members of the public.'' Reversing
prevalent practice, he points out, the law expands public
participation in local planning; offers property owners greater
certainty about the scope of their land use entitlements; makes
local officials more accountable for plan content; secures
comprehensive planning by addressing at least nine quality-of-life
issues, including the often neglected housing, transportation and
economic development; and affirms property rights as ''one of the
state and local planning goals'' by requiring communities to spell
out how they will ''balance individual property rights with
community interests'' if they seek state aid for devising their
plans. Wisconsin's Smart Growth, the writer continues, doesn't give
the state any authority ''to control'' local plans, limiting its role
to awarding planning grants. It is not designed to stop growth in
rural areas and steer it to cities, upholding communities'
prerogatives to ''grow (or not grow) any way they wish.'' It is not
''an unfunded mandate,'' with the state providing $3.5 million in
planning grants in 1999-2001 and $6 million in 2001-2003. It was
not conceived by the U.N., but put forward and supported ''by an
extremely broad coalition of major stakeholders,'' including
associations of Wisconsin REALTORS, builders, towns, cities,
municipalities, counties and planners, along with 1000 Friends of
Wisconsin. It doesn't mandate urban growth boundaries, mass transit
or high density, leaving all growth choices to communities. It
doesn't set the plans in stone, but requires properly executed
amendments and timely updates. It doesn't leave small communities
with the sole prospect of hiring costly planning professionals,
since help is available from the University of Wisconsin-Extension,
regional experts and county planners. It doesn't impose planning
standards, because it recognizes ''that each community is different,
with its unique history, values and resources.'' And its repeal
would solve no controversial issue, because far from being
responsible for shoreland zoning debates, sprawl, restrictive
development policies, open-space protection initiatives or other
problems ''people have with local authorities and state agencies'' --
problems that started long before the law's enactment and will
likely continue without it -- ''Smart Growth in Wisconsin is about
balanced, more informed planning at the local level.'' -- Wisconsin
Realtors Association
8/15/2003
Resource(s): www.wra.org/government/land_use/wr_articles/wr0703_land_use.htm
Lawmaker Blocks Legislation to Repeal Wisconsin's Comprehensive Land Use Plan
As 94 of Wisconsin's 1,922 municipalities and counties have already
completed and about 600 continue work on their comprehensive
land-use plans, required under the state 1999 Smart Growth law by
2010, a group of mostly Republican state lawmakers, prodded by
their mainly small-town and rural constituencies, introduced
legislation to repeal the law, citing concerns over the cost of the
planning and a possible erosion of local control and property
rights. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Lisa Sink quotes
Republican Representative Carol Owens of Nekimi, who notes that her
town of 1,400 spent $10,000-$20,000 on a planning consultant and
who fears that should there be a mismatch between municipal and
county planning ''(t)owns's plans may be altered to fit everyone
else's plan.'' Stevens Point Journal writer quotes Republican
Representative Scott Suder, who thinks ''planning is good,'' but the
Smart Growth bill ''was crafted and passed behind closed doors,''
without ''proper public hearings,'' caused ''much confusion'' and needs
''to be reworked or completely thrown out.'' But not all Republicans
feel the same and Assembly Committee on Property Rights and Land
Management chairwoman Sheryl Albers blocked the repeal legislation
from entering her committee. With the Wisconsin Realtors
Association among Smart Growth backers, its official Tom Larson
says he and leaders of other groups would favor exceptions for some
slow-growing rural areas worried about planning costs. --
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
7/28/2003
Resource(s): www.jsonline.com/ ; www.stevenspointjournal.com/
Foreclosure Concerns Rise Over Wisconsin Sale of Delinquent Property Taxes to Private Investors
Introduced by state Republican Representative Jeff Stone as part of
the budget package eventually signed by Democratic Governor Jim
Doyle, a measure letting Wisconsin counties and municipalities sell
delinquent property taxes to private investors is justified by
gubernatorial spokesman Dan Leistikow as needed to give local
jurisdictions ''another weapon in their arsenals'' to fight the
current fiscal crisis, but criticized by some as risky to
delinquent homeowners, with Democratic Representative Lena Taylor
considering the possibility of its repeal, because she doesn't want
''to give someone that kind of power over our residents.'' Having
banned such sales in 1987, because they weren't much needed in
''times of economic prosperity,'' Wisconsin now joins about 20 states
that allow the practice, including New York and New Jersey, reports
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Scott Williams, listing $5
million in unpaid property taxes in Racine County, $8 million in
Waukesha County, more than $10 million in Milwaukee and $6.8
million in Milwaukee County. Under the new provision, investors
would pay local governments up front and try to collect more from
delinquent taxpayers or sell their tax liens to other parties,
which could increase the threat of foreclosures. The president of
New York-based Plymouth Financial Corp., which has acquired about
$400 million in tax liens since its inception in 1996 and which
lobbied for the measure, Paul Scura, disclaims any foreclosure
intent. This doesn't tranquilize critics. The Milwaukee County
Board passed a resolution against the state measure and overrode
the subsequent veto by Executive Scott Walker -- who may sell some
of the county's delinquent taxes to reduce its $4 million deficit
-- and County Treasurer Dorothy Dean said, ''Local government does
not exist to enrich private investors.'' -- Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
8/4/2003
Resource(s): www.jsonline.com/
Gov. Doyle Vetos Bill Calling for Funding Cuts to Land Protection Programs
''Protecting the environment is one of my highest priorities as
governor,'' said Democratic Governor Jim Doyle at Governor Nelson
State Park on the north shore of Lake Mendota, announcing his
decision to veto Republican-sponsored cuts of 43 percent -- from
$572 million to $327 million by 2010 -- in the Warren
Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship bonding program, which saved
from development more than 250,000 acres across Wisconsin so far.
He also promised to veto a deficit-reduction provision that would
require the Department of Natural Resources to sell off $40 million
of state land by 2005. ''We need to get through this difficult
time,'' the governor stressed, ''making sure that our top priorities
-- including protecting our environment -- are still in place.''
According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, reports
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Dennis Chaptman, the
stewardship's cuts would save $2.8 million in debt service payments
in the 2003-05 budget and a total of $390 million by 2030.
Republican Senator Bob Welch said the state budget crisis justifies
the cuts, because, ''When you can't make the mortgage payment, you
can't buy the empty lot next door.'' Environmentalists reject this
argument, pointing out that if the state lacks the money to protect
land, developers will buy it, caring little about public recreation
and wilderness. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
7/14/2003
Resource(s): www.jsonline.com/
Adjustments to Smart Growth Law Expected from Wisconsin Legislature
While some Republican lawmakers who want to repeal Wisconsin's 1999
Smart Growth law -- which requires all counties and municipalities
to craft comprehensive and enforceable land use plans by 2010 --
arguing that small towns free from development pressures can't
afford planning costs, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
editorial cautions the legislature against throwing out the baby
with the bath water, but expects it to ''make reasonable adjustments
soon,'' since even the law's advocates acknowledge its burden on
some rural communities and the need for exceptions. No more the
insinuated ''blueprint for socialism'' than ''flouridated water was a
communist plot,'' the Smart Growth law ''is simple common sense,'' the
editorial says. Without it, ''helter-skelter'' development can
''result in traffic jams on roads not designed for heavy traffic,
subdivisions that overburden local schools, strip malls that drive
out established local businesses and (in) other bad things.'' Far
from trying to ''wipe out property rights,'' the law doesn't require
local officials to ''follow any specific planning concept;'' it
requires them to implement ''a plan they created,'' which ensures
''more stability in their development decisions'' and is thus
''supported by such groups as the Wisconsin Realtors Association.''
Applauding Assembly Committee on Property Rights and Land
Management Chairwoman Sheryl Albers' statement, ''Planning is a good
thing,'' the editorial says ''so is flexibility'' and concludes that
''the smartest thing to do on this issue is to find a way to lessen
the burden on some rural communities without killing a law that
promises to do much for the future shape of all Wisconsin
communities.'' -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
8/7/2003
Resource(s): www.jsonline.com/
Jackson Town Council Approves Mixed-Use Downtown Redevelopment District; Affordable Housing Amendment Likely
In line with voter rejection of a proposal to develop some 800
acres of ranch land south of Jackson two years ago, the Town
Council decided to spur growth inside, by unanimous approval of the
Downtown Redevelopment District (DRD), whose zoning will allow
mixed residential-commercial use and a maximum building height
raised from 36 to 46 feet, with Mayor Mark Barron saying, ''Smart
growth is about zoning for it,'' to let the downtown area ''reach its
potential.'' But civic activists pointed out that the DRD ordinance,
expected to become final after two more public hearings, needs to
ensure construction of affordable housing, reports Casper
Star-Tribune correspondent Whitney Royster. Jackson Hole
Community Housing Trust official Anne Hayden said the DRD ''relies
on the market economy to provide market housing,'' with guarantees
neither for a mix of uses nor affordable housing. ''Letting the
market take care of it hasn't created any affordable housing in the
community,'' she stressed, calling for developer incentives to meet
the demand. Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance representative
Margie Lynch said the current ''fee in lieu'' of parking, for
developers who can't meet parking space requirements, could be
based a sliding scale to make them more interested in affordable
housing -- short-term rental units would be charged the highest
fee, affordable units would be charged zero. Councilors promised to
refine the ordinance and are likely to add affordable housing
incentives in the coming weeks. -- Star-Tribune
7/23/2003
Resource(s): www.casperstartribune.net/
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