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Birmingham Northern Beltline Would Pass Through Main Sources of Region's Drinking Water
With the Alabama Department of Transportation's (ALDOT's) three-year improvement plan for the Birmingham area including $237 million in federal funds for the area's 50-mile Northern Beltline, which would complete a highway loop around the city but run through the Black Warrior watershed and the Cahaba River headwaters -- both main regional drinking water sources -- environmentalists once again protested against rushing the project, urging a full environmental impact assessment before the route is set.
As the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) prepared to approve the ALDOT's plan, reports Birmingham News writer Ginny MacDonald, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce official Paul Volker cautioned that ''any attempt to move the beltline will be seen as an attempt to kill the beltline.''
Environmentalists think he exaggerates.
''We do not oppose the beltline,'' said Cahaba River Society Executive Director Beth Steward. ''But we would ask that the Northern Beltline east of Interstate 65 not be fast-tracked in the transportation plan, and that it be removed from the plan for meaningful review.''
Although ALDOT is already buying land for a few-mile beltline segment that got environmental approval, MPO Transportation Director Bill Foisy said inclusion of a project in the transportation plan doesn't mean it's ready for construction, noting that the Finley Boulevard extension has been in the plan for 20 years, but work hasn't started yet.
He pointed out that the MPO must approve all federally funded projects in the plan for Jefferson and Shelby counties, while ALDOT must win environmental approval for the whole beltline and make it its construction a priority before work can begin. -- Birmingham News
9/1/2007
Resource(s): www.al.com/birminghamnews/
New Scorecard to Reward Arizona's Quality Growth Projects With Priority Funding
Arizona has accommodated its first 6.2 million residents quite well, but to absorb another 6 million by 2030 and keep the same quality of life it must rethink how to plan and ''what kind of communities'' people want, stressed Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano at a City Hall event in Casa Grande, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, saying her multi-agency ''growth cabinet'' is working on a scorecard, under which ''we will give priority for new discretionary dollars to communities that have really engaged in a smart growth planning process.''
Intent on local control, but ''within the context of a statewide vision,'' the process will be voluntary.
''You get rewarded for doing that,'' Governor Napolitano promised. ''You don't get penalized for not, but you get rewarded with new dollars for participating with others in a quality growth process.''
People should recognize, she continued, ''that what is decided, for example in Casa Grande, may affect what happens in the Ak-Chin Community, what happens in the Ak-Chin Community can affect what happens in Maricopa, what happens in Maricopa can affect what happens in Buckeye, what happens in Buckeye can affect everything along the west side of Maricopa County.''
It's a necessary recognition ''that we really don't have any islands anymore, that we're growing into each other,'' and that decisions have to be made accordingly.
''And, we need to have some 'transit' options -- not transportation, trans-it,'' the governor accentuated the word, because ''we can't build enough freeways'' and certainly not ''fast enough'' for the present and projected population.
Thus, the state is looking ''in-depth'' at the possibility of commuter rail between Phoenix, Tucson and ''the outermost reaches of Maricopa County'' to relieve the region's road congestion.
If done right, rail is a cost-effective and environmentally sound solution, reducing car traffic and ''that brown cloud that is hovering above us,'' the governor said, also determined to address the issue of potential uses for 9.2 million acres of state trust land, whose auctions pay for public schools.
Among other things, she would like the State Land Department to be able to ''set aside some of those lands from development so that we preserve some open space, particularly in the urban counties.''
With the governor calling Casa Grande ''the epicenter of growth in Arizona and Pinal County,'' Casa Grande Dispatch writer Harold Kitching notes that the city is already working on the growth-management and multi-jurisdictional cooperation goals she outlined on the state scale.
After ''a period of poor relations with some of its neighbors,'' he reports, recently elected Mayor Bob Jackson moved to remedy the situation and make progress in other areas.
The city's new transportation plan seeks cooperation with nearby cities as crucial, especially for connecting highways, while making clear that local subdivisions shouldn't be isolated from one another but connected by streets and trail systems. -- Casa Grande Dispatch
9/17/2007
Resource(s): www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1817
Surge in Early Morning Commutes Taking Toll on Arizonans' Quality of Life
Once again overshadowing the nationwide increase in the number of workers on the road by 6 a.m. to reach work on time, from about 11.1 to 12.5 percent between 2000 and 2006, their number in Arizona and Maricopa County surged from 16 to 20 percent, reports Arizona Republic writer Yvonne Wingett, citing the newest U.S. Census data and quoting Maricopa Association of Governments Transportation Director Eric Anderson, who assigned this dramatic surge to ''more affordable housing in the outskirts.''
The early and long commutes, the writer observes, ''come with big sacrifices in relationships and lifestyles.''
She mentions ''less time to spend with family, and less time for sleep;'' extra stress ''caused by bad drivers and bumper-to-bumper traffic;'' and lost weekend ''afternoons by the pool,'' now ''filled with errands and chores that don't get done during the workweek.''
Accidents and other unpredictable factors often stretch the time on the road for many commuters.
Among 513,698 Arizonans who left for work before 6 a.m. last year, including 354,039 in Maricopa County, were the writer's three interviewees from metro Phoenix.
''It's a trade-off I chose to make,'' said Maureen Gerard, who listens to talk radio and audio books as she drives, sometimes for three hours a day. ''But you feel like you have lost, kind of your life, because you spend so much time on the road.''
Josh Ewing cuts his commute time by at least a half hour each way, also to three hours both ways, by taking his 15-month-old daughter along and using the carpool lane.
''I don't have a lot of time to play with my daughter, walk the dog,'' he admitted. ''I just want to get out of the car and go to bed.''
Kim Lewis uses her time on the road to catch up with family and friends by phone, with husband Patrick taking on the chores she no longer has time to do.
''I love my job, but the commute is nasty,'' she said. ''I really struggle with the decision every single day.'' -- Arizona Republic
9/12/2007
Resource(s): www.azcentral.com/
How Better Planning Can Cut Time Spent on California's Congested Highways
Not surprised that a new Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) study again shows Los Angeles topping the list of the most congested metro areas nationwide -- its drivers having sat an average of 72 hours in stationary traffic in 2005, in contrast to 60 hours wasted by their second-place counterparts in the San Francisco-Oakland, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. regions -- a Los Angeles Times editorial stresses that though future congestion will get worse, it doesn't have to hold drivers on the road correspondingly longer as Portland, Oregon found, thanks to its smart-growth planning and compact development strategy.
According to the TTI study, the editorial notes, Portland has recorded longer rush-hour traffic delays than most other big cities since 1982, yet the average time drivers spent stuck in traffic hasn't increased as much as elsewhere, due to its long-practiced denser and infill development in the urban core.
''The result is that although traffic is worse, people spend less time in it than they would have otherwise because their homes are closer to their workplaces and they don't have to drive as far.''
Calling smart growth and construction of residential towers near transit much ''in vogue'' in Los Angeles, but sometimes criticized for not reliving and perhaps worsening traffic, the editorial calls critics' attention to the Portland Effect.
''If people are driving shorter distances, traffic affects them less,'' the daily points out. ''Think about that the next time you pass one of those 'If you lived here, you'd be home already' signs while you're stuck in bumper-to-bumper hell.'' -- Los Angeles Times
9/20/2007
Resource(s): www.latimes.com/
Efficient Land Use Key to Reducing California's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Since more efficient auto engines and home solar panels help but do not ensure enough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to overcome their constant increase from ever longer car trips, a good way to chip away at global warming is to live ''closer to work,'' points out Los Angeles Times writer Margot Roosevelt, citing research from Growing Cooler: Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, a book to be published by the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute.
Until recently, she writes, climate policy has mainly focused on ''higher fuel economy for cars and trucks, cleaner fuels, greener building standards, lower power plant emissions, and international treaties,'' while now most experts also stress the importance of ''everyday zoning decisions'' on local and county levels.
''We can no longer afford to ignore land use,'' said one of the book's authors, Center for Clean Air Policy Transportation Program Director Steve Winkelman, calling the land development pattern ''both a key contributor to climate change and an essential factor in combating it.''
Hotly debated in California, whose pioneering 2006 global warming law ''requires emission reductions to 1990 levels by 2020,'' the writer notes, the land use issue made Republicans hold up the budget during the summer ''in an effort to exempt localities from global-warming-related lawsuits'' by state Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown.
Similarly, Democratic Senator Darrell Steinberg's bill that would require regional planners to set greenhouse gas emission targets and could block outlays of millions of taxpayer dollars on roads likely to induce sprawl passed the Senate but was delayed until next year.
California builders, municipal officials and others who ''want the state to stay out of local planning decisions'' oppose the bill despite the fiscal advantages of compact and transit-oriented development.
''Southern California's regional planners,'' commented Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) consultant Amanda Eaken, ''have found that by locating new housing near transit corridors, they can save $48 billion that they would have to spend on new roads.''
With the Growing Cooler authors calling on Congress to encourage and reward compact development in the next $300 billion transportation bill, the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation's litigation director James Burling dismissed the research as ''the latest anti-sprawl crusade based on global warming . . . no different from every other anti-sprawl campaign.''
Book co-author, Smart Growth America Executive Director Don Chen, suggested critics should look at the changed demographics and market demand.
''Baby boomers are trading in their big houses for condos closer to town. These folks are demanding walkable neighborhoods. We need to pressure governments to give them choices,'' he said. ''Funding today is tied to vehicle miles traveled (VMT). So areas are rewarded for driving more.'' -- Los Angeles Times
9/21/2007
Resource(s): www.latimes.com/
Work Transportation and Home Location: How Affordable Housing Becomes an Environmental Issue
California leads the national drive against climate change, and the San Francisco Bay Area leads California, but ''why are we building like it's 1957, and the best thing we can think of is driving on the freeway,'' ask former Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director Tom Steinbach and Interim Director Mike Howe in a San Francisco Chronicle column, pointing out that hybrid-car and low-carbon fuel technology must be augmented by cuts in miles drivers travel to make the state reach its 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act goal of reducing the total greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
To help readers appreciate not only the need for both technology and life-style changes to minimize tailpipe emissions, but also the related pocketbook and personal-time gains, the writers invoke an example of someone who drives a big SUV in a three-hour round-trip to work at the cost of at least $60 a week.
That person's first option is to buy a more fuel-efficient hybrid car. By buying a more fuel-efficient hybrid car, that someone could lower the work-trip's tailpipe emissions by two-thirds and save about $45 on gas.
But by moving within perhaps three miles to the job, the person could cut the trip's emissions by almost 90 percent, spend just $3 weekly on gas, and gain at least 10 hours a week to be with family, pursue sports or run errands now delayed till weekends.
And if really ambitious, that person could even bike a few miles to work, which would still save time and be a lot healthier.
Unfortunately, they write, housing near work has become too costly for too many, which ''illustrates why affordable housing is truly an environmental issue; when people can't afford to live close their jobs, they end up driving long distances and pumping more carbon into the air.''
Nevertheless, the best for all determined to reduce their impact on climate, they continue, is to ''do both: get a hybrid and move closer to work'' if the housing prices aren't out of their reach.
''We need to build more homes near jobs, and make sure people can afford those homes,'' the writers stress. ''We need to build neighborhoods with shops, services, good public transit, and parks -- all within easy walking distance of homes.''
With half of all development envisioned by 2030 not built yet, there's still time, they write, noting that technological innovations ''are at the heart of the Bay Area's culture and economy'' and urging application of local talent to ''the question of how to use our land well.''
Stopping ''the climate juggernaut'' requires ''everything we know will work now,'' they conclude. ''We know it'll work to drive less. Let's build our cities to make it possible.'' -- San Francisco Chronicle
10/21/2007
Resource(s): www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
More Than 60,000 Los Angeles Students at Risk from Tailpipe Emissions
Los Angeles Still Placing Schools Near High-Traffic Roads
Though a 2003 state law prohibits siting new schools within 500 feet of highways and numerous studies document the impact of constant tailpipe emissions on children's lungs, reports Los Angeles Times writer Evelyn Larrubia, more than 60,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students breathed such extra-polluted air around some 70 of its schools last year, while the district was building another five and planned two more in similar proximity to high-traffic roads, including one just 90 feet away.
Nearby market and restaurant owner Carlos Estrada is indignant.
''I don't want to be one of those people who went ahead and sold the property because they want money,'' he said. ''I personally don't want a school that's going to harm the health of the children.''
A neighbor of another recently remodeled school along a highway, state vocational rehabilitation counselor Marsha Rose, cautioned officials during a 2004 public meeting against exposing children to concentrated air pollutants, but they responded that under the law they can build within 500 feet of highway if they have no choice and upgrade the ventilation system, which they did.
But scientists from University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of South California (USC) point out that no air filtering can eliminate the most dangerous ultra-fine particles and that once outside, children absorb the full impact of all pollutants.
''Ultra-fine particle numbers are highest on and around freeways and in experimental studies appear to have much higher levels of the damaging chemicals that are found to have health effects,'' said UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine nanomedicine chief, Southern California Particle Center Co-director Andre Nel.
Thanks to such research, noted the district's Office of Environmental Health and Safety head Angelo Bellomo, he has recently included ultra-fine particles in analyses of sites near highways and instituted a 200-foot minimum buffer between schools and major roads.
For the two planned schools near high-traffic roads, he recommended such a buffer, plus air filtering and reduced outdoor activity on particularly bad air-quality days, admitting that students and staff still face more pollution than they would have elsewhere and looking toward tougher control on emissions as the best solution for everybody in congested corridors.
USC lead researcher Jim Gauderman, who found significant air pollution impact on children within 1,600 feet of a highway -- with higher rates of asthma and lung disfunction -- considers schools near highways a bad idea, and not only because of the limitations of air-filtering systems.
''They're (the filters) not going to work on ultra-fine particles and they're not going to work on gases. They're only going to work when the kid is inside. The minute the kid steps out or starts playing P.E. and breathing heavy, they're not going to be useful,'' he said. ''It just makes sense that if you're going to have children spending a lot of time in a location and you know that location is polluted -- and I don't care if it's air, water or whatever -- that you would try to avoid that situation at any cost. The kids are going to be there [. . .] four, five, seven years. That's a lot of time when you accumulate it.'' -- Los Angeles Times
9/24/2007
Resource(s): www.latimes.com/
Conservationists, Housing Advocates Differ on Development Options for Last Large Marin County Tract
In an acrimonious debate about the future of the 1,230 acres north of San Rafael held by the St. Vincent's School for Boys and the Silveira Ranch, conservationists urged Marin County supervisors to follow Planning Commission recommendations to include this last big developable tract in a proposed ''baylands corridor'' between San Pablo Bay and Highway 101 two miles east and to cap the number of prospective tract homes at 221, while housing advocates, property owners and others demanded more housing for lower-income earners and seniors, the latter demographic group seen as an upcoming ''silver tsunami.''
In the commission-approved county plan update, ''environmental protection overwhelmed social equity and economics,'' said Marin League of Women Voters President Donna Bjorn.
She called extension of the baylands corridor over the St. Vincent's and Silveira lands scientifically unsupported, saying, ''The 221-unit housing limit is so restrictive as to make it next to impossible to provide senior facilities or workforce housing.''
With the St. Vincent's School for Boys hoping to build 642 units -- 132 cottages, 40 assisted living rooms, 360 continued-care apartments, and 110 very-low and low-income apartments, reports Marin Independent Journal writer Rob Rogers, its attorney, former county supervisor Gary Giacomini, had stronger words.
''This is a moral as well as physical crisis,'' he argued. ''We should not treat our seniors like flotsam, sending them off to Contra Costa and Solano counties. It's tragic, absolutely deplorable.''
His arguments resonated with resident Janice Leach, who felt grateful for the environment and open space enriching the county's quality of life, but called it ''meaningless'' to her if she has ''to parcel'' her father away ''because we refuse to allow anyone to build anything.''
Environmentalists consider these charges overstated.
Campaign for Marin spokeswoman Marjorie Macris, who helped create the original county plan, stressed that like its three present corridors -- city-centered, inland rural and coastal recreation -- the baylands corridor would prevent unwanted development.
Sierra Club official Doug Wilson pointed out that even if the county would provide 1,000 or 100,000 homes, many more people would always like to live in it, adding, ''Economics should not drive priorities.''
Although supervisors will continue their hearings on the county plan update, the writer observes, Supervisor Susan Adams has already indicated that she will vote for inclusion of the controversial tract in the baylands corridor and for the tract's 221-residential-unit limit.
''I also support the idea of capping housing sizes throughout the county, and not just in West Marin,'' she announced. ''The phenomenon of 'monster homes' is one reason we're using so much of our resources.''
At the same time, Supervisor Judy Arnold declared herself for a ''balance'' and smart growth, saying, ''I'd like to see equal weight given to the environment, the economy and social equity.'' -- Marin Independent Journal
9/11/2007
Resource(s): www.marinij.com/
San Francisco to Test Demand-Based Parking Meter Program
Following the February 2007 introduction of demand-based meter prices on downtown parking by Redwood City, 26 miles south, San Francisco officials plan to launch a similar high-tech pilot program in several neighborhoods early next year, hoping eventually to increase the city's parking meter revenue from about $30 million to perhaps $150 million a year while making drivers cruise less in search for vacant spaces and thus reducing traffic and air pollution.
''We're looking at actually pricing a parking space like housing,'' said San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose, ''let the market dictate the price.''
Under the program the MTA board will discuss in greater detail next month, reports San Francisco Chronicle writer Rachel Gordon, the city may expand meter hours in high-demand areas but lift user time limits, bring meter rates closer to charges on nearby parking lots, and set progressive prices of perhaps $2 for the first hour, with each additional hour costing a dollar more than the previous one.
Officials aim for an 85 percent meter occupancy rate to ensure turnover, the writer notes, and they also want to make payments convenient, believing people will readily use a credit or debit card, a cell phone or other electronic gadget even if there's a surcharge.
In Redwood City, redevelopment manager Susan Moeller is pleased with the 85 percent meter occupancy and the electronic meter payment results, telling the writer that initial technological glitches were worked out and that officials promised downtown merchants to spend the extra revenue on district street and sidewalk enhancements.
''The program hasn't been without its challenges,'' she observed, ''but we've gotten to the point where we are managing our parking much better so there is less congestion and there are always spaces available.''
A ''parking management guru,'' University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup expects more municipalities to embrace free-market parking rates.
''I think new technology makes it much easier to try pricing variation and the world is changing,'' he stressed. ''There's a much better understanding about energy dependency and global warming, and people are becoming more willing to do what they can about congestion.'' -- San Francisco Chronicle
10/12/2007
Resource(s): www.sfgate.com/
Credit Crunch, New Urbanism Lifestyle Making Multifamily Housing a Popular Choice
Despite or because of tighter credit and in contrast to a single-family-home market slump, Fort Collins multifamily construction and permits are up, reports the city's Coloradoan writer Pat Ferrier, quoting Coldwell Banker managing broker and Fort Collins Board of Realtors Director Chris Hardy, who said ''people are looking at the opportunity multifamily provides in terms of being closer to the things they need . . . they don't need to drive to get to the market'' and they ''can live a pedestrian life,'' adding, ''It's new urbanism taking hold.''
Townhouses are usually more affordable than single-family homes, especially when interest rates rise, observed Armstead Construction principal and Homebuilders Association of Northern Colorado President Jeff Schneider, glad to see multifamily units ''picking back up'' from last year.
Hearne Construction principal Kevin Hearne, who built 42 townhouse units last year and is now building 63, all for rent at $1,100 to $1,300 a month, said multifamily dwellings are reselling well and there is ''an undersupply'' in their new units.
His 63-unit project in Rigden Farms, the writer notes, will offer residents easy access to an adjacent shopping plaza, restaurants, a gas station, church and other services. -- Coloradoan
10/18/2007
Resource(s): www.coloradoan.com/
Professor Says Diverse Neighborhoods Key to Great Cities; Debunks Claim That Revitalized Cities Create Family-Flight
Appreciative of Denver's revitalization and residential construction boom, its new and transformed neighborhoods, great civic and cultural buildings, and vast transit system, former City Council member and current Denver Post columnist Susan Barnes-Gelt fears that increased gentrification, combined with the loss of key employers, the lack of affordable housing, the high number of poor students in public schools, and the migration of the middle-class families to the suburbs do not ''bode well for urban centers in general and aspiring creative-class cities like Denver in particular,'' a fear the ''creative class'' concept initiator Professor Richard Florida considers unwarranted.
He counters the columnist, who tells the readers ''as the core becomes less welcoming to the middle class and families, the hip, the poor and the affluent will continue to dominate urban demographics, and quality private-sector jobs and a stable economic base may be more difficult to maintain.''
Author of seminal books, including ''The Rise of the Creative Class'' and ''The Flight of the Creative Class,'' founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Creative Class Group (CCG) specializing in global advisory services, and former faculty member at several prestigious U.S. universities, now at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Professor Florida writes on his Web page, ''The 'hipsters and gays versus families' argument is an old saw.''
His Toronto neighborhood, like and many others, ''is filled with families and kids,'' he observes. ''Time for the debate in the states to grow up and get over this. Truly great cities can and should work for everyone.''
In a subsequent response to a Web message from a Vancouver resident, who suspects that the affordable housing shortage in U.S. cities may reflect their lack of progressive zoning, which would allow a split of an older house in two living spaces or replacement of a decrepit one with a duplex or triplex, including rentals, the professor drives his point further.
Toronto has plenty of affluent pockets, but also ''a mix of housing types and tenures'' -- thus diversity of incomes and families -- in the same and adjacent neighborhoods, the city is safe and the schools are good.
''It's high time for Americans to realize that the city-suburb dichotomy is a false choice,'' he points out. ''Cities can be fantastic places for families. Not everyone leaves when they have kids.'' -- Denver Post
9/1/2007
Resource(s): www.denverpost.com/ ; www.creativeclass.com/
Commentary: Showcase Projects Won't Cut Sprawl
Although Quinnipiac University statistics professor Jack Kaplan, a former Sierra Club Executive Committee member, admires the 10 smart-growth developments showcased in the club's 2005 ''Building Better'' report for their ''genuine contribution to fighting sprawl,'' he admonishes the environmental community's anti-sprawl campaign for still focusing almost exclusively on ''these one-of-a- kind'' projects, even if any realistic person should see that ''only a very small fraction of population'' will ever live in such places.
''There are certainly advantages to living in the downtown area of a central city or above a store in a mixed-use development, but there are disadvantages as well,'' the professor writes in a Hartford Courant guest opinion, certain that most people in large metropolitan areas, ''especially families with children,'' prefer conventional suburban housing, a preference ''just as true for environmentalists as it is for the general population.''
Besides, he observes, there ''aren't that many suitable locations'' for similar showcase projects, most of which also require large subsidies to offer housing that the average person can afford.
Concerned that any ''smart growth campaign that fails to recognize this reality will be only marginally effective at best,'' the professor believes that the central issue in efforts to curb sprawl must be ''the density and location of conventional residential development in the suburbs.''
Noting that the prevalent suburban practice of limiting most residential construction ''to expensive, single-family homes on large lots, plus perhaps a few apartment buildings reserved for the elderly'' doubled Connecticut's urbanized land between 1970 and 2000, while its population increased by only 12 percent, Professor Kaplan stresses that preservation of the state's quality of life depends on policies to discourage low-density residential growth in rural areas and to promote densities of at least four units per acre near cities and along transit routes.
He applauds the HOMEConnecticut group for initiating such a move this year, with legislation on financial incentives for towns that allow single-family home densities of at least six units per acre and multifamily housing densities of at least 20 units per acre, both project types required to set aside at least 20 percent of dwellings deemed affordable.
The incentives were set at $7,000 for each single-family home and $4,000 for each multifamily unit.
''More important, towns would be reimbursed by the state for 15 years for the additional cost of education generated by such housing,'' the professor points out, disappointed that the General Assembly approved only the one-time payments, up to $4 million the first year, referring the education reimbursement issue to an advisory committee, expected to report back by February 1.
''Let's hope,'' he concludes, ''it will come up with some good, politically viable ideas so that further progress can be made next year.'' -- Hartford Courant
10/21/2007
Resource(s): www.courant.com/
Reporter Recounts Maryland's Smart Growth Experience for Connecticut Readers
Although Connecticut's residents may be increasingly confident of its gradual shift toward smart growth, Baltimore Sun reporter Timothy B. Wheeler's tale of Maryland ups and downs in The Hartford Courant makes it clear that smart-growth policy progress is by no means automatic, but requires steady public, political and fiscal commitment to land-use and transportation planning changes and related distribution of taxpayer dollars.
Introduced by Democratic Governor Parris N. Glendening in 1997, the reporter notes, anti-sprawl and urban revitalization programs put Maryland on the forefront of smart growth, uplifting environmental advocates and inspiring other states.
Having taken over in 2003, Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. dispersed smart-growth office staff and cut funds for land preservation and for some redevelopment programs, which left his Democratic successor Martin O'Malley a harder task this year as he moves to recharge the state's smart growth efforts.
A decade since their inception, large tracts ''have been spared from the bulldozer'' in some areas, but houses are still ''popping up'' on former farmland, and the Chesapeake Bay is still in decline, the Baltimore Sun reporter observes, quoting Maryland Secretary of Planning Richard Eberhart Hall.
''It's tough, and it's going to get tougher,'' the secretary said, with the latest military Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round adding up to 60,000 jobs in the Baltimore-Washington area, and the state's population of 5.6 million increasing by another million within 20 to 25 years.
On the plus side, the reporter continues, three-quarters of Maryland homes built since the law's enactment are in its smart-growth zones, or ''priority funding areas.''
On the minus side, the average lot size for those homes has been ''creeping up'' and three-quarters of the land taken for residential construction is outside smart-growth zones, with builders saying they can do little in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs due to neighborhood opposition or because of local laws barring home construction if schools are already overcrowded and roads congested.
Secretary Hall said he can't measure how the situation would have looked if the state ''had not had'' the smart-growth law, but he believes ''it would be worse now.''
University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education Director Gerrit Knaap thinks ''using incentives alone'' is not enough to manage growth, and stresses the need for regional planning and land-use controls, so effective in metro Portland, Oregon.
Considering outside lessons useful for Maryland, Governor Glendening, who now leads the national Smart Growth Leadership Institute, the reporter adds, has recently helped arrange a two-day workshop for Governor O'Malley and his aides to examine ways of curbing sprawl.
''A dozen or more states are doing some very interesting things,'' he said. ''Everyone is starting to get that this is critical.'' -- The Hartford Courant
9/2/2007
Resource(s): www.courant.com/
Kids Aren't Walking to School? Author Points to Efficiency and Choice
''As the nation's population sprawls over an ever-larger geography -- and as schools increase in size -- fewer families can indulge the simple act of walking their children to school,'' observes book author Charles Euchner in a Hartford Courant commentary on the annual National Walk to School Day on October 3, noting that despite serious setbacks since the 1970s, ''America has super-sized its schools for two reasons -- efficiency and choice,'' with administrators driven by economies of scale and the potential for more language and vocational classes, pre-college electives, and extracurricular activities.
''Why build a $70 million school for 1,000 students when you can build a $90 million school for 2,000 students?'' he paraphrases the predominant reasoning among district officials, as if they weren't aware that most students, especially from minority and poor families ''do better in smaller schools,'' a conclusion of 103 studies reviewed by Kathleen Cotton in 1996.
''Private and parochial schools thrive in part because of the small, tight communities they offer, often with few amenities or frills,'' he writes, pointing out that the nation's 27,000 private schools enroll 5.3 million students, or an average below 200 each.
As a rule of thumb, the author continues, elementary schools should have about 400 students, and secondary schools between 600 and 800.
''In a small school, everybody has a chance to be somebody,'' he writes. ''In a high school of 600 students, almost any kid can make the sports teams, land a role in the play or join the student paper. More important, teachers know the students and can spot a student's problems before they fester too long. That's why, according to a survey by Public Agenda, two-thirds of parents and three-quarters of teachers favor small schools.''
As an example, the author quotes Yale Center for British Art postdoctoral fellow Stephane Roy, who moved with his wife to New Haven's East Rock neighborhood two years ago so they could walk their daughter Charlotte to the Worthington Hooker School a few blocks away.
''For her, being able to walk to school makes it all very concrete, very tangible,'' the father said. ''It's an extension of her home, something she knows and loves.''
A decade ago, the author adds, the grand 107-year-old school ''might have been turned into condos,'' but thanks to local advocates, it was reopened after an 18-month-long, $13 million renovation ''for children like Charlotte Roy.'' -- Hartford Courant
10/7/2007
Resource(s): www.courant.com/
Writer's Backroad Drive Becomes Catalogue of Florida's Sprawl
Having returned after a long stay in Alabama to Florida last year, St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell is stunned by how the state has changed, especially resentful of what he saw along once pleasant country roads as he drove back from his recent 300-mile trip to Amelia Island northeast of Jacksonville, calling the 70-mile Highway 17 stretch from Yulee south to Palatka ''a virtual gateway to the sprawl'' everywhere from the Atlantic Ocean to west of Jacksonville International Airport and the highway itself ''nothing more than a frontage road for developers.''
Thankful that the Ocala National Forest ''is off limits to greedy developers'' and ''remains one of the gems of old Florida,'' the columnist found the rest of Lake County along Highway 19 ''no longer blanketed with rolling citrus groves'' and green fields.
''The groves,'' he writes, ''have been replaced with subdivisions with look-alike houses, strip malls and Wal-Marts that have killed family stores and that stick-whittling ambience that made these places special.''
The same, ''a vast track of modernity,'' is about to overtake the countryside farther down, on both sides of Highway 50, in five or perhaps eight years.
Coming again on I-75 for the last 60 miles to St. Petersburg, the columnist regretted that he had taken back roads.
''I hated what I saw,'' he writes, urging others to take a good look around. ''Gangs of fools -- with public approval -- are backfilling our swamps, bulldozing our trees, butchering our mangroves, gouging our shorelines and paving over our grasslands all in the name of development and profit.''
Among some 20 e-mail comment senders in the next two days, a few disliked the columnist's attitude, pointed to population growth, or asked where the new housing should be built, but most shared his sentiments, expressing sadness or disappointment or indignation.
A sample follows.
Richard: ''As a seasonal resident of St. Petersburg, I resent being blamed for the destruction of Florida's 'country charm.' Are the developers, who plow under citrus groves and back-fill the wetlands, native Floridians? Probably, so be angry with them.''
Roberto: ''Mr Maxwell, would you rather the new arrivals and the offspring of older arrivals simply disappear? Maybe you & the SPT can send them to Siberia.''
Cindy: ''Florida's major industry is tourism. All the baby boomers want to retire here. Our government leaders need to keep these facts in mind. After all, they are the ones who issue the building permits and control the planning commissions.''
Jason: ''Florida has become one big row of strip malls and fast food chains. Greed has taken over the landscape.''
Shana: ''Sprawl is not the necessary byproduct of a growing population. Better use of cities and previously built up locations can limit that. McMansions are not the inevitable result of development to house more population.''
Chris: ''Couldn't agree more. The developers are doing what developers do. It's the politicians that are not stopping them that is the problem. Vote to restrict growth.''
Jane: ''The Jeb-Bushification of Florida. The government of this state has given developers free rein and boy are they taking advantage. But the worse fools are BUYING these things. Who wants 'Luxury' housing in a cow field anyway?'' -- St. Petersburg Times
9/23/2007
Resource(s): www.sptimes.com/
Cape Coral Resident Worries That City Council Will Represent Developers, Not Residents, in Sans Souci Megaproject Decisions
''The movers and shakers are at it again, and as usual, they don't care who gets moved and shaken,'' writes Cape Coral resident, retired university professor Gordon R. Ultsch, in Fort Myers News-Press guest opinion on the proposed Sans Souci (French: worry-free) ''megaproject'' that would put 220-foot high-rises in his single-family-home area with a 38-foot height cap, pointing out that it ''may be worry-free for developers who don't live near,'' but not to northwest Cape residents and calling its 7.5-mile distance from the nearest shopping center ''entirely inconsistent with 'Smart Growth' and an egregious example of urban sprawl.''
Beside the height excess and the shopping trip distance arguments, he writes, a Northwest Neighborhood Association (NWNA) petition against the ''largely gated'' project -- already signed by more than 1,000 residents -- lists three other reasons for the area rezoning denial.
It notes that the city already has a 2,500-acre commercial/industrial land deficiency, which would be worsened by towers for the projected 1,600-1,800 occupants; that the effect of the project's location at the Charlotte Harbor Aquatic and State Buffer Preserve could not be good; and that its traffic would ultimately empty onto Burnt Store Road, an even now dangerous route also designated for hurricane evacuation.
Hoping that project supporter, Councilman Tom Hair, a real estate agent whose Miloff Aubuchon Realty Group ''has been hired to help sell the concept and the homes, will recuse himself from any related council vote, professor Ultsch asks ''the big question: Who does the City Council represents -- developers or residents?'' -- News-Press
10/22/2007
Resource(s): www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Sarasota County Residents Stunned by Vote Granting Density Variance
Sarasota County commissioners, who called North Port officials irresponsible for annexing Thomas Ranch to let developers ''dodge'' the stricter county provisions against rural density, won 71-percent voter approval eight months ago for a measure that gave the county ''underlying land-use control over property annexed by cities,'' only to stun residents near the ranch with a comprehensive plan amendment that ''will allow 7,000 homes on land previously destined for 1,000,'' writes Herald Tribune columnist Eric Ernst, troubled that a pivotal vote in the 3-2 decision was cast by Commissioner Joe Barbetta, elected last year as a supporter of smart growth.
''It's hard to see anything smart about a plan that would increase density sevenfold along an already overworked, two-lane River Road,'' which forms a triangle with SR 776 and U.S. 41, the columnist observes, whose population of some 90,000 at buildout would almost double that of the city of Sarasota.
''And it does not account for whatever crazy schemes someone will propose in the future to jam in even more people,'' he writes, noting that county planners expected the area to have enough housing for years from projects approved before the plan amendment.
What's more, the additional 7,000 homes would threat the headwaters of Ainger, Gottfried and Forked creeks, major feeders of fresh water to Lemon Bay, which even now suffers from nutrient overload.
After the vote, the columnist adds, some disappointed residents thought Commissioner Barbetta intended to demonstrate the need for approval of ''the super-majority charter amendment'' on the November 6 ballot, which would require a 4-1 county commission vote to increase density set in the comprehensive plan, but he denied that intention. -- Herald Tribune
10/28/2007
Resource(s): www.heraldtribune.com/
Petitioners Want Voter Approval for Local Land Use Plan Changes
''Growth decisions are supposed to reflect the public interest, but unfortunately in Florida the public interest has been hijacked by the development industry,'' said Florida Hometown Democracy (FHD) Chairwoman Lesley Blackner, commenting on Republican Governor Charlie Crist's private meeting with several of the state's most powerful business executives at Darden Restaurants headquarters in Orlando -- reporters let in just for the last few minutes -- during which the governor assured them he feels their pain over the nonpartisan grassroots group's efforts to place a constitutional anti-sprawl amendment on a 2008 ballot.
The amendment, reports Orlando Sentinel writer Jason Garcia, would require referendums on adoption and change of local government comprehensive land use plans, a requirement business leaders fear could result in halting growth and further undercutting the state's sluggish economy.
''Anything that threatens the economic climate of the state is a problem,'' said Darden Chairman and CEO Clarence Otis about the proposed amendment, while the governor added after the meeting, ''You don't want to overburden entrepreneurship and the opportunity for people to have gainful employment.''
His interlocutors, both in Orlando and at a similar meeting a few hours earlier at the Jacksonville offices of the St. Joe Co., seemed satisfied.
''I think the governor was very opposed,'' concluded Walt Disney Parks and Resorts official Al Weiss.
With the deep-pocketed companies promising a multi-million dollar drive against the amendment and already financing a campaign to reach voters and make ballot petition signers change their minds, the writer reports, FHD leader Blackner described the governor as repaying for business contributions to his $20-million electoral chest in 2006 and ''drinking the over-developers' Kool-Aid.''
She noted that her group has gathered some 500,000 voter signatures for the amendment petition so far, with 331,000 already confirmed by the state and 611,000 needed by February.
See the ballot and signature form at www.floridahometowndemocracy.com. -- Orlando Sentinel
9/25/2007
Resource(s): www.orlandosentinel.com/
More Restrictions on Water Use Likely for Atlanta Region
First, wasteful land consumption since the 1950s has led to land shortages and exorbitant housing prices across urban areas, and now similar multi-level profligacy is exacerbating the impact of higher temperatures and recurrent regional droughts, threatening national water sources, with Georgia Environmental Protection Division Carol Couch having until the end of the month to advise Republican Governor Sonny Perdue on water use restriction options, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Matt Kempner, ''that not even arid Southern California or Las Vegas has had to make.''
Director Couch, the writer notes, already banned recreational water uses, along with watering lawns and gardens and noncommercial car washing throughout Atlanta metro and Northern Georgia late last month, and is preparing recommendations for commercial and industrial water restrictions, with eventual limits on farm and even personal use also possible.
''Most large metropolitan areas have systems in place where they try to be better managers of the resource than that,'' commented University of Nebraska-Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center founder Don Wilhite, calling the Eastern states ''more vulnerable than the West,'' where the need for conservation, giant reservoirs and other backup supplies was realized long ago.
Their growth notwithstanding, the Eastern states put ''less emphasis on conservation'' and a severe long-term drought, he observed, ''creates problems they've never had to deal with before.''
Amherst, Massachusetts-based author and water conservation consultant Amy Vickers agrees, putting much of the blame for the quick draining of water supplies during droughts to a dramatic outdoor watering increase over the last ten years.
''We need to act sooner in imposing these more restrictive measures,'' she points out, ''because we may not have as much time as we had in the past to rebound.''
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California General Manager Jeff Kightlinger recollects the severe drought of the late 1980s and early 1990, when the region limited outdoor watering to certain days, asked restaurants to serve water only upon request, and encouraged other forms of conservation.
''It became kind of patriotic to let your lawn dry up,'' he remembers. ''People banded together.''
What is in stock for Atlanta metro and counties farther north should their water levels continue to drop?
In central North Carolina, some 300 miles northeast of Atlanta, the writer reports, Siler City's reservoir lost so much water that officials of this town of 8,000 just ordered all users -- from homeowners to industries -- to cut their water use in half. ''We're asking them to do whatever it takes,'' stressed Town Manager Joel Brower, noting that violators face fines or may even see their water cut off. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
10/15/2007
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Landowner Files Lawsuit Following Duluth Big-Box Moratorium
Heedful of many public pleas, the Duluth City Council imposed a six-month big-box moratorium on July 30 and two weeks later denied Wal-Mart a permit for a 176,305-square-foot Supercenter on 27 acres owned by area resident Jack Bandy, whose legal representative, former conservative Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, has just informed the city about his intention to file a $25 million suit for delaying his land sale, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Eileen Drennen, with state law requiring a response in 30 days.
In his letter, the attorney says his client and Wal-Mart signed a sale contract last November, assured by the city ''that the property was properly zoned for a Wal-Mart and that Bandy had a vested right to construct a Wal-Mart store.''
The moratorium ordinance ''was not passed for the general health and welfare of the citizens of Duluth, but with the specific intent to delay, hinder and frustrate Bandy and Wal-Mart,'' he goes on, arguing that the city has unconstitutionally singled out Wal-Mart by actions that ''lessen competition ... and impede commerce'' while giving ''preference ... to ... competitors of Wal-Mart.''
The six-month big-box moratorium was sponsored by Duluth Councilman Doug Mundrick, who pointed out before the vote that the city needs time to ''catch its breath'' as development pressures mounts, the writer recalls, noting that City Attorney Lee Thompson declined to comment on the suit threat until full evaluation of the letter and its implications. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
9/4/2007
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Editorial: Impact Fees Needed to Relieve Georgia's Overcrowded Schools
Although state law has permitted impact fees for new roads, utilities, libraries and parks since 1990, points out Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial writer Maureen Downey, the General Assembly is still ignoring the urgent need for such developer fees to relieve increasingly overcrowded schools, ''parroting the script fed to it by the real estate industry,'' and leaving schools utterly dependent ''on property taxes, bond issues or local-option sales taxes for education,'' none sufficient in rapidly-growing metro Atlanta counties where more and more students must take lessons in trailers.
Georgia also lacks disincentives to restrain developers from locating ''their mega-subdivisions in overcrowded school districts or on cheap land in remote areas far from any school,'' and the districts are stuck with the costs of additional classrooms to absorb the influx from all those new homes.
The routine arguments against school impact fees -- that they hamper residential construction, that new homes pay fair school-cost shares through property taxes, and that builders would flee to areas without fees -- found champions in the state's legislature, the editorial writer observes, but have been discredited by wide experience and numerous studies.
Three of the nation's fastest-growing states -- California, Florida and Washington, she writes, have for years been charging school impact fees ''with no fallout.''
Nationally, the average school impact fees per single-family home and multi-family unit are $4,463 and $2,430, respectively.
In Florida, school impact fees brought districts $225 million in 2004, the Lake County School Board has just doubled its impact fees to $14,646 per single-family home; and a recent Hillsborough County study showed that each dollar in property-tax revenue costs the public $1.39 in services.
A similar Georgia State University study on the state's school districts found in the annual, county-by-county data ''numerous instances where growth failed to pay for itself.''
And in Oregon, a recent school-impact-fee compromise allows school boards to collect 50 cents per square foot of commercial or industrial development, and $1 per square foot of residential construction, including additions, with the tax on a typical 2,000-square-foot home amounting to $2,000.
''If every district in Oregon levies the construction tax, the state estimates schools would raise $60 million a year for construction and renovation,'' the editorial writer notes. ''That $60 million could go a long way in Georgia to tame overcrowding, get kids out of trailers and restore lunch hour to noon rather than 10 a.m. or 2 p.m.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
9/6/2007
Resource(s): www.ajc.com/
Honolulu Officials Want Local Input on Planning and Design for New Transit Communities
The upcoming light-rail system between East Kapolei and downtown Honolulu, about 20 miles west, will certainly spur mixed-use transit-oriented development (TOD) within a quarter-to-half-mile radius of some 20 stations, turning ''sleepy bedroom communities into teeming new hubs of 24-hour activity,'' but their look and feel ultimately depend on local input in the planning and design process, observes Honolulu Advertiser writer Gordon Y.K. Pang, reporting on a consensus among officials and experts who seek the strongest possible public involvement in city-sponsored workshops and related meetings.
Mayor Mufi Hannemann expects residents to keep telling the planners and builders in detail what they want around transit stations, said city planning and permitting director Henry Eng.
''From everyone we've spoken to on the Mainland -- Denver, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco -- (we heard) a critical element of successful projects is continuous and inclusive community participation,'' he stressed. ''And we're taking this advice very seriously.''
With the first TOD workshop slated for two stations in very different parts of Waipahu, area native and Land Use Research Foundation Executive Director David Arakawa pointed out that most of the successful TOD projects feature mixed uses and multiple-story buildings so ''you're not going to have one- or two-story single-family homes around there anymore,'' but still each of the Waipahu stations ''is going to be unique.''
Accomplished professional planner Lowell Chun and University of Hawaii-Manoa urban and regional planning associate professor Peter Flachsbart offered residents a few words of experience and warning against passivity.
''While there are some basic rules of thumb on what should go in the area around transit stops, every neighborhood on Oahu, as in any other place in the world, is different, with different people with different values and different goals and dreams,'' said the planner, noting that if they ignore the input workshops, others ''who may know very little about the area, how they live and what they care about, may do something they think is good for somebody else but which may not be'' for this particular neighborhood.
Professor Flachsbart put it this way: ''The planning process calls for participation among a number of stakeholders -- planners, transit agencies, developers, bankers and the community. If the community doesn't show up, then something might be built that's not to its liking.'' -- Honolulu Advertiser
10/21/2007
Resource(s): www.honoluluadvertiser.com/
Plan Would Help Hawaii's Teachers Buy Homes
With an unbridgeable gap between the nearly $700,000 single-family home median price and the $42,000 teacher starting salary considered a key reason behind Hawaii's loss of more than 1,500 public school teachers each year, Hawaii State Teachers Association President Roger Takabayashi is hoping to limit the drain with a unique affordable-housing bill, under which the state would buy both new and old homes for resale to qualified teachers at 20 percent of the value, while keeping 80 percent ownership.
''The intent of this is not for investment purposes, but rather to encourage teachers to put down roots in communities where they teach,'' he said. ''This bill offers one way to alleviate a burden from teachers' backs, so they can focus on teaching and not so much on survival.''
First proposed last year, reports Builder Online writer Jenny Sullivan, his legislation stalled in committee due to budget problems, a setback he wants to avoid in the 2008 legislative session, which will open in July, by reintroducing the bill together with an appropriation measure that would increase state funds for teacher rental housing, offered mostly in rural communities.
President Takabayashi thinks his proposal to help teachers become homeowners may advance next year, the writer observes, because the state could tap the expanding foreclosure market and buy houses at reduced prices.
The bill, she adds, would require teachers to pay property taxes, mortgage payments and insurance, own no other property elsewhere, and work full-time for public schools. -- BuilderOnline.com
10/19/2007
Resource(s): www.builderonline.com/
Post Falls Moving Quickly Toward Smart Growth
Either speed or resolve could be the middle name for Post Falls, a few miles west of Coeur d'Alene, as it moves toward smart growth, with several public sessions just a year ago now resulting in a SmartCode draft slated for City Council approval after December hearings, city staff scheduled to attend a national PlaceMakers best practice workshop, and a related consultant-guided city comprehensive plan update process expected to begin in January and end by the summer.
''The comprehensive plan guides growth; the SmartCode is an implementation strategy. They need to be consistent because they inform each other,'' pointed out city Community Development Director Alex Ifekuna, emphasizing the importance of a local sense of place.
''We need to add a number of new elements to the comprehensive plan to include SmartCode, new mobility elements that relate to both vehicular and pedestrian transportation, as well as address areas in which the city is projected to grow on the prairie.''
One of the code's aims, reports Coeur d'Alene Press writer Brian Walker, quoting from the text, is to ensure ''that a community will not have to scrutinize all proposed projects because, in the process that creates the code, what the community intends has already been specified.''
For example, the writer notes, a proposed mixed-use project in east Post Falls would include rosewalks, buffered by an equestrian trail, and homes with front porches on both sides of a pedestrian green.
Officials, said City Administrator Eric Keck, are anxious to implement the SmartCode ''to get the community moving in a different, more desirable direction.'' -- Coeur d'Alene Press
10/4/2007
Resource(s): www.cdapress.com/
School District Facing Added Land Expenses as Total Cost Approaches $150 Million
Planning a 3,000-student high school on 80 acres -- roughly equidistant from the Indian Prairie Unit District 204 sectors of Aurora, Naperville, Bolinbrook and Plainfield some four miles away -- where they already own a 25-acre tract, district officials were ready to buy the additional 55 acres for $13.75 million in 2005, or $250,000 an acre, but a jury in a condemnation case decided the land was worth $518,250 per acre at the time the suit was filed, telling the district to pay the owners $28.5 million plus $2.5 million in compensation for loss value of their remaining 15.9 acres.
With $124.7 million in bonds approved by voters last year to ease overcrowding in the two older high schools and absorb future students, reports Arlington Heights Daily Herald writer Melissa Jenco, district officials expected to launch construction six months ago and open the more than $100 million mega-school, near a road intersection passed daily by 75,000 cars, in fall 2009.
Having 30 days from the jury's verdict to buy the land for immediate possession or to appeal, they began special meetings to consider what to do, while seeking information on other possible sites and their prices.
But despite slower residential growth than envisioned in 2005, and in contrast to a growing national trend toward smaller neighborhood schools, they are unwilling to scale down the plans, especially since they count on $17 million to $20 million from land-cash donations, bond proceeds and interest, which brings their land purchase and construction budget for this one high school to a possible $145 million total.
''We are certainly, most likely because of a downturn in housing, not seeing the growth we initially projected we would get,'' acknowledged School Board President Mark Metzger. ''But, as a whole, the board felt the (2006) referendum was not sold on the basis of future projections as it was on the basis of students already here. And we see nothing to suggest current levels are going to go down anytime soon.''
Without questioning the need for 80 acres to build a high school, a Daily Herald editorial says the district found itself in an unenviable position, stressing that the jury's decision ''should inject a sense of urgency that was missing earlier in looking at possible alternative sites.''
To avoid such a position in the future, it adds, the district should have ''a contract for land in hand before asking for money to build a school.'' -- Daily Herald
10/3/2007
Resource(s): www.dailyherald.com/
Legislature Goes to Bat for Complete Streets in Illinois
''The Illinois Legislature recognized what is becoming common sense across the country -- that our roads need to serve everyone using them, whether they are driving, walking, bicycling, or catching the bus,'' said National Complete Streets Coalition (NCSC) Coordinator Barbara McCann after lawmakers voted unanimously in the Senate and 109-3 in the House to nullify Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich's amendatory veto on the comprehensive Complete Street Law (AB 314), under which the Illinois Department of Transportation must include safe bicycling and walking routes in all planning for urbanized areas immediately and in construction by August 2008.
''By routinely completing their streets,'' she pointed out, ''transportation agencies increase road capacity, avoid costly retrofits, encourage physical activity and help create the walkable communities that so many people want today.''
Chicagoland Bicycle Federation Chief Strategy Officer Randy Neufeld echoed the statement.
''The law is a very cost-effective way to improve safety and access for bicyclists and pedestrians,'' he stressed. ''In the past, the state was prompted by death or injury to correct unsafe conditions on a given project. This law requires projects be built correctly the first time, which will save taxpayers' money and protect people.''
According to an NCSC press release, five other states have adopted some form of complete street law since the movement's 2003 inception, and eight have established other types of such policies, with California lawmakers considering a measure that requires all jurisdictions to plan roads for all travelers, including transit passengers and the disabled.
In related news, reports NYC Streets Renaissance's Streetsblog, an August amendment to the Illinois Vehicle Code requires motorists to leave at least three feet when passing a bicycle.
In an extensive e-mail comment on the Illinois' new law, blog reader Angus Grieve-Smith writes:
''The fact that there needs to be a movement, with a coalition leading to it, to provide basic facilities for people to walk from one place to another, is completely shameful.
''Also, why just urban areas? Many towns and cities are a comfortable walking distance apart (and many more are a comfortable cycling distance apart), and there are lots of country and suburb dwellers (including but not limited to the elderly, teenagers and the disabled) who don't have access to cars and public transportation. I know that urban areas might be a first step, but I think it's important to think and talk in terms of long-term goals. Limiting this to urban areas makes no sense in the long term.
'' 'We didn't build sidewalks here for 50 years,' says Norm Steinman, planning manager for Charlotte's transportation department. 'Streets designed by traffic engineers in the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s were mostly for autos.'
''It's worse that that. In these years, miles and miles of sidewalks in North Carolina were removed from the streets -- demapped, torn up and transferred to lawns and parking lots. If you walk around some of the older downtowns, you can still see traces (assuming you don't get run over first).'' -- Streetsblog
10/17/2007
Resource(s): http://completestreets.org ; www.streetsblog.org/
Momentum Builds for Muncie-Indianapolis-Bloomington Commuter Rail Line
''Driving has some hidden costs,'' compounded by the lack of walkable neighborhoods, said University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning (TCAUP) Dean Douglas Kelbaugh at Muncie-based Ball State University (BSU) -- which strongly backs a proposal to build a 50-mile commuter rail line from Muncie southwest to Indianapolis and 50 miles farther to Bloomington -- mentioning not only vehicle, insurance, and gas prices, but also road maintenance outlays, time wasted in traffic, record overweight and obesity rates, and more than 42,000 people killed and another 3 million injured in crashes last year.
With the I-69 corridor between Muncie and Indianapolis likely to become fully urban within 40 years, reports Indianapolis Star writer Seth Slabaugh, the Indiana Department of Transportation has tentatively chosen San Francisco's prestigious URS engineering design firm to study the feasibility of the Muncie-Bloomington commuter rail system, and BSU's Land Design Institute and its Community Based Projects are about to launch a ''Green Line Initiative,'' focused on all transit issues.
The high gas prices and increasingly heavy I-69 congestion make commuter rail ''a no-brainer'' for most people, especially in Delaware County, said the legislative Joint Study Committee on Mass Transit and Transportation Alternatives Democratic Co-Chair Terri Austin.
Delaware County Commissioner John Brooke and state Democratic Senator Sue Errington applaud the proposal.
A commuter rail would benefit Delaware County residents ''by providing an economical, energy-saving, traffic-reducing method of transportation to and from Indianapolis,'' county commissioners stressed in their recent resolution, while Senator Errington noted, ''With all of our concerns about foreign oil and our dependence on it, I think a commuter rail is a really good idea.''
BSU Urban Planning Associate Professor Scott Truex expects the ''Green Line Initiative'' to elevate the regional transit discussion from traffic flow and air quality improvements to transit-oriented development and its economic advantages.
''We see across the country,'' he pointed out, ''that transit centers become a major catalyst for corporation location and economic development.''
BSU, the writer adds, will continue its guest speaker series on land use and transit this fall, with presentations by Washington-based Smart Growth Leadership Institute President, former Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening and by Denver-based Citiventure Associates transit-oriented development expert Marilee Utter. -- Indianapolis Star
9/3/2007
Resource(s): www.indystar.com/
Need for Good Land Use Planning Key to Southwestern Indiana's Future
''You're not going to have a bird destroying its nest, but that's what we're doing,'' said the Evansville region's Sustainable Communities Coalition President Jim Daniels at a smart-growth forum co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana, pointing out that development is outpacing population growth in much of Vanderburgh, Posey, Gibson and Warrick counties, while forest and farmland shrink.
States with the strongest environmental laws enjoy the strongest economies, he observed, assuring the audience that through smart-growth planning the four-county region can optimize land use, maximize resource efficiency, minimize waste, and improve both the quality of life and economic competitiveness.
Details, reports Evansville Courier & Press writer Libby Keeling, came from the other forum speaker, Purdue University's Forestry and Natural Resources Department expert Robert McCormick, leader of its Planning with POWER (Protecting Our Water and Environmental Resources) project.
''The goal is to strike a balance between (population) growth and development,'' he said. ''This is about how we grow, not if we grow.''
Noting that Indiana loses some 10 acres of farmland to development each hour, he stressed that smart growth offers communities a framework for informed planning decisions.
He advised planners to inventory natural resources, prioritize areas for protection, channel development to areas with infrastructure, make sure projects incorporate open space, and revise zoning and subdivision regulations.
''We're not making any new farmland,'' he said. ''It's where houses are going up.''
One reader sent the daily an e-mail with these two questions: ''Should there be available government tax breaks and grants for using the existing facilities instead of destroying these forest and farm acres? And should these breaks be given to businesses of any size, from mom & pop's coffee shop to Toyota?'' -- Evansville Courier & Press
10/28/2007
Resource(s): www.courierpress.com/
Parking Spaces Outnumber Drivers 3 to 1 in Midwest County; Research Details Hazards of Stormwater Runoff, Heat Island Effect
In the first of several surveys of vehicle impact on land-use patterns, a team of Purdue University-West Lafayette researchers under Forestry and Natural Resources Associate Professor Bryan Pijanowski found that in its home Tippecanoe County -- a typical midsize Midwestern county of 155,000 residents -- parking lots with a total of 355,000 spaces, have taken more than two square miles of land, the equivalent of some 1,000 football fields, and this excludes private-property and multi-level garage parking.
According to Professor Pijanowski and Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering Professor Bernard Engel, the land lost to parking lots could produce 250,000 bushels of corn each year.
Instead, the impervious lots collect a lot of pollutants -- oil, grease, sediment and heavy metals, the latter from car batteries and even airborne fumes -- all eventually carried to lakes and streams by rain and stormwater runoff, which also worsens flooding and erosion.
Professor Engel's computer model showed that in comparison to potential runoff from a rural area of the same size, the runoff from the county's parking lots is 25 times heavier and includes 1,000 times more heavy metal content.
In addition, noted state climatologist Dev Niogi, parking lots exacerbate the ''urban heat island effect,'' increasing local temperatures 2 to 3 degrees Celsius.
Having studied the issues for several years, Professor Pijanowski is concerned about the American willingness to pave more and more land each year for cars and trucks.
''In many areas of the world, particularly Europe, cities were planned prior to automobiles, and many locations are typically within walking distance,'' he observed. ''This is just one different way to plan that has certain advantages.''
Nevertheless, he said, huge parking lots ''at big-box stores and mega-churches are rarely filled,'' and their builders, like many other businesses, should consider combined-use or shared parking, which would save on construction and ownership costs while minimizing pavement.
''People can help by first realizing that our land is not unlimited and that we need to use it prudently,'' he stressed. ''They can seek a lifestyle that requires less automobile use. They can express their opinions that parking lots do not have to be as large as they are, attend planning meetings and help guide others to act.'' -- Purdue University
9/11/2007
Resource(s): http://news.uns.purdue.edu/
Smart Growth Needed to Manage Challenge of ''Land Hunger'' in Kenya's Urban Zones
In Nairobi, 10 percent of residents live on 60 percent of its land and ''quite a few land-owners want it to stay that way,'' writes Kenya Private Developers Association Vice Chairman and Scion Real principal Dr. Laila Macharia in the Nairobi Business Daily, attributing the public feeling ''that status only comes with space'' to the nation's traditional notion of wealth as ''owning huge expanses of open land'' and to its agricultural, pastoral and fishery roots, but urging attitudinal changes and adoption of smart growth.
Sorry that some still see ''high-rise living'' as ''low-income living'' and dismiss the city's new residential towers as ''ghettos,'' she calls readers' attention to three economic and sociocultural facts.
Building, she writes, is one of the few industries employing all categories of highly educated and unskilled workers and having significant multiplier effects; the closer proximity to the central business district, the higher the land prices and density; and all across the globe, ''people want to live close to where the action is.''
No single family ''can expect to live on a one acre plot in Manhattan,'' and the same is becoming true in Lavington, less than six miles from Nairobi's central business district.
To manage ''the challenge of land hunger in Kenya's urban zones,'' she stresses, the nation needs smart growth, which ''allows diverse citizens -- the youth, single professionals, tourists, growing families and older adults -- to enjoy the benefits of density,'' including the sense of belonging to ''an interdependent community,'' the feeling of safety, and the presence of conveniently-located services such as transport and health care.
''As planning policy allows for higher density, we should ensure that space is reserved for green spaces, road shoulders and drainage and other amenities,'' she concludes. ''All this will ease congestion so that density is welcomed rather than despised.'' -- Business Daily
9/19/2007
Resource(s): http://allafrica.com/
Intelligent Community Forum Releases ''Smart 21 List'' of Leading Sustainable Communities
Convinced that local and regional prosperity in this global Digital Age depends on sustainability, smart growth and 'green'' development, the New York City-based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) had made these subjects the theme of its next Intelligent Community of the Year award, releasing a first-phase list of Smart21 Communities of 2008 at the ''Intelligent Communities and Broadband'' conference in Waterloo, Ontario -- the 2007 award winner, well-known for its cluster of high-tech companies, including Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry wireless communication devices.
The first-phase list of 21 communities from 14 nations will be narrowed to the Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year in January, with the winner announced at the annual ''Building the Broadband Economy'' summit in New York City on May 16.
The list includes Ashland, Oregon; Barcelonetta, Puerto Rico; Cape Town, South Africa; Doha, Qatar; Dublin, Ohio; Dundee, Scotland; Edmonton, Alberta; Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Fredericton, New Brunswick; Gengnam-gu District, Seoul, South Korea; Gold Coast City, Australia; Hammarby Sjostad, Sweden; Hwa Seong Dong Tan, South Korea; Hyderabad, India; Isle of Man, United Kingdom (Crown Protectorate); Malta; Northeast Ohio; Tallinn, Estonia; Vancouver, British Columbia; Westchester County, New York; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
''Gaining a place among the Smart21 is the first step toward greater recognition as a community or region that is either positioning itself to prosper, or already is prospering in the Digital Age,'' said ICF Chairman John G. Jung. ''This year we found that communities have passed the threshold, and no longer question whether broadband is a key to success, but are attempting to take steps to use the technology to move forward in order to 'future proof' themselves and ensure sustainability.'' -- Intelligent Community Forum
10/25/2007
Resource(s): www.intelligentcommunity.org/
Cyclist Urges Integration of Pedestrian and Cycling Networks Into Ontario's Transportation Planning
With our quality of life challenged daily by the negative aspects of growth -- climate change, pollution, gridlock, urban sprawl, resource depletion,'' Ontario needs Smart Growth, writes cycling enthusiast Keith Jones in an Oshawa This Week guest column, pointing out that under the province's 2005 Smart Growth strategy municipalities should integrate ''pedestrian and cycling networks'' into their transportation planning, without which most such network projects become ''museum pieces.''
A cycling network is ''a combination of on-road routes and off-road pathways,'' letting commuter and recreation cyclists ''move confidently and efficiently'' throughout their areas, he observes, urging Oshawa to incorporate its 1999 cycling plan into the city's official plan, as did the Niagara Region in 2000 and Windsor in 2001.
''Cycling should be treated as a viable transportation option,'' he tells officials, who must know that the city's large employers and its growing university and college population make it especially ''well-positioned'' to build and promote cycling networks.
They are part of ''a balanced and sustainable transportation system,'' he concludes. ''Cycling networks are Smart Growth.'' -- Oshawa This Week
9/30/2007
Resource(s): www.newsdurhamregion.com/
Queensland Tranport Economist Points to San Diego as Model for Transit Investment
Worried about the lack of transit investment and expansion prospects in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, University of Queensland's Centre for Transport Strategy urban economist Chris Hale would like local planners to follow the example of their American counterparts from San Diego, a very similar mid-size city where initial transit experiments three decades ago spawned an increasingly popular light rail system, transit-oriented development, higher downtown density, and eventually a regional Smart Growth vision.
''In embracing smart growth principles, San Diego planners are placing their hopes for economic, environmental and social sustainability on better integration of public transport and land uses,'' the economist writes in a Brisbane Courier-Mail piece, part of the daily's series on southeast Queensland growth impact, a special project pursued jointly with TV Channel 9, the Brisbane Institute and Griffith University's Urban Research Program.
As in Australia now, he points out, ''some transport pundits were skeptical of the public transit investments in San Diego and elsewhere,'' but they ''deliberately overlooked'' transit benefits for some 30 percent of urban dwellers in the U.S. (the same here) who don't drive plus those who wouldn't bother driving if they had alternatives.
''As with Australian cities,'' the economist concludes, ''it seems the greatest barrier toward achieving those goals that now faces San Diego is reluctance to commit wholeheartedly to a 21st century wave of public transit service and infrastructure expansion.'' -- Courier-Mail
9/17/2007
Resource(s): www.news.com.au/couriermail/
''Art for the Environment'' Initiative Begins With Plug for Smart Growth, Sustainability
Under their ''Art For the Environment'' curatorial initiative, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the mobile Natural World Museum (NWM) invited the public to a joint international symposium on key ''social, economic and political aspects of global warming'' and the opening of a traveling exhibit, ''Melting Ice/A Hot Topic: Envisioning Change'' in Brussels, Belgium on October 5, with the exhibit's sponsor, design software Autodesk company President and CEO Carl Bass proud to help advance ''the dialog about promoting smart growth in a sustainable world, and demonstrate the critical role design can play in this process.''
Both the symposium and the exhibit aim for deeper public understanding of climate change causes and effects, while outlining their possible remedies.
Symposium panelists and the more than 40 artists participating in the exhibit have been increasingly absorbed in recent years with such questions as ''What is climate change?'' ''What are the political implications?'' ''How does sustainable development create a pathway to peace?'' and ''Why should we care?''
The ''Art For the Environment'' initiative, said United Nations Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner ''utilizes the universal language of art as a catalyst to unite people in action and thought and to empower individuals, communities, and leaders to focus on environmental values across social, economic, and political realms.''
The artists, added Natural World Museum Curator Randy Rosenberg, were asked to address ''just one dimension: the thawing and melting of the ice caps and permafrost, and the implications for humans and other species.''
The Envisioning Change exhibit, first opened in Oslo, Norway three months ago, will remain in Brussels till January 8, traveling later to Monaco and Chicago.
Details at www.artinaction.org and www.artintoaction.org/__documents/brussels.html.
9/11/2007
Resource(s): www.prnewswire.co.uk/
China's Cities Facing Massive Migration from Rural Areas
Although at the projected 0.6 percent growth rate, China's population of nearly 1.3 billion in 2003 may be increasing by just 7.8 to 8.4 million annually, its urban segment will be growing by 15 million to 20 million a year over the next 10 years, with Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy President Gregory K. Ingram, co-chair of the International Studies department, saying, ''The growth has huge implications for urban areas, land policy and the environment, while the massive migration from rural areas will have important consequences in those communities as well.''
To increase American and international awareness of China's challenges in its ''transition to a socialist market economy'' and the wider repercussions, the institute has now published a 320-page book, ''Urbanization in China: Critical Issues in an Era of Rapid Growth,'' edited by Yan Song, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Chengri Ding, University of Maryland, College Park.
The book reflects the proceedings of the institute's May 2006 conference on ''urban strategies and instruments'' to promote ''economically sound, environmentally desirable, politically feasible, and socially acceptable'' growth in China.
Having started five years ago, the institute will continue its research and other involvement to facilitate these prospects under its Program in the People's Republic of China, with program director Joyce Man of Indiana University now based in Beijing. -- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
10/20/2007
Resource(s): www.lincolninst.edu/
Development Proposals Challenge Ontario's Smart Growth Policy
In the first major challenge to Ontario's smart-growth policy embodied in the 2005 Places to Grow Act -- which projects 227,000 new residents and 100,000 new jobs over the next 25 years in Simcoe County, not far north of Greater Toronto -- developers Fred DeGasperis and Marion Cortelluci want local politicians to designate huge swaths of rural land in the south-east Highway 400 corridor as ''a massive'' industrial-commercial employment zone, writes Toronto Star reporter Phinjo Gombu, with Building Industry and Land Development consultant John Genest calling the proposal contingent on expansion of residential areas.
''This is an opportunity to create complete communities and to pull southern pay scales to the north,'' he said, tempting officials at a public visioning session in Barrie, while DeGasperis company representative John Bousfield made the lure sweeter by announcing that an unnamed major manufacturer is almost ready to consolidate operations near the corridor's center.
That consolidation could bring in a lot of the 80,000 jobs the developer-proposed industrial-commercial zone would eventually create in addition to the 100,000 under the provincial Places to Grow plan.
Correspondingly, the reporter observes, DeGasperis intends to build homes for nearly 70,000 people in rural Bradford and for 27,000 in Innisfil on Lake Simcoe, a few miles east of Barrie.
In contrast to county planners, who point out that already designated industrial and commercial land in various areas is sufficient under the province's plan, developers want it concentrated in one zone, which would mean leapfrogging over the Greater Toronto Area's conservation Greenbelt, while posing at least two other big problems.
Concerned that the proponents would locate most newcomers ''on the most fertile farmland,'' Oro-Medonte Mayor Harry Hughes stressed the need to consider the potential impact.
And developer Gian Delzotto, who also favors small employment nodes on the county's urban land and hopes to build in the Collingwood area, about 40 miles northwest of proposed Highway 400 development zone, said the county has ''a blank page'' to draw development on and should follow the provincial plan's goals, instead of ''loading up South Simcoe'' in places like Bradford and Innisfil. -- Star
10/26/2007
Resource(s): www.thestar.com/
Delay Sought on Squamish Building Height Cap Removal
Upset by the prospect of 20-story condo towers in downtown Squamish, about 30 miles north of Vancouver, local residents persuaded the City Council to defer removal of the six-story height cap until the November 6 meeting, to allow Pridham Development to rethink that aspect of its 1,500-unit Waterfront Landing project on a former mill site, reports Globe and Mail writer Cathryn Atkinson, with resident Ivan Hughes, a filmmaker, saying, ''I'm all for smart growth and densification of downtown, but 20 storeys are unfathomable'' in this small community of some 16,000.
''The biggest concern is by changing the bylaw, you set a dangerous precedent and towers could end up popping up all over the place,'' he told councillors. ''I understand the argument for affordable housing, but it is very lucrative for developers as well.''
His complaint that at the first two readings of the bylaw change proposal ''the towers weren't mentioned at all'' and the public left ''misinformed,'' was expressed in equally strong terms by resident and Downtown Advisory Committee member Peter Harker, who is building a bistro downtown and worries that the towers would block the beautiful vistas of the mountains and Howe Sound.
''I have no problem with development, nor do I have problems with density -- we have the makings of a world-class city here -- but everything has been done in an ad hoc way,'' he said, stressing that even the advisory committee has never discussed ''anything over six storeys,'' and asking officials, ''How do you plan a downtown with arbitrary decisions?''
Beside the objectionable 20-story condo towers, the Waterfront Landing project would include smaller condo buildings, townhouses, and some commercial space, the writer observes, noting that after the industry and many working-class families made room for more affluent newcomers seeking ''the mountain lifestyle'' and ''a reasonable commute to Vancouver,'' redevelopment in Squamish has been swift, detached-house values have increased by 20 percent since last year, and many business owners are backing the project as likely to double the downtown population and economic activity.
''Waterfront Landing would bring the numbers to the point so that the businesses downtown would actually survive,'' said Gelato Carina owner Gregory Fisher. ''At the moment, it is a day-by-day survival. Yes, they (the towers) are controversial, but on the other hand, Whistler (30 miles farther north) has 12-storey buildings, and nobody kicks up a fuss up there.'' -- Globe and Mail
10/19/2007
Resource(s): www.theglobeandmail.com/
Cambridge Residents Protest Size of Brownfield-to-Housing Plan
Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig and all six councilors push for more infill housing on postindustrial tracts in their city, some 50 miles southwest of Toronto, but they voted 4-3 to delay approval for 118 apartments and 82 townhouses on a 10.5-acre former foundry site amid narrow, quiet streets, to give Reid's Heritage Homes officials and local neighbors time for further talks about reducing his unit numbers, with resident Bob McMullen telling the council, ''This is merely residential intensification, not smart growth.''
He also asked councilors for advance information about other prospective redevelopment, suggesting the city send residents a map of brownfields targeted for housing.
Reid's planner Brian Blackmere, reports Kitchener Record writer Kevin Swayze, called the planned redevelopment a national pilot project for blending environmentally sensitive residential construction, which ensures water conservation and energy efficiency, into an established neighborhood.
Area Councillor Karl Kiefer pointed out that he hasn't heard any complaints from his constituents about the plan and he sees the need to change the site's zoning from heavy industrial to residential now to avoid the risk of someone trying to ''put up a factory.''
Conversely, Councillor Ben Tucci was ''at a loss'' how to explain the developer's increase of the housing unit numbers from 169 to 200 after neighbors first criticized the project's size.
And resident Ryan Church reiterated their stance.
''As a community,'' he stressed, ''we're not opposed to development of this site, but we are interested in mitigating the negative implications of it as we see it.''
Voting to delay approval, the writer notes, Mayor Craig praised the project, but thought it needed a ''softening, a transition'' between old and new. -- Record
10/26/2007
Resource(s): www.therecord.com/
Sen. Landrieu Says Planned, Sustainable Growth Is ''Critical'' to Louisiana's Future
''Two of the crucial areas where we need to focus our efforts are federal investments in infrastructure and smart growth policies,'' neither of which should involve partisanship or ideology, writes Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in a New Orleans CityBusiness guest opinion after her August tour around the state, pointing out that although its different regions have different needs, these investments not only will help communities prepare for disasters like the hurricanes two years ago, but also will spur the economy by ensuring ''safe and efficient'' transportation.
''Promoting smart growth creates unique challenges for each community,'' she observes. ''My travels underscored the importance of smart planning throughout the growth process in order to control sprawl and congestion, attract tourism and convention business and bring new jobs to our communities.''
To improve infrastructure and effectively manage growth, while implementing an opportunity agenda, the government in Washington must work better than it did after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when many federal agencies were ''ineffective and tied up in red tape,'' Senator Landrieu writes. ''Clearly, we can't continue to ask taxpayers to pour billions of dollars into agencies and bureaucracies that don't work.''
As the Senate's Disaster Recovery Subcommittee Chairman, Senator Landrieu has taken ''the lead in investigating areas of abuse and developing responsible reform,'' determined to continue work ''with Democrats and Republicans to make sure our government works for us, and not the other way around.''
Also reiterating her commitment to a fight for ''a school system that prepares our children to be competitive in a global economy,'' she emphasizes the importance of putting aside ''old divisions and differences'' to secure the changes Louisiana needs.
''In the end, Louisianans are far more united than divided on the major issues we are facing,'' she stresses. ''Government competency, investment in infrastructure, smart planning and growth management, and basic opportunity through education are neither partisan nor ideological -- they're just common sense.'' -- New Orleans CityBusiness
9/17/2007
Resource(s): www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/
''Smart Growth'' Means Different Things to Different Interests in Lafayette City-Parish Council Elections
With races heating up for the October 20 election to the Lafayette City-Parish Council and ''smart growth'' once more prominent in debates and questionnaires, Baton Rouge Advocate Acadiana Bureau writer Kevin Blanchard points out that in the absence of ''common vocabulary and shared assumptions'' the term is ''vague'' and usually used as an argument ''for or against a development decision,'' with some preferring the term ''managed growth,'' which ''implies the real issue -- that government needs to step in and take a greater role in managing how the area grows.''
Managed growth, he writes, ''assumes that many of the problems growing cities like Lafayette face -- traffic congestion, urban sprawl, zoning conflicts and drainage problems -- can be mitigated through a series of new rules.''
Still, as cheaper rural land pulls developers increasingly away from the city core, as thousands of commuters agonize on two-lane roads never meant for the load, as opposition torpedoes ideas of impact fees or special tax districts to fund the needed infrastructure, and as neighbors fight higher-density housing, smaller lots and inter-connected street proposals as detrimental to their property values, ''the government can't 'manage' growth without making some politically unpopular decisions.''
Among others, ''it will necessarily have to dictate to people what they may or may not do with their own property.''
In addition, be it through new tax, impact fees or special taxing districts, ''someone will eventually have to pay to build necessary infrastructure, which is not free and is getting more expensive every day,'' the writer stresses, convinced that ''(s)mart policy means facing growth costs.'' -- Advocate
10/9/2007
Resource(s): www.2theadvocate.com/
York's Workforce Affordable Housing Committee Wants to Include Model Site Ordinance on November Ballot
With a $73,400-$400,000 gap between York's median income and median home price, and only 71 percent of residents able to afford a new home, the town's Workforce Affordable Housing Committee wanted to put its proposed ''Workforce Housing Model Site Overlay District'' ordinance on the November ballot, but after the Board of Selectmen turned it down in a 3-2 vote a few weeks ago as ''unready'' yet, the committee is counting on media coverage and an informational forum later this month to promote its ''smart growth approach,'' which would balance the coastal community's affordable-housing and growth-management goals, while preserving local small-town character.
Board and Committee Chairman Mike Estes and Selectman Ted Little, reported York Weekly writer Herb Perry earlier, characterized the ordinance criticism by their board colleagues Dwight Bardwell, Dave Marshall and Kinley Gregg as political instead of substantive.
In a message to the public, just run by the Portsmouth Herald in lieu of its weekly editorial, all seven committee members explain that their aim is to create a model affordable site of up to 50 homes, including townhouse rental apartments, with a density of just over five or over two units per acre, depending on availability of water and sewer lines.
Since the main factor in high housing prices is the cost of land, they write, putting more units on a given parcel in clusters, to save open space with walking and biking trails, could significantly lower unit costs.
They would like to price the homes from $175,000 to $250,000 -- ''manageable for households with incomes from about $50,000 to $80,000'' -- and offer rental apartments to households making under $50,000 a year.
Among those who would qualify, they note, would be police officers, nurses, hospital technicians, teachers and town employees.
Glad of support from many residents and community leaders, including School Superintendent Henry Scipione and Police Chief Doug Bracy, they write, ''The intent of the model site is to give the people of York a concrete opportunity to learn what works and what does not work -- a first step in developing a larger, more comprehensive affordable housing strategy.'' -- York Weekly
9/5/2007
Resource(s): www.seacoastonline.com/
GrowSmart Maine Will Bring Free Professional Planning Help to Town of Standish
Selected by GrowSmart Maine from among 75 municipalities that sought the status of its first model town, Standish -- increasingly a ''bedroom community'' of some 10,000, about 15 miles northwest of central Portland -- will receive free professional help to implement its new comprehensive plan, which will contain sprawl and protect local character, two key goals the previous plan fell short of, with 73 percent of new development between 1999 and 2004 taking place on rural land, outside designated growth areas.
GrowSmart Maine, reports Portland Press Herald writer Ann S. Kim, will bring to Standish planners, designers, economists and other experts from several other organizations while providing the town with technology and the best ordinances from around the country, an equivalent of $80,000 to $100,000.
''We're going to bring about as much talent and resources as you could reasonably expect,'' said GrowSmart Maine President and CEO Alan Caron.
Hoping the program will prove that the right resources are crucial for implementation of local comprehensive plans, state-mandated documents on growth and land use, he pledged to fight for such resources for all towns across the state.
State Planning Office land use director Stacy Benjamin said, ''Some towns do a great job in implementing their comprehensive plans and others finish them, and they sit on the shelf.''
GrowSmart Maine decided to assist Standish with plan implementation, said program director Bruce Hyman, because of its fast and projected development, commitment to smart growth, and enthusiasm about the task.
Under the program, he added, the group will work with the town's new open lands committee to draw up a rural area conservation plan, focusing on wildlife habitat, forest tracts, orchards and access to Saco River and Sebago Lake, and with its economic development committee to create a village center at Standish Corner. -- Portland Press Herald
9/17/2007
Resource(s): http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/
Study Finds Gaps in Monitoring Maryland's Priority Funding Areas Program
Rarely if ever do new policies break long habits, surmount systemic hurdles and quickly reach all their goals, an adage now confirmed in University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education report on results of the state's 1997 shift toward land conservation and urban redevelopment, with some agencies unable to determine whether all their infrastructure money went to growth-designated ''priority funding areas,'' Democratic Governor Parris N. Glendening ending his second term in January 2003, and his Republican successor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. ignoring the need to continue the work and fill the initial gaps.
''The Glendening administration tried to do it but didn't succeed. And then Ehrlich dropped it,'' said study co-author and Center Director Gerritt Knaap about monitoring of smart growth investments. ''The way to guide state infrastructure spending using priority funding areas is not working well.''
Its release coinciding with the Center's three-day Annapolis conference on the state's smart-growth accomplishments and stumbles over the last 10 years, writes Baltimore Sun reporter Timothy B. Wheeler, the study found that about 75 percent of housing built between 2000 and 2004 is in priority funding areas, but that the total of units built elsewhere not only went slightly up, but also took some 75 percent of all land developed in those five years.
It also found that most of the $1.1 billion in the state's annual growth-related spending -- about five percent of its whole budget -- helped transportation, with 60 percent of those outlays benefiting growth areas, but with toll highways, Baltimore harbor tunnels, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and school construction and renovation exempted from the priority-funding areas law.
For Home Builders Association of Maryland Director of Government Affairs Tom Ballentine the report justifies frequent builders' complaints about local laws in some growth areas that bar construction until their roads, schools and utilities are upgraded.
''Most people who are involved in growth management in Maryland,'' he said, ''understand that the priority funding areas aren't functioning as they were intended to.''
For 1000 Friends of Maryland Executive Director Dru Schmidt-Perkins the key is a renewed and stronger growth-management commitment.
''We have a law,'' she observed, ''but if we're not going to have a monitoring and enforcement system, it's not going to happen particularly effectively, and the impact of the law will be lessened.''
Director Knaap and state Secretary of Planning Richard E. Hall agree, especially hopeful for additional anti-sprawl measures promised by Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley.
''I think it makes sense for the state to worry and try to monitor where it spends its money, to do everything it can to avoid subsidizing sprawl. But I don't think just that is enough to change development patterns,'' said the director.
''No one who knows anything about growth would think that the 1997 law would change things overnight. I think it is having an effect,'' said the secretary, adding, ''We need to do more.'' -- Baltimore Sun
10/1/2007
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Maryland Poll Respondents Want More State Involvement in Managing Growth
Reconfirming the scope and intensity of public concerns about Maryland's rapid development and its quality-of-life impact, previously evidenced in a 2005 Baltimore Sun survey, a new poll by California-based Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates for 1000 Friends of Maryland shows that 85 percent of respondents think the state government should be more active in coordinating and managing growth, including 49 percent who would like it to be very active, with 80 percent also agreeing that residents don't have enough control over local community plans.
Correspondingly, more than 80 percent of respondents support expanding county-town planning coordination (88 percent); ensuring state funding priority for roads, schools and other services in established communities rather than in the countryside (87 percent); making state dollars encourage towns and counties to conserve land, spur redevelopment and contain sprawl (86 percent); and limiting new construction to areas where provision of services would be cost-effective.
In addition, 74 percent of respondents support increasing state outlays on trains, buses and light rail, even if it means less money for new highways; while 72 percent in each case back requiring homebuilders to set aside 15 percent of new project units for moderate and low-income families, and channeling new residential and commercial construction to urbanized areas.
Poll results, observes Baltimore Sun reporter Nick Madigan, do not impress Maryland Association of Counties (MAC) Associate Director Leslie Knapp and Home Builders Association of Maryland (HBAM) CEO and Executive Vice President John E. Kortecamp, both considering the poll questions superficial and inadequate.
''When you try to concentrate growth, you get significant citizens resistance,'' noted Director Knapp, referring to the ''Not-In-My-Neighborhood'' (NIMBY) factor. ''You'd need to ask people what amount of new development would you be willing to accept to keep it out of more rural areas.''
The HBAM CEO agreed. ''This level of concern and frustration has been expressed consistently for some time. These generalizations lead us nowhere,'' he said, asking about transit backers' real commitment. ''What percentage of those people would themselves ride mass transit if it were available?''
Unpersuaded, 1000 Friends of Maryland Executive Director Dru Schmidt-Perkins and other anti-sprawl movement leaders expect the results once again to show Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley the urgency of fulfilling his 2006 electoral pledge to strengthen the state's Smart Growth laws and policies. -- Baltimore Sun
10/17/2007
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Former Maryland Planner Says Annexations Bring Needed Infrastructure to Towns While Limiting Sprawl
When Democratic Governor Paris N. Glendening and state legislators were launching their landmark multi-prong Smart Growth policy amid record outward development pressures in 1997, ''they didn't think they would do anything about sprawl in a decade,'' observed former longtime Maryland Planning Department key manager, now senior Hunt Valley firm consultant James Noonan, an exponent of more realistic expectations at the policy's three-day review conference in Annapolis, where he and colleague Jacquelyn Magness Seneschal presented a paper on community revitalization success.
According to their paper, described by a Baltimore Sun environmental blog writer as sometimes ''provocative,'' the state invested more than $679 million in revitalization of cities, towns and unincorporated villages, from Glen Burnie to Cumberland and from Hyattsville to Vienna, with each dollar leveraging $2 in private and local money.
The authors think the state should publicize these efforts better to attract more private investors, while helping communities apply and use the various grants, loans and tax credits that could reenergize their neighborhoods.
Convinced that making the designated growth areas ''more attractive places to live, work and play'' would do more to rein in sprawl than denying state infrastructure funds for ''spread out suburbia,'' the paper authors argue against opposition to municipal annexation deals with developers.
A ''lighting rod in growth debates across the state,'' especially on the Chesapeake Bay Eastern Shore, the Sun writer notes, annexation deals have the authors' support as bringing towns developer investment in their cores and otherwise unaffordable but ''badly needed public facilities.''
With further growth unavoidable, clustering homes around towns rather than letting them spread throughout the countryside is also better for the Chesapeake Bay and its water quality, James Noonan said, adding, ''Whether or not you think a town has annexed too much, any house on water and sewer (lines) is one less house on sprawl.'' -- Baltimore Sun
10/7/2007
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Gov. Glendening Reflects on Work to Curb Sprawl in Maryland
''We did good; we could have done better,'' said former two-term Maryland Democratic Governor Parris N. Glendening at a conference on the aftermath of his 1997 Smart Growth policy, agreeing that Oregon or the Seattle area did more to curb sprawl thanks to their strict and early urban growth boundaries, though stressing, ''But most important, we stimulated a national debate that really changed policy,'' with about 30 states having adopted a number of smart growth principles and programs.
He also pointed out, notes Baltimore Sun reporter Timothy B. Wheeler, that Oregon-type growth boundaries and development regulations were neither politically viable in Maryland ten years back nor have they become so now.
What's more, the governor said, his policy of urban investments spurred revitalization in downtown Baltimore, Easton, Hagerstown and Hyattsville, despite mere lip-service to growth management under one-term Republican Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and despite federal ''hostility'' to public transit and smart growth since 2001.
Applauding Governor Martin O'Malley for his pledge to strengthen Maryland's growth-management efforts, the former governor, now Washington-based Smart Growth Leadership Institute president, made it clear he would like to see greater state assertiveness and more outlays for compact mixed-use development.
''As we face booming population, rising sea levels, a warming planet, escalating gas prices and a troubled housing market,'' he said, ''the need for aggressive action is urgent.'' -- Baltimore Sun
10/4/2007
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Climate Change Report Spurs Maryland Anti-Sprawl Activists to Seek Quick Restoration of State Smart Growth Policies
With the U.S. population projected to increase by 23 percent between 2005 and 2030, but driving and tailpipe carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 59 and 41 percent, respectively, and with the Baltimore area already enduring some of the nation's longest commutes and loss of time in traffic jams, writes Baltimore Sun reporter Timothy B. Wheeler, Maryland anti-sprawl activists seized on data from the just-announced ''Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change'' book and urged Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley to speed up reinvigoration of the state's 1997 policies of Smart Growth.
The data show that development away from urban centers and related driving increases cancel improved vehicle fuel economy and emission standards, and thus much of the effort to slow down global warming, the reporter notes, quoting 1000 Friends of Maryland Executive Director Dru Schmidt-Perkins.
The urgency of blocking further sprawl has become even more evident, she said, in the face of the expected arrival of some 28,000 households to the Baltimore area within next several years under the Military Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC) process.
''BRAC is really a test for the state and for local governments,'' she pointed out, seeing no real commitment yet to compact development, despite politicians' rhetoric about the need for regional planning cooperation and mass transit improvements.
''Is this going to get us the kind of development Maryland deserves and needs,'' she asked about the prospective BRAC influx, ''or is it going to just put us further back, hurting the Chesapeake Bay and contributing to global warming?'' -- Baltimore Sun
9/20/2007
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Lincoln Institute to Focus on Land Use in Addressing Global Warming
''At a time when climate change and energy efficiency are more and more on people's minds, our goal is to bring a sharp focus on the land use component in addressing global warming,'' said the Cambridge-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's Department of Planning and Urban Form Chairman Armando Carbonell in a press release ahead of the Institute's annual New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum, organized in partnership with the U.S. EPA and key regional advocacy, research and professional institutions November 1 in Boston.
Entitled Climate Change: The Emerging Role of Land Use, open to the public, and co-sponsored by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and the Boston Society of Architects, the forum will focus on metropolitan and regional growth policies and greenhouse gas reduction plans as factors in the fight against climate change.
Speakers and panelists include Tufts University Professor Paul Kirshen, Center for Clean Air Policy Transportation Program Manager Steve Winkelman, Sarrafix founding partner Douglas I. Foy, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy, Grow Smart Rhode Island Executive Director Scott Wolf, Grow Smart Maine project director Beth Nagusky, Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance Executive Director Andre Leroux, and EPA's Development, Community and Environment Division Director Geoff Anderson. -- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
10/16/2007
Resource(s): www.lincolninst.edu
Planner Suggests Using Clearer Terms to Describe Smart Growth
All professions have specific languages and verbal peculiarities that may confuse the general public, with lawyers wielding ''torts and writs,'' football coaches deploying ''schemes and nickel packages,'' doctors employing ''illegible handwriting,'' and planners ''too often guilty of overusing the term 'smart growth' as an all-encompassing cure-all for traffic jams, environmental degradation and often just plain ugly development,'' said Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District Executive Director Stephen C. Smith at a New Bedford Standard-Times land use forum, pointing out that since planners participate in ''setting and executing public policy, the last thing that we can afford to be is obscure and unclear.''
One of the planners who prefers to ''define smart growth in non-technical terms,'' Director Smith said, ''Think of smart growth as development similar to what we recall from one or more generations ago, characterized by vibrant neighborhoods, busy downtowns and abundant open space and public places.''
Its antithesis, he continued, is ''endless commercial strip development, long commutes, and residences barely within shouting distance of each other.''
To follow such area examples of smart growth as Padanaram Village and New Bedford's historic district, and to prevent their antithesis, like most development along Route 6 and many new subdivisions, he advised local governments to take ''10 smart growth steps,'' all involving bylaw or policy changes and not all easy, but mostly within their jurisdictional control.
One, he said, promote mixed-use development through zoning changes. Two, provide more housing choices by allowing in-law apartments, duplexes, apartment complexes, and varied lot sizes for single-family homes.
Three, preserve agriculture by offering farmers tax breaks and the purchase of development rights.
Four, promote cluster development to preserve the saved land as open space.
Five, keep municipal buildings, courthouses, post offices, libraries and schools downtown as the lifeblood of the urban cores.
Six, transfer development rights to areas targeted for higher densities.
Seven, preserve your history, remembering that a building hundreds of years old is individual and unique but a new McDonald's or Wal-Mart is not.
Eight, preserve open space, using state grants, land trust funds and local preservation money, as this may be your community's best long-term investment.
Nine, minimize pavement width by allowing narrower residential streets to improve safety and restore neighborhood cohesion.
And ten, expand water and sewer service wisely because these pipes will guide future development.
''The details of zoning and other local development regulations can be pretty boring stuff,'' Director Smith concluded, ''but we need to pay attention to these details because local bylaws are our best means to translate our visions into reality.'' -- Standard-Times
10/19/2007
Resource(s): www.southcoasttoday.com/
Fannie Mae Foundation Recognizes City of Flint for Community Redevelopment, Affordable Housing Work
Empowered by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm a week earlier to use some $20.6 million in state and local tax revenue for cleanup and reclamation of hundreds of blighted properties in Genesee County and the city of Flint, the Genesee County Land Bank Authority (GCLBA), created in 2002, has now won this year's $100,000 Fannie Mae Foundation Innovation Award in Affordable Housing for its exemplary community redevelopment and low-cost housing work.
''Genesee County successfully demonstrates that the creation of affordable residential areas serves as the catalyst for transforming declining communities into areas of growth and prosperity,'' stressed Fannie Mae Foundation Executive Director Peter Beard at the award event, held jointly with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the school's Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation in Washington, D.C. ''The county's work revitalizing its community is not only inspirational, its work can serve to influence new practices in affordable housing throughout our country, especially in today's challenging housing markets.''
Applauding the county for ''creative partnerships'' to ensure community redevelopment and quality of life improvements, Kennedy School of Government's American Government Program Director Stephen Goldsmith also expressed hope that its example will spur similar efforts nationwide.
Grateful for the recognition, Genesee County Treasurer and GCLBA Chairman Dan Kildee said, ''We have already begun advising government officials in New Orleans, Baltimore and Cleveland and we look forward to the opportunity to encourage and support even more municipalities across the nation with our shared best practices.''
For details and 2008 award applications see www.innovationsaward.harvard.edu.
9/25/2007
Resource(s): www.businesswire.com/
Monroe County Adopts Farmland Preservation Ordinance
Launched by the Monroe County Community Foundation and Temperance-based Community College at their Land Use Summit in 2004, an intensive educational and public input process has resulted in the county's just-adopted Farmland Preservation Ordinance, with Planning Director Royce Maniko hailing it as ''one of many 'smart growth' tools'' jurisdictions can use to save agriculture and open space and to secure long-term rural land productivity and viability.
Drawn up by a task force under Planning Commission Chairwoman Mary Webb and former Cooperative Extension Director Dale Brose, after public workshops in each township and consultation with experts, reports Monroe News writer Stephanie Ariganello, the ordinance makes the county eligible for state Agricultural Preservation Fund grants to buy ''development rights easements'' from willing farmers from townships that join the program.
Since land for development usually goes for more than land for agriculture, the writer notes, farmers who retire or look for other income often feel they must take advantage of selling to developers.
Participation in the land preservation program relieves that financial pressure, with the county paying them the difference between land for agriculture and land for development and holding their development rights in trust.
''It's been clear from the beginning of the process that preserving Monroe County's rural heritage is a priority for the vast majority of county residents,'' said Chairwoman Webb. ''The ordinance is a first step toward protecting our farmland and open space for the benefit of future generations.'' -- Monroe News
9/3/2007
Resource(s): www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Genesee County Set to Receive $20.6 Million for Brownfield Cleanup
Burdened with hundreds of abandoned sites and structures, Genesee County and its 15 communities are getting more than $20.6 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDE) for their cleanup and redevelopment -- the city of Flint alone expecting to begin lead and asbestos removal, and demolition and site preparation at some 704 tax-foreclosed homes and buildings, including two former hotels downtown.
''These properties have been a source of blight, and now they will be a source of hope and rebirth,'' said Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, voicing a key urban revitalization and quality of life theme of her 2006 State of the State speech. ''The creation of dynamic residential and commercial centers will enhance the livability and walkability of neighborhoods, and make the area a more attractive place to shop, invest, live, work and play.''
Among other projects, Flint will renovate and convert the vacant Durant Hotel to 109 two-bedroom apartments above stores and offices, redevelop the former Berridge Hotel as 20 affordable housing units and commercial space, and turn the adjacent historic Tinlin Building into four apartments.
''These brownfield projects will give the local economy a shot in the arm by removing and replacing problem properties with attractive new developments,'' said MEDC President and CEO James C. Epolito. ''Genesee County is making good use of the brownfield incentives that the state makes available for precisely this purpose.''
MSHDA Executive Director Michael DeVos expressed satisfaction over joint work with MEDC on brownfield reclamation, stressing, ''This partnership goes a long way in not only helping revitalize traditional downtowns, but also in making our downtowns a more desirable place to live, work and invest.''
Genesee County Land Bank Authority (GCLBA) Chairman and County Treasurer Dan Kildee, whose staff will administer the urban revitalization funds, added, ''Our experience so far proves that demolishing dilapidated structures, greening vacant lots, and redeveloping targeted properties unlocks the value of surrounding properties and improves neighborhoods.'' -- Michigan Economic Development Corporation
9/18/2007
Resource(s): www.michigan.org/index.asp
Editorial: Smart Growth Can Help Minnesota Address Climate Change, Improve Quality of Life
Assembled by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty to help the state carry out an 80-percent greenhouse gas emission cut by 2050, with about 27 percent of the current emissions attributable to transportation, the broad-based Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Committee has been concentrating on the need ''to change the ways Minnesotans commute and travel,'' observes a Twin Cities Minnesota Daily editorial, stressing that while the committee ''is considering drastic measures such as fees to discourage driving, new policies should especially focus on smart urban development and mass transit.''
As the Metropolitan Council projects another million Twin Cities residents by 2030, the editorial notes, the region must have smarter transportation and development policies to preserve its environment and ease traffic.
Expecting the committee's recommendations to spark a series of state bills next spring, the editorial points out that the governor and lawmakers must lead the way to make sure the bills include ''real benchmarks and plans.''
Glad of Minnesota's advance to the renewable energy forefront, thanks to legislation passed at the previous session, the editorial says, ''Smart growth takes foresight, and we are now in the perfect position to not only address climate change, but also improve standards of living.'' -- Minnesota Daily
10/18/2007
Resource(s): www.mndaily.com/
Stearns County Will Create Varied ''Policy Zones'' in Updated Comprehensive Plan
Like most other topographically and economically diverse jurisdictions, Stearns County is facing several disparate challenges -- its eastern part booming, but west side towns struggle to survive -- which officials want to address in the 1998 comprehensive plan's almost completed update by dividing the county into nine zones, or ''policy areas,'' with different development standards and requirements, while trying such smart-growth ideas as conservation design and transfer of development rights.
''Nobody thinks Stearns County from north to south and from east to west should be managed the same way,'' said County Environmental Services Director Don Adams. ''This one-size-fits-all isn't cutting it.''
The proposed zones, reports St. Cloud Times writer Kristi Marohn, include the (Mississippi) River corridor north, I-94 corridor, Agricultural limited growth area, Avon Hills natural resource area, St. Cloud metro area, Southwest area, Highway 23 corridor, Lakes natural/recreation area, and River corridor south.
The writer lists some examples of the zone-oriented policies.
The conservation design, with cluster housing and open space preservation, strongly advocated by internationally known planner Randall Arendt at a St. John's University conference in June, would be promoted in the Avon Hills natural resource area.
Transfer of development rights would help the county save prime farmland for production while offering farmers additional income and developers the opportunity to build more densely on residential tracts, which would limit sprawl and keep construction in service areas.
Farm-related industry would be allowed in the depressed Southwest area, new homes in the Lakes natural/recreational area would need vegetative buffers along lake shores, and development between cities along the I-94 corridor would be discouraged to protect local character.
With approval of the updates by the County Board possible this year, Director Adams said that although ''most plans sit up on the shelf,'' he expects this one to become a day-to-day reference manual for staff and officials, guiding their decisions at ''every single meeting.'' -- St. Cloud Times
10/8/2007
Resource(s): www.sctimes.com/
Columbia School Officials Urged to Rethink Site Selection of New High School
In overt disregard of the ''Metro 2020: A Planning Guide for Columbia Future'' goals, the Columbia Area Transportation Study Organization's (CATSO's) 2025 Transportation Plan, and the public outcry, Columbia Public School officials want to build a new high school three miles southeast of city limits, writes resident-activist Sid Sullivan in a sharp Missourian op-ed, stressing that while many people envision walkable neighborhoods, energy efficiency and less obesity, school officials are moving in the opposite direction.
Having gone ''beyond forecasting growth'' with their school site proposal, they are ''shaping growth for years to come'' and expect the city and Boone County to pay the infrastructure and service costs.
''There is no question the proposed site with its demand for extended water and sewer lines and an improved road would spur development where land is cheap,'' he observes. ''But its effect would also encourage sprawl and premature development.''
Instead of choosing a site that may be perfect ''for the fourth or fifth high school,'' the school board should realize that the taxpayer money needed for roads in the sparsely populated southeast can be better spent ''to fill out neighborhoods already under development'' in the city's close-in northern section.
Its population growth, which a walkable high school would accelerate, the op-ed author points out, would certainly encourage future construction of similar pedestrian-friendly elementary schools in those neighborhoods. -- Missourian
9/4/2007
Resource(s): www.columbiamissourian.com/
Columbia's Smart Growth Coalition Helping to Shape Growth Decisions
Although Columbia's Smart Growth Coalition is still small, it has already become a public force and former Missourian editor, Missouri School of Journalism Professor Emeritus George Kennedy, expects it to gain even more clout for at least two reasons -- because voters have put its past president Barbara Hoppe and anti-sprawl advocate Karl Skala on the City Council and because the coalition's insistence on fairness in paying development costs was just substantiated by retired Missouri University Professor Ben Londeree, whose research shows that the city ''has been giving developers pretty close to a free ride.''
Having ranked Columbia and 26 similar Midwestern cities according to their development fees, Professor Londeree found only three that charge less than Columbia's meager $1,200 per housing unit to help build roads and water and sewer lines, with the median for his target cities at $2,260 and the 2006 average for 271 cities nationwide at $8,868.
With the Columbia City Council's recent unanimous approval of a $300 increase in developer fees over three years, Professor Kennedy observes, the city will move ''all the way up from 24th to 23rd'' on the 27-city list, ''jumping over College Station, Texas, but still well below Fayetteville, Arkansas.''
Still, since professor Londeree refrained from pointing out ''that even the higher fees don't cover the full costs of providing the services nor that infrastructure is only part of the cost of growth,'' Professor Kennedy considers it his journalistic privilege to draw for Missourian readers the inescapable conclusion: ''What the developers don't pay, the rest of us do.'' -- Missourian
10/6/2007
Resource(s): www.columbiamissourian.com/
Infrastructure Costs Could Sway School Board Decision on Location for New Columbia High School
Columbia School Board Weighing Options for New High School Location
Having $60 million in recently-passed bonds and expecting to open a new 600-to-1,800-student high school by 2010, the Columbia School Board should decide next month whether to approve the High School Site Evaluation Committee's selection of an 80-acre site on St. Charles Road, some six miles northeast of the city's core, as the best of the six available -- the owner willing to sell for $900,000 instead of $2 million and the Engineering Surveys & Services (ESS) firm estimating its gas, sewer and other connection costs at $758,000 but declining to provide an estimate for road improvements -- a gap filled on his own by a committee member, former University of Missouri Professor Ben Londeree, who calculated their cost at $23 million.
This cost would be the lowest, except for a 70-acre and less distant $3.5 million site, whose owner-developer proposes to build the roads himself, reports Columbia Tribune writer Janese Heavin, with Committee Chairman Jim Ritter convinced the public would eventually pay much less.
''The roads are the hardest thing to make a judgment on,'' he said prior to site selection. ''Anywhere a school is built, developers are going to be doing some of that work, so there's a lot of shared costs.''
Still, Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe, a Smart Growth Coalition past president, told Columbia Missourian writer Audrey Spalding last month that school road costs are an important factor for the city, especially since the state ''isn't awash in money,'' and her like-minded colleague, Councilman Karl Skala, rebuked the committee at its public site-selection meeting for not asking the city for full infrastructure cost estimates.
As to the school's architectural design, reports Missourian writer Tori Moss, district officials are working with Kansas City-based DLR Group office leader Andy Anderson to make it ''green,'' which will save on materials and energy use and enhance students' learning and retention.
The design may also follow a recent trend to create more personal learning surroundings in which groups of perhaps 180 students of different grades would share the same teachers for core classes.
According to the architect, the writer notes, ''students feel more valued and known'' in such a school within school. -- Columbia Tribune, Missourian
10/5/2007
Resource(s): www.columbiamissourian.com/ ; www.columbiatribune.com/
Court Decision Upholds Interim Zoning Rules for Lewis and Clark County
Confident of their prerogative to rein in and guide the ''free-for-all'' residential expansion across the Helena Valley, Lewis and Clark County commissioners won a legal round against valley landowners Mike Fasbender and John Errin, who planned development and sued the county in December 2006 for its interim zoning rules designed to protect the area from increases in nitrogen and other water contaminants, with District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock finding the enactment proper under state law and not dependent on a 30-day window for public protest.
''To require (officials) to create a protest period would create a ridiculous situation where there would be absolutely no reason to have a specific statutory requirement on emergency interim zoning,'' the judge wrote, setting a jury trial for October 2008.
The commissioners, recalls Helena Independent Record writer Larry Kline, first set permanent zoning rules for the valley in November 2006, voiding them a few weeks later upon notification they had missed a public-notice provision, and approving initial interim zoning, almost immediately challenged by the two plaintiffs in court.
Judge Sherlock throw out that zoning on procedural grounds last March, upholding the next interim zoning, enacted in May for at least a year, with a possible one-year extension.
Officials hail the decision.
''It reaffirms what we're trying to do,'' said County Commission Chairman Mike Murray.
''To me, we shouldn't be having debate over interim zoning,'' stressed County Administrator Ron Alles. ''We should be talking about land use and comprehensive zoning for Lewis and Clark County. -- Independent Record
10/26/2007
Resource(s): www.helenair.com/
Report: Compact Development Critical to Meet Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals
If sprawl continues unchecked and makes more and more people drive farther and sit in traffic longer while the growing demand for compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented development with almost everything within easy walking or biking distance isn't fully met, the toughest tailpipe emission and fuel efficiency standards won't suffice to depress the carbon dioxide (CO2) content in the atmosphere and stabilize the global climate, warns a forthcoming book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, by a team of top land use, transportation, urban design and smart growth experts, their extensive research funded by the U.S. EPA and the Hewlett Foundation.
The researchers, University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Professor Reid Ewing, University of Utah's College of Architecture + Planning Assistant Professor Keith Bartholomew, Center for Clean Air Policy's Transportation Program Director Steve Winkelman, Fehr & Peers Associates principal Jerry Walters and Smart Growth America (SGA) Executive Director Don Chen, along with McCann Consulting principal Barbara McCann and SGA Communication Director David Goldberg, start with the basics.
''Scientific consensus now exists that greenhouse gas accumulations due to human activities are contributing to global warming with potentially catastrophic consequences (IPCC 2007),'' they write. ''International and domestic climate policy discussions have gravitated toward the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees C to 3 degrees C by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. The primary greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, and every gallon of gasoline burned produces about 20 pounds of CO2 emissions.''
Therefore, the U.S. -- the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases that cause global warming -- must ''find a way to sharply reduce the growth in vehicle miles driven across the nation's sprawling urban areas, reversing trends that go back decades,'' to slow the projected climb in its transportation-borne CO2 emissions.
''Curbing emissions from cars depends on a three-legged stool: improved vehicle efficiency, cleaner fuels, and a reduction in driving,'' said Professor Ewing, announcing the book. ''The research shows that one of the best ways to reduce vehicle travel is to build places where people can accomplish more with less driving.''
Such places would reduce driving by 20 to 40 percent and sometimes more, with the researchers certain that a shift of 60 percent of new development from sprawl to compact patterns would cut tailpipe CO2 emissions by 85 million metric tons annually over the next 22 years.
''Clearly, the development industry has a key role in the search for solutions to offset the impact of climate change,'' said Urban Land Institute (ULI) Senior Resident Fellow and former Indianapolis Mayor William H. Hudnut, III.
''Whether close-in or in suburbs, well-planned communities give residents the option to walk, bike or take transit to nearby shopping, retail and entertainment. Being able to spend less time behind the wheel will benefit our health, our pocketbooks and the environment.''
And even if some compact-community residents still choose to take a car, their trips are shorter, the authors point out, noting the advantages of interconnected street networks, of complete streets including safe and convenient sidewalks, bike lanes and transit stops, and of different type of housing on smaller lots, with stores, offices and other structures built ''up'' rather than ''out.''
They cite numerous studies. Among others, a study found that in contrast to highly sprawling Atlanta, with an average of 34 Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) per person each day, the number was below 24 in denser, pedestrian- and transit-oriented Portland, Oregon.
What's more, even in Atlanta, a separate study for redevelopment of its former steel mill site as compact mixed-use Atlantic Station projected driving and tailpipe emissions about 35 percent lower than those recorded at three numerically similar but low-density locations in the suburbs.
A comprehensive study in King County, Washington showed that residents of the most walkable neighborhoods drive 26 percent fewer miles than those in the most sprawling areas.
''A meta-analysis of many of these types of studies,'' the authors write, ''finds that households living in developments with twice the density, diversity of uses, accessible destinations, and interconnected streets when compared to low-density sprawl drive about 33 percent less.''
Consequently, smart growth can be ''an important 'third leg' in the transportation sector's fight against global warming, along with more efficient vehicles and lower-carbon fuels,'' especially since its strategy matches market demand and offers multiple payoffs.
They include preserved farmland and open space, better water quality, more opportunities for physical activity crucial for health and fitness, and public savings on infrastructure and utility extension costs.
''Pursuing smart growth is a low-cost climate change strategy, because it involves shifting investments that have to be made anyway,'' the authors stress, calling for three federal actions.
The government, they write, should require transportation conformity for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with CO2 testing similar to that for other pollutants; follow the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) with ''Green-TEA'' to promote environmental performance, climate protection and green development; and ensure more funds and greater authority for their use directly to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), recognizing that metropolitan areas ''contain more than 80 percent of the nation's population and 85 percent of its economic output.'' -- Smart Growth America
9/20/2007
Resource(s): www.smartgrowthamerica.org/
Nation's School Districts Behind the Curve in School Site Planning
Discredited Acreage Formulas Still Being Used to Create Mega-Schools
The Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) revaluated its school siting recommendations four years ago and joined the EPA's Community, Development and Environment Division (DCED) in promoting construction of small neighborhood schools and rehabilitation of older ones, but many school district and town officials across the country still use discredited acreage formulas and prefer to build costly new mega-schools farther away rather than renovate some that have long doubled as easily accessible sociocultural centers.
Here are four recent examples.
In Iowa, the Fort Madison School District bought a 97.8-acre farmland site barely within city limits but some three miles west of the core, planning to relocate all its schools to the huge site over coming decades.
The district, reports Burlington
Hawk Eye writer Craig T. Neises, wants to start next year with the $19 million construction of a 900-student K-8 building to replace a 1923 elementary and a 1926 middle school, and absorb overflow from two other elementary schools in older neighborhoods -- a project dependent on voter approval of a $16-million bond issue in mid-October and opposed by many who want to save the historic schools.
In Maine, the Brunswick Town Council unanimously decided to demolish a 1937 high school and one of its two 1960 wings, because renovation would cost $14.3 million, and to build an elementary school on the site, while using the other old wing for current basketball programs and a future multigenerational center.
Councilors voiced regret and sense of loss over their decision, but
Portland Press Herald readers questioned these sentiments in their e-mails, noting that residents preferred renovation and that construction is likely to cost two times more, with one reader writing he ''can't wait until the next Town Council elections!!!!!''
In Ohio, the Monroe Local School District's Board of Education hired a design team for a proposed pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade school for 1,200 to 1,400 children, expecting to place a $28-million construction bond issue on the ballot in March.
The board, notes
Middletown Journal reporter Denise Wilson, expects such a mega-school to be sufficient to accommodate the district's long-term population growth.
In Oregon, the Baker School Board will ask voters to approve $21 million in bonds this November to build a large middle school near Baker Sports Complex, more than a mile north of downtown, for students from two central-city buildings, dating back respectively to 1916 and 1934.
School board member Damien Yervasi and City Councilwoman Beverly Calder, writes
Baker City Herald reporter Chris Collins, stressed the importance of the two historic buildings to the community, urging the board to consider their renovation -- as the Oregon School Boards Association recommends in such cases -- and to delay the bond ballot until after next May's election, which would allow for greater public input.
Now many children walk to the school buildings and people watch over them, the councilwoman pointed out, concerned that neither will be possible if the school is moved to empty land at the city's northside. -- Hawk Eye, Portland Press Herald, Middletown Journal, Baker City Herald, Council of Educational Facility Planners International
9/24/2007
Resource(s): http://www.cefpi.org/pubs.html
Why Walking to a Green School Shouldn't Be an Impossible Dream
The nation's educational success depends not just on teaching and testing standards, but also on school location and design, points out Washington Post Writers Group columnist Neal Peirce, troubled by the predominant practice of building distant mega-schools -- inaccessible on foot or bike and not best for children's physical habits or health -- but hopeful that walking to a ''green'' school won't be an ''impossible new-century dream.''
Before and through the 1960s, he observes, half of the children walked or biked to school; now the numbers are 12 and 2 percent, respectively, a regrettable drop caused partly by school consolidation, with site size and parking requirements forcing construction on less costly outer land, and partly by inflated parental fears of exposing children to traffic accidents or even abductions.
Yet both risks are minimal.
Data show, he writes, that 75 percent of school-trip child fatalities and 84 percent of injuries occur in passenger vehicles, while abductions range from 100 to 130 a year nationwide.
A much bigger threat comes from missed exercise in the form of a walk or bike ride to school, with chauffeuring and busing children contributing to their sedentary lifestyle and related afflictions.
These include overweight and obesity, often precursors ''to hypertension, diabetes and heart disease by middle age.''
Glad that the Safe Routes to School program -- begun by Denmark in the 1970s and first adopted here by New York's borough of the Bronx in 1997 -- is increasingly popular, helped by a 2005 congressional appropriation of $612 million and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation multi-state outreach effort, the writer thinks its ''first payoff may be healthier kids'' and better academic scores.
''Exercise is proven to sharpen concentration, memory, learning, creativity, even mood,'' he stresses. ''How better to arrive at school?''
Still, schools should be built or refurbished to the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards to augment walking and biking benefits.
The design, incorporating recyclable and toxic-free materials, should ensure good natural lighting by ''smart solar orientation of the building,'' modern ventilation to meet the children's high respiratory needs, and reduced energy and water use to save on operations and offset the two-percent-higher construction costs.
Despite advances on ''the green school front,'' thousands of school districts still pursue ''old off-the-shelf, lowest-possible cost school designs'' and towns resist spending on sidewalks and trails.
Citing school administrators' scoffing, ''Today's kids want to drive or be driven. You can't change it,'' the writer concludes. ''Well, perhaps we must.'' -- Stateline.org
9/23/2007
Resource(s): www.stateline.org/
Sierra Club Reports Stormwater Runoff Now Greatest Threat to Clean Water
While the 1997 Water Quality Act, the subsequent amendments and related programs reined in the worst industrial contamination of water, they did little to curb sprawl-fed pollution sources, with the Sierra Club pointing out in its Building Better II: A Guide to America's Best New Development Projects -- Clean Water Edition that now the greatest threat comes from ''stormwater runoff washing contaminants into the water from parking lots and roads'' and from ''combined sewer overflows, which occur when stormwater overwhelms the sanitary sewer system.''
A follow-up to the club's 2005 report, the Clean Water Edition calls for ''stronger, more natural, stormwater management methods from public and private sectors alike,'' listing seven innovative stormwater solutions. They include restored and new wetlands, rain gardens and swales, stormwater parks and bio-retention ponds, green roofs, cisterns and rain barrels, cascades, and urban ''greening'' and natural plantings.
To encourage their creation and systematic use, the report spotlights ''ten outstanding examples of environmentally responsible stormwater runoff management projects'' from across the nation.
Spotlighted are: Natural Drainage System Program, Seattle, Washington; Open Charter Magnet Elementary School, Westchester, California; Sisters, Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Motherhouse Renovation, Monroe, Michigan; Menomonee Valley, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Alberici Constructors Headquarters, Overland, Missouri; Mason Park Project, Houston, Texas; Heinz 57 Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; ''Philadelphia Green'' Urban Greening and Stormwater Projects; UNC Expansion, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Urban Roadside Project, Mt. Rainier, Maryland.
Read the report online as a PDF document (28 pages/2.3mb) at the resource link below. -- Sierra Club
10/15/2007
Resource(s): www.sierraclub.org/
Controversy Erupts Over Transportation Secretary's Comments on Bike Paths
Although pedestrians and cyclists make 10 percent of all trips to work, school and stores nationally, and suffer 12 percent of annual traffic fatalities, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters thinks the 1.5 percent of federal transportation dollars invested in walking and biking paths takes too much gas-tax money away from highways and bridges long deteriorating under increasingly heavy auto traffic, reports Salon magazine writer Katherine Mieszkowski, quoting the secretary's recently formed view that bike paths and trails ''are really not transportation.''
Before becoming President Bush's appointee last year, the current secretary praised bikes as transportation at the 2002 National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., the writer recalls, and now many are attributing her change of tone to the administration's campaign against Minnesota Democratic Congressman Jim Oberstar's push for a gas tax increase to repair national infrastructure.
He proposed such an increase in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse last month, with Secretary Petters criticizing that approach shortly later in an appearance on PBS' ''Newshour With Jim Lehrer'' and in a recent Washington Post guest opinion.
In the PBS interview, the secretary launched a general attack on congressional earmarks in the transportation bill, under which 10 percent of the gas tax goes to about 6,000 other local priority projects, including some that make walking and biking easier.
''There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses,'' she marveled. ''Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.''
Bikers and alternative transportation advocates are in arms.
League of American Bicyclists Executive Director Andy Clarke said, ''There are hundreds of thousands of people who ride to work, and millions who walk to work every day, and the idea (that) that isn't transportation is ludicrous.''
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition program director Andy Thornley stressed, ''The guy in his Humvee taking his videos back to the video store isn't any more legitimate a trip than the guy on the Raleigh taking his videos back.''
The area's East Bay Bike Coalition Executive Director Robert Rabun called the secretary's remarks ''outrageous,'' especially in the time of an obesity epidemic, high fuels costs, and efforts to move toward energy independence and check global warming.
What really antagonizes bikers most, the writer observes, is politicizing the issue and blaming them for taking money away from infrastructure needs, while last year state departments of transportation sent back to Washington $1 billion in unspent bridge repair funds.
Congressional Democrats share their views.
''It's a red herring to point to bike paths and even imply that if we didn't build another bike path we'd have all the money we need to fix our highway and bridges,'' said House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Communications Director Jim Berard. ''You can't build very many bridges with the amount of money that you would save if you didn't build any bike paths.'' -- Salon
9/14/2007
Resource(s): www.salon.com/
Cluster Development Necessary to Meet Conservation Goals, Say Authors of Landmark Study
In contrast to residential sprawl, clustering homes has a smaller ecological ''footprint,'' as their disturbance zones overlap and leave much of the whole area unaffected, but ''conservation goals can only be met if policies promote cluster development and simultaneously steer development away form sensitive ecosystems,'' concluded a six-member academic team in a landmark empirical study, ''Patterns of Houses and Habitat Loss from 1937 to 1999 in Northern Wisconsin.''
The team -- Charlotte E. Gonzales Abraham, Volker C. Radeloff, Todd J. Hawbaker and Murray K. Clayton from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Roger B. Hammer form the Oregon State University, Corvallis, and Susan I. Steward from the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station, Evanston, Illinois -- mapped 27,419 houses from older and more recent aerial photos for five periods in 17 northern Wisconsin townships, calculating land left after buffering each house with 100-meter and 500-meter disturbance zones (approximately 330 and 550 feet).
They found a 353 percent housing growth rate from 1937 to 1999, with significant clustering in all five timeframes, but just a 176 and 55 percent habitat loss rate for the 100-meter and 500-meter buffers, respectively, with 95 and 61 percent of their areas unaffected.
''The percentage growth of disturbed land area was much lower than for housing growth,'' observed Volker C. Radeloff in an Ecological Society of America (ESA) press release, ''in the most extreme case, a 1,658 percent increase in the number of houses resulted in only a 204 percent increase in the disturbed land area.''
He noted that habitat loss was lowest in wetlands but reached 60 percent in deciduous forests, and he cautioned against the practice of massive residential clustering within 100 meters of lakes.
''People and wildlife are often drawn to the same places and that exacerbates the environmental effect of houses,'' he stressed. ''Some areas are going to be more important to avoid than others because of their conservation value. High density development in such areas as lakeshores means degrading habitat we prize for its scenic and recreational value.'' -- Ecological Society of America
10/24/2007
Resource(s): www.esajournals.org/ ; www.eurekalert.org/
Goodbye McMansions? Survey Shows Americans Can't Afford Oversize Homes
Cloaked by low interest rates, loose credit and risky mortgages over the past several years, the mounting home affordability crisis has now been exposed by the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey, which shows that the numbers of mortgage holders who spent at least 30 or 50 percent of household incomes on housing went up from 27 to 37 percent and from 10 to 14 percent between 2000 and 2006, respectively, with builders increasingly recognizing the smart-growth truth that to meet the demand for less costly housing and make a fair profit they must offset high land prices by building more smaller and multi-family units.
In fact, reports Wall Street Journal writer Kelly Evans, after the median size of new single-family homes rose from 1,560 square feet in 1974 to 2,248 square feet last year and 2,302 square feet in the first quarter of this year, it slipped back to 2,241 square feet in the second quarter, which industry insiders and experts consider a likely harbinger of a wider trend.
Major companies that have begun to build smaller homes, even in some long-term projects launched on a grand scale and still incomplete, include not only KB Home, Centex Corp., Lennar Corp., and Pulte Homes, but also Toll Brothers Inc., known for its 6,000-square-foot and bigger ''McMansions'' in the suburbs.
''Throughout the U.S. people can't afford what they previously did. Floor plans are going to get smaller,'' predicts Hanley Wood Market Intelligence account executive Kathryn Boyce.
Author Sarah Susanka sees heightened builders' interest in her books about the advantages of ''not-so-big'' houses. ''I used to be asked all the time why would anybody want to downsize?'' she recalls. ''Now it's becoming much more mainstream.''
It can hardly be otherwise, given the enormous disparity between sluggish income growth and the sky-high home price spiral, especially harmful last year, when more than 1.5 million mortgage owners began spending at least 30 percent of their incomes on housing, including 680,000 who must spend at least 50 percent.
Behind the new census figures, point out USA Today writers Noelle Knox and Barbara Hansen, ''lie the daily, difficult choices many families have to make about where they can afford to live, how far they have to commute, how many of their kids' ballgames they will miss and whether to take a second job.''
The lack of affordable housing, they note, fuels sprawl pressures and challenges governments and businesses, affecting their hiring decisions, and local taxes, schools, services, road congestion and the environment, and sending ''a ripple effect thorough the economy.''
The lowest wage earners are hit hardest, with the number of households that make $50,000 or less and spend at least 30 percent of it on housing up from 69 percent in 2005 to 73 percent last year, and with many families forced to move in with relatives or friends, since neither state housing agencies nor city and business assistance programs have enough money for all who desperately need help to afford first homes or decent rentals.
At the same time, the rise in housing expenses among so many mortgage holders who borrowed or refinanced more than their incomes would usually warrant, ''as if the market would never fall,'' notes
New York Times writer John Leland, may trigger another wave of foreclosures.
''The lure was that housing prices would always increase,'' comments Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies Executive Director Eric S. Belsky, saying lenders offered mortgages based on buyers' abilities to pay at the low initial interest rate and borrowers counted on substantial property value gains and expected to refinance accordingly before the rates went up.
''But the more you initially stretched, the more painful any increase becomes, and the less recourse you have to make up the money,'' he observes, ''because there are only so many places to stretch the budget.''
Brookings Institution metropolitan policy scholar Matt Fellowes adds another point.
''Maybe it all means that housing is not as smart an investment for as many people as we thought,'' he says. ''Stocks perform better than houses over time. Maybe the American dream should be building wealth in general, not building a certain type of wealth, which we see is narrow and dangerous. It's not an accident that the states that are leading in foreclosures, including California, Nevada and Florida, are also on the top of the list for the proportion of mortgage borrowers paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing.'' -- Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times
9/12/2007
Resource(s): http://online.wsj.com/home ; www.usatoday.com/
Americans Want More Government Support for Transit, Pedestrian-Friendly Development
Jointly sponsored by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Smart Growth America (SGA), a Public Opinion Strategies telephone poll shows high nationwide support for greater governmental efforts to expand transit, promote pedestrian-friendly development, save open space and check climate change, with just 21 percent of respondents seeing more new roads as the best long-term solution to reducing traffic in their areas, and 75 percent opting either for improved public transportation or walkable neighborhoods where people can drive less -- 49 and 26 percent, respectively.
''Realtors build communities and care about improving our cities and towns through smarter development,'' said NAR President Pat V. Combs. ''With increased traffic congestion and long commutes, Americans are receptive to new ideas for handling growth, such as better transit or mixed-use walkable communities that allow people to cut down on their driving.''
SGA Executive Director Don Chen emphasized the same point.
''With concern about climate change rising along with gas prices, Americans are looking for options that allow them to reduce the time they spend in their cars,'' he pointed out. ''Americans see smarter development patterns as a viable way to achieve that goal, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.''
With a mere 35 and 39 percent of respondents, respectively, considering public transportation and growth management in their communities more or less sufficient, including 6 and 8 percent who call the situation excellent, between 90 and 83 percent approve major actions to reduce energy use as part of a fight against climate change and oil dependency.
Specifically, among the 90 percent who approve regulations for the car industry to make vehicles more fuel efficient, 74 percent voiced their strong approval.
Correspondingly, the total and the strong approval numbers include 88 and 62 percent, respectively, for improved public transportation, including rail and buses; the identical percentages for requirements to make homes and other buildings more energy efficient; and 83 and 49 percent for building walkable communities where people can use their cars less.
In contrast, the idea of higher gas taxes to discourage driving found only 16 percent support, including strong approval from 8 percent of respondents.
At the same time, with 24 percent of respondents believing Congress should spend more to expand and improve roads, highways, freeways and bridges, 40 and 33 percent, respectively, believe Congress should instead increase funding for maintenance and repair, and for expanding and improving bus, rail and other mass transit. -- National Association of Realtors, Smart Growth America
10/25/2007
Resource(s): www.prnewswire.com/ ; www.realtor.org/
USGBC Advised to Make Location Part of LEED Certification to Avoid ''Green Sprawl''
Some planned big-box stores or bank branches may meet the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) eco-friendly standards, win ''green'' certification under its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system and receive related tax breaks, but if they are built in car-dependent strip malls or on urban fringes, writes Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel associate Shari Shapiro, J.D., in a Greener Buildings News column, they are just ''green sprawl,'' an apt term other smart growth advocates consider equally applicable to many new schools.
''Green sprawl,'' Dr Shapiro points out, ''presents several problems: it justifies the continued development on the periphery, perpetuates reliance on overburdened infrastructure and misses the opportunity to build in a sustainable manner.''
To discourage green sprawl, she advises at least two changes. The USGBC should require a sustainable location -- in dense mixed-use surroundings and near transit lines -- to certify a new big-box, bank or any other building as ''green;'' and governments should tie their green incentives to ''an assessment of the site's sustainability and the project's impact on the infrastructure.''
Right now, she observes, the USGBC assigns a project only two out of the possible 69 points for location on a brownfield (SS Credit 3) and in a dense context (SS Credit 2), which is not enough to help reverse the ingrained habit of building away from community centers.
Citing the U.S. Census Bureau estimate of more than $1.17 billion in construction expenses last June, she stresses, ''Each dollar invested in a building located in an unsustainable context is a dollar that could have been used to develop a building on a brownfield site or near public transit.''
As to the often raised question, ''Isn't somewhat green better than not green at all?'' Dr Shapiro is adamant.
''If the ultimate goal is to reduce energy and water usage at the level of individual buildings, then it does not matter what the context looks like,'' she writes. ''But context matters if the goal is to transform the built environment in order to have a dramatic impact on the environment. We should not sacrifice the forest to save a few trees.''
See also http://greenlaw.blogspot.com and www.usgbc.org/LEED. -- Greener Buildings News
9/6/2007
Resource(s): www.greenerbuildings.com/
New Tahoe Development Proposals Under Review by Community Enhancement Program
Mindful of smart growth principles and extensive public input during its work on the 20-year Lake Tahoe Regional Plan update, scheduled for approval October 2008, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) is accepting developer applications under the recently created incentive-based Community Enhancement Program for another four weeks, with TRPA Executive Director John Singlaub expecting their projects to meet environmental criteria and civic needs, encourage ''further upgrades to our community centers, transit connections and neighborhoods,'' and guide local plan updates that will begin in 2009.
The overall goal, he writes in a North Lake Tahoe Bonanza guest opinion, is to make sure that lake communities are ''unique and beautiful,'' while offering mixed uses, affordable housing, walkable town centers and greater access to public transportation.
Noting that the almost 90 percent of buildings built at the lake before TRPA adopted its 1988 plan to curb sprawl and spur urban improvement have few conservation features but plenty of asphalt liable for high runoff and erosion rates, director Singlaub stresses, ''Smart growth is needed in the Tahoe Basin and TRPA is required by law to work toward better transportation with less reliance on the automobile.''
To make it happen, he points out, TRPA may need to revise some of its rules and ordinances, ''such as those limiting density and building height around commercial centers.''
For more information about the comprehensive planning process and the Community Enhancement Program, he invites readers to visit TRPA's web site at www.trpa.org or contact Brenda Hunt at bhunt@trp.org or at (775) 589-5225. -- Bonanza
9/30/2007
Resource(s): www.tahoebonanza.com/
Upper Freehold Mayor Says New Regulations Will Hinder Farmland Preservation Efforts
''It is ironic that while Smart Growth goals are intended to maximize preservation of large tracts of farmland by promoting compact design, recent regulations and guidance have imposed far too much cost uncertainty in the process,'' said Upper Freehold Mayor Stephen Fleischacker, especially concerned that an increased state Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) bank role in buying and selling land credits may frustrate local landowners, who prefer private transactions.
The problem, reports area Examiner writer Jane Meggitt, was signaled two weeks ago by Township Planner Mark Remsa, who advised its board against implementation of a TDR program, complaining that the state now makes Smart Growth efforts ''extraordinarily difficult.''
According to Mayor Fleischacker, the planner referred to the regulations and guidelines recently issued by the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
They include new endorsement procedures for local compliance with the State Development and Redevelopment Plan (SDRP), recently proposed water quality regulations affecting the township's wastewater management plans for new village areas, restrictions on septic discharges and on sending TDR density allowances from noncontiguous land to designated receiving areas.
Although the rural township's master-plan update draft overlooks Smart Growth principles, the writer reports, the mayor isn't concerned, saying ''(t)he larger context is to limit growth in the farming communities and redirect it to cities and older suburban areas.''
He pointed out that the township needs state endorsement for its updated plan, because without such endorsement it can't set up a new wastewater management area, without which ''there cannot be a center-based village.''
On the other hand, he observed, it's ''unlikely landowners would become willing buyers and sellers in the state TDR bank process,'' because they ''shun government intervention in the private sector.''
DCA spokesman Chris Donnelly commended the mayor and the township for pursuing equitable preservation strategies and saving farmland, promising the Office of Smart Growth's full support for their effort ''to manage future growth and to preserve that rural agricultural character however we can.'' -- Examiner
10/25/2007
Resource(s): http://examiner.gmnews.com/
Removing Obstacles to Compact Development Would Help Cut New Jersey's Carbon Emissions
Just released by the New Jersey Sustainable State Institute and Rutgers University at a joint New Brunswick conference, their Energy Sustainability Project research data prove the need for aggressive action to cut state carbon emissions by 13 percent over the next 13 years, with University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Professor Reid Ewing advising federal outlays to help localities overhaul sprawl-era land-use planning and zoning rules that hinder the growing trend toward mixed uses, higher densities and less car dependency.
He pointed out, reports Asbury Park Press writer Kirk Moore, that both car and land use have been three times faster than population growth in recent decades, and that cars and light trucks are now responsible for 45 percent of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide.
''All of that has a lot to do with our land use patterns. We just drive so much farther,'' he observed, noting that it took the nation some 50-60 years ''to get into this mess,'' and that getting out of it may take just as long.
With ever-larger demographic groups preferring urban living and the industry turning to compact development, the professor urged local governments to facilitate rather then obstruct the trend as old housing stock gets replaced, saying, ''we already have enough large-lot, single-family detached housing on the ground, right now, to meet demand in 2025.''
Bloustein Institute's Voorhees Transportation Center Director Dan Chatman said builders ready to pursue compact pedestrian-friendly development are often stymied by lot-size minimums, off-street parking requirements, and frequent neighborhood opposition.
''We're zoning out all kinds of things we ought not to,'' he stressed. ''Maybe the answer is to get out of their (builders') way.'' -- Asbury Park Press
10/30/2007
Resource(s): www.app.com/
Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC Includes Programs to Address Rapid Population Growth, Global Warming
For more than two millennia, civic virtue was symbolized in the classic architecture of the great Greek and Roman public buildings, with the world's largest display of Corinthian columns at the Farley building in New York, but now the virtue paradigm has shifted toward ''a concern for nature'' and ''networks of green,'' points out New York's Department of City Planning Chief Urban Designer Alexandros Washburn in the Metropolis magazine, saluting Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his PlaNYC, a series of 127 programs with ''highly practical steps to improve our city in a period of rapid population growth against a backdrop of global warming.''
President Emeritus of the Moynihan Station Redevelopment Corporation and W Architecture and Landscape Architecture principal, he writes, ''Civic virtue is the cultivation of habits important for the success of community. The ideas Mayor Bloomberg laid out are nothing short of a new compact with nature for the urban dweller, an acknowledgement that the success of our city will in large part be determined by our success in managing our environment.''
Paraphrasing the mayor's Earth Day speech, he explains, ''To be a better city, we must build green, use mass transit, and restore purity to our water and air, with park access for all . . . . It's a marriage of building and landscape that is challenging every notion we have ever had about design . . . City-initiated rezonings center around new public spaces or streetscape improvements and each is crafted in consultation with the community it serves.''
The invention of ''the new urban design language'' may involve a surprisingly low-tech approach or the most advanced science; it may evolve from tradition or take entirely new forms; ''(t)he only certainty is that change is in the air, from planting in our parking lots to rediscovering our waterfronts,'' he concludes. ''We will need every ounce of creative strength to bring our city into a new balance with nature and in so doing, define a new civic measure for architecture.'' -- Metropolis
9/5/2007
Resource(s): www.metropolismag.com/
Trailer Classrooms: Columnist Asks Why We Can't Build Quality Schools for U.S. Students
Are classrooms in trailers the ''best we can do'' for children in this ''richest country in the world,'' asks Charlotte Observer community columnist and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district employee William Blackburn, both saddened and embarrassed by the frequent ''lip service'' to youth's needs and by ''society's unwillingness'' to emphasize the importance of quality buildings for quality education.
''We build new restaurants, new state-of-the-arts arenas, new multi-million-dollar neighborhoods, new office buildings, new mega churches . . . but not enough new schools,'' he writes. ''So 1,600 students walk the halls of a school built for 800. Trailers account for a good portion of the classrooms.''
In Charlotte, he continues, someone has apparently miscalculated its tremendous growth, especially fast in the north, ''and now children across the area sit in trailers while still being urged to be the best they can be'' but deprived of ''the proper classroom environments to do the work'' and pass the tests.
''We applaud and honor celebrities, organizations and corporations for their contributions in other countries, but we're failing to make the grade in our own cities,'' he stresses. ''One trailer is too many, and for a school to have some 30 to 40 trailers is an indictment on our rich society.'' -- Charlotte Observer
9/4/2007
Resource(s): www.charlotte.com/
Charlotte Referendum on Transit Tax Will Define Future of City's Transit-Oriented Development
Well aware of how high-density housing along Charlotte's 9.6-mile South Boulevard light-rail line is reviving this long-ignored corridor even before the trains move late next month, city and Mecklenburg County residents facing a November 6 vote on repeal of their 1998 half-cent transit tax -- based on the 2025 Integrated Transit/Land-Use Plan and crucial for further light-rail, streetcar and bus service expansion -- will basically decide whether the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) should just follow development with buses wherever it goes or continue to steer much of it into another four prospective mixed-use light-rail corridors, helping commuters, shoppers and others reach most destinations without cars.
Charlotte's ''transit-oriented development'' zoning, reports Charlotte Observer writer Steve Harrison, requires developers to build at least 20 housing units per acre within a quarter-mile of a rail station and at least 15 units per acre within a half-mile, with building heights up to 120 feet.
City, CATS and business leaders believe the area's quality of life and sustainability depend on such transit and land-use integration, but transit sales-tax repeal proponents contend that some high-density development along South Boulevard was bound to happen without light rail as similar projects far from the line show, and that it can't be replicated in the other projected transit corridors without massive subsidies, among which they list the $462.7 million line construction costs and $70 million put into improvement of nearby streets.
Appearing last month at a Charlotte debate on the transit tax, Los Angeles-based libertarian Reason Institute urban and land-use policy director Sam Staley called the transit role in spurring development overstated nationwide and attributed most of the South Boulevard projects to the city's housing deficit and its high-density zoning for the corridor, where property values have gone up by 52 percent since 2000, a full 12 percent more than in the city as a whole.
At the same time, County Commissioner Dan Bishop told his colleagues that he sees CATS's land-use involvement as a sign of government willingness ''to control how you live.''
Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory dismissed the notion.
''We aren't going to force people to live in high densities,'' he stressed, ''that's one of the most inaccurate statements I've heard.''
Local developer Steven Harris, whose two large projects at the line's last station and the third from the end account for $650 million of the $1.6 billion in new proposals, was clear about what's behind the rush.
''Without light rail, none of this stuff would have happened for years,'' he pointed out, while developer Monte Ritchey said he primarily focused on an urban location for his Lowe store and 69 housing units under construction on South Boulevard, but the proximity of two light-rail stations has made the units easier to sell. -- Charlotte Observer
10/7/2007
Resource(s): www.charlotte.com/
Editorial: Charlotte's Transit Tax Foes On the Wrong Track
''If you think the November 6 vote on repeal of Mecklenburg's transit tax is just about light rail, think again. It's also a clash of philosophies about government,'' writes Charlotte Observer editorial pages editor Ed Williams, confident that those seeking to kill the half-cent transit tax will lose, because ''their philosophy is not the one that has made the Charlotte region grow and prosper'' and because they ignore Smart Growth populist roots and see it as governmental coercion.
In contrast to ''keep-the-tax'' advocates, who want their government to ''use the powers granted by state law to try to build an urban region that works well,'' the editor points out, transit tax foes think ''light rail is folly; government is too big, even oppressive; taxes are unacceptably high; government planning is improper meddling with property rights.'' All these views are championed by the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation and its key founder Art Pope, a wealthy Republican lieutenant-governor aspirant in 1992 and two-term state House member until 2002, whose family's retail company owns almost 600 discount stores nationwide.
His foundation is leading and financing the campaign to repeal the transit tax, the editor writes, quoting two related paragraphs from its 2006 policy agenda.
They read: ''Building rail systems in Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad is not likely to have the promised results. As projects in other states show, mass transit is almost invariably a wasteful attempt to entice or coerce commuters out of their personal vehicles and into buses and trains. The percentage of commuters willing to use buses or trains is far below 10 percent, and is likely to stay that way regardless of expenditures on transit -- unless, of course, transit advocates are successful in using Smart Growth policies to force families to live in densely packed neighborhoods.''
When Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Planning Director Debra Campbell told the Governing magazine earlier this year that the region ''saw transit as a means, not an end'' and that the ''real impetus for transit was how it could help us grow in a way that was smart,'' transit foes cried foul, while the editor appreciated the statement.
''A belt road around Charlotte promotes a suburban population boom. A light-rail line along South Boulevard encourages residential development by providing people a way to get uptown and back without driving a car at rush hour,'' he stresses. ''To me, it's smart to consider how such decisions affect the goal of having a livable urban region.'' -- Charlotte Observer
10/14/2007
Resource(s): www.charlotte.com/
Franklin Town Board Set to Enact Comprehensive Growth Guidelines
In the first but giant step from its 1950s era almost-anything-goes development toward public-input-based smart growth, the Franklin Town Board is about to pass a comprehensive set of guidelines for commercial construction and expansion downtown and in ''mixed-use neighborhood districts,'' with big-box stores of over 30,000 square feet and strip malls having to seek special use permits and town leaders able to impose any restrictions or requirements necessary to make the projects match area character.
''We have what every developer is foaming at the mouth to get a hold of,'' said Alderman Bob Scott about his town amid picturesque mountains and forests. ''If a town board does not say, 'This is the way we want you to go,' they are going to do whatever they darn well please.''
He would prefer to start with more stringent requirements, also applicable to smaller businesses such as fast food restaurants, including their appearance, reports Waynesville Smoky Mountain News writer Becky Johnson, but agrees with Alderman Verlin Curtis and town planner Mike Grubberman on the need to control big projects now, confident that others will see similar regulations later.
''The little hairdresser does not have as large an impact as Wal-Mart or a guy who is building a strip mall,'' planner Grubberman observed, emphasizing the importance of the special permit process and developer response to concerns from neighbors within a site's 400-foot radius.
''The developer has to come to that meeting or the project doesn't move one inch beyond that.''
Under the incoming ordinance, the writer notes, every commercial development in currently targeted areas must include sidewalks, leave 10 percent of land as open space, and hide dumpsters.
New commercial buildings downtown must meet architectural and aesthetic standards, be aligned with adjacent structures, and enhance streets with rows of trees.
The requirements ''can be summed up in one word: 'streetscape,''' the planner pointed out. ''You want to have a look that everything is close and walkable, everything is kind of cohesive.''
With small commercial projects for mixed-use neighborhood districts having to stay on the edges of residential areas and blend in architecturally, he stressed, ''If someone wants to come into a neighborhood mixed-use district, they have to fit the neighborhood and not just be this sore thumb sticking out.''
See the ordinance and a zoning map at www.franklinnc.com/ordinances.html. -- Smoky Mountain News
9/26/2007
Resource(s): www.smokymountainnews.com/
Charlotte's Impressive Transit Growth Demonstrates Importance of Services to Region, APTA President Says
Charlotte transit ridership and the area's express bus service have grown by 67 and 300 percent respectively since 1998, stressed American Public Transportation Association (APTA) President William M. Millar before its 2007 Annual Meeting in the city October 7-10, saying these numbers demonstrate the importance of transit for this metro area, whose residents ''need it, want it, and use it.''
The conference's program covers such subjects as ''green'' public transit systems; transit security and disaster risk management; technological advances, including emerging software technologies; recruitment and retention of the Generation X, Y, and Millennium workers; and pursuit of new energy efficiency and land use goals.
Specifically, the program includes three key presentations and sessions -- ''Public Transportation's Future -- an Economic and Political View,'' ''Sustainable Policies, Practices, and Standards for Transit,'' and ''Linking Smart Growth, Transit-Oriented Development, and Placemaking.''
Details at www.apta.com.
9/24/2007
Resource(s): www.expertclick.com/
Greater Ohio Readies 2007 Candidate Briefing Book for Quality Growth
Last year, the Columbus-based Greater Ohio nonpartisan advocacy group's Candidate Briefing Book helped contenders for state offices and legislative seats tune into public hopes for smart land use, farmland protection, urban reinvestment and transportation options; this year, the Local Candidate's Briefing Book aims to do the same on the mayoral and council levels, said Greater Ohio Co-Director Gene Krebs stressing, ''The smart city concepts outlined in this briefing book include changes the voters are looking for and communities need -- changes that will bring the quality growth and development Ohio's cities and towns need to become great again.''
With the state's recent 49th rank in economic momentum and grade C in quality of life, the book makes it clear that these and related setbacks stem from wasteful land use patterns and that the remedy is smart growth.
''As metropolitan regions spread out, the new development at the edges requires new infrastructure that imposes costs on taxpayers and on local governments (especially burdensome if the region as a whole isn't growing much). Meanwhile, older infrastructure must be maintained. Older communities -- with their beautiful brick roadways, historic buildings, and walkable neighborhoods -- decline,'' the book points out. ''Smart growth is an alternative to urban sprawl, traffic congestion, urban decay and disconnected neighborhoods.''
Designed to match ''Ohio's traditions of local control and property rights,'' Greater Ohio's policy recommendations address those problems.
''For instance,'' the book reads, ''We need to construct walkable communities where people spend their money close to where they live, so that their communities' services benefit from the taxes paid. When people walk to local retail shops, they also limit gasoline consumption and enjoy the benefits of physical exertion. And the regeneration of cities and towns then helps preserve farmland, which provides substantial economic value for food and energy production.''
Noting that the book explains and documents the urgency of community reinvestment, tax reform and Main Street restoration as crucial to attract young, creative, educated workers, and to spur economic growth, Director Krebs invites local candidates and their staff to contact Greater Ohio at the resource link below for additional details or to obtain a copy online. -- Greater Ohio
10.02.2007
10/2/2007
Resource(s): www.greaterohio.org
Portland in Center of Political Battlefield Following Request for Streetcar Funds from Federal Small Starts Program
They have recently committed $27 million toward a $147 million west-east extension of Portland's streetcar line and filed a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) application for its $75 million share -- the other local funds to be raised later -- but now city and TriMet leaders find this first-ever municipal request for streetcar construction money from the agency's Small Starts program in the center of ''a political battlefield,'' reports Oregonian writer Dylan Rivera, with think tanks, congressional Democrats and the White House ''fighting over whether the federal government should help cities use streetcars to promote urban revitalization, or simply fund buses that move the most people over the greatest distances for the least amount of upfront money.''
Oregon Democratic Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio, the former instrumental in designing the Community Streetcar Development and Revitalization Act in 2002, stress that FTA officials ignored the law's intent and overstepped their authority by drafting implementation rules favoring rapid buses, whose routes can easily change and do little to attract private investments in transit-oriented development. The law, the writer notes, requires projects to enhance public transportation, be cost-effective, and boost economic development; the FTA makes cost-effectiveness the key test for project funding.
''There's a contest going on here about the future role of the federal government in transit development in cities around the country,'' observes Portland Streetcar Inc. Executive Director Rick Gustafson, he and others aware that the federal bias has discouraged many cities from seeking Small Starts funds for streetcars.
Pointing to the Westside streetcar role in spurring dense mixed-use redevelopment downtown, in the Pearl and River districts, and at South Waterfront, Representative Blumenauer says he wanted to put the relatively small-scale streetcar projects on a faster funding track than large light-rail proposals, which usually face years of federal scrutiny.
According to TriMet and consultant estimates, the writer adds, an Eastside streetcar would make developers increase the planned number of area housing units from 1,105 to 4,537, with the envisioned construction on 29 acres along the route saving 257 acres of farmland and future residents able to cut their driving to an average of 9.8 miles a day, in contrast to 21.8 miles driven in Portland's suburbs. -- Oregonian
9/25/2007
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/
Funding in Support of Oregon's Measure 49 Coming Largely from In-State Contributors
Since Oregon voters passed property-rights Measure 37 in November 2004, eager applicants have filed 7,500 claims for public compensation of their land value losses or for rule waivers to build homes, subdivisions, malls and commercial or industrial projects on a total of 750,000 acres in development-restricted rural and forest areas, a retroactive process whose continuation would erode the state's growth management and its green ''look and feel,'' with an unusual number of local residents, businesses and advocacy groups committing their money to remedial Measure 49 on a state ballot next month.
Measure 49, report Oregonian writers Eric Mortenson and Dave Hogan, would entitle claimants to fast-track construction of one to three homes or between four and ten in cases of a proven property value loss, while banning commercial and industrial development.
The Yes on 49 campaign has raised $2.7 million and spent almost $1.5 million so far, while the opposing Oregonians in Action group, successful with its Measure 37 three years ago, has now gotten about $340,000 and spent $133,000.
The top Yes on 49 contributor, Carlton area winemaker Eric Lemelson, gave $725,000 and another $101,000 from his mother's trust, worried not only that prospective development near his vineyards threatens his ability to farm and his access to groundwater, but also that the state's future is at risk.
''I think the impacts of Measure 37, if it's not amended, will be disastrous, long-term, for Oregon,'' he told the writers. ''Filling up the Willamette Valley with subdivisions all over the place, even over 15 or 20 years, I think, is nuts.''
Similarly motivated former Portland businessmen Edmund ''Ned'' Hayes Jr. and John D. Gray donated $100,000 each, while the Nature Conservancy, its local chapter standing for some 25,000 households, invested $769,000.
''We truly feel we're at a crossroads in Oregon,'' stressed chapter director Russell Hoeflich. ''Can we protect our land and water resources that represent our future? The integrity of the state is really at stake.''
Measure 49 foes dramatize a potential property-rights setback, and its impact on business operations, prices and jobs, without matching the other side's contributions.
''This is about timber for us; it's about keeping our doors open,'' said Seneca Jones Timber senior vice president of legal affairs Dale Riddle, whose company gave Oregonians in Action $50,000.
The milling Swanson Group put in the same amount, its president and CEO Steve Swanson saying, ''When you take away our assets, it takes away our ability to make a profit. It will affect everybody over time, as the employment base shrinks as a result of Measure 49.''
The A-dec dental equipment company contributed another $50,000 and RSG Forest Products added $25,000.
Observers agree that the massive local donations for Yes on 49 signal its advantage in the upcoming referendum.
''I think Oregonian voters differentiate based on whether something is funded out of state or not,'' said the national Common Cause watchdog group's state board chairman David Buchanan. ''If our local people are paying for advertising, that's our business. If it's from out of the state, then there's resentment.'' -- Oregonian
10/1/2007
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/
National Vacant Properties Campaign Holds First Annual Conference
''Vacant properties are really a big problem in older cities and we look upon them, often, as a major resource for revitalization,'' commented Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. about the first annual conference by Washington-based National Vacant Properties Campaign (NVPC) in his city, he and other redevelopment advocates confident Pittsburgh can successfully follow the best reclamation practices nationwide, with Smart Growth America (SGA) Executive Director Don Chen hailing Mayor Luke Ravensthal's buyback of more than 11,000 tax liens as a great initial step.
Actually, the choice of Pittsburgh to host the conference was partly based on its top livability rank among 379 metro areas surveyed for the 2007 edition of the authoritative Places Rated Almanac, published by former Times, Inc subsidiary official David Savageau since 1981, noted NVPC Director Jennifer Leonard.
''It's a good showplace for cities similar to it,'' she said. ''It's a city with problems. But it's also a city looking for solutions.''
The name tags of 620 government leaders and development officials at the conference, reports Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writer Justin Vellucci, ''read like a who's who of America's post-industrial Rust Belt,'' its cities -- Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and smaller like Youngstown, Ohio -- dealing with blighted housing, population loss and neighborhood disinvestment.
Among the cities from which Pittsburgh should learn, SGA Director Chen, Virginia Tech Professor Joseph Schilling and others mentioned Philadelphia; Youngstown, Ohio; and Richmond, Virginia.
Philadelphia, the writer notes, helped communities and preserved local infrastructure thanks to its Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.
Youngstown redeveloped or turned many abandoned properties into public green space through its innovative Youngstown 2010 plan.
And Richmond spurred revival of six targeted communities with its Neighborhoods In Bloom program. -- Places Rated Almanac, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
9/25/2007
Resource(s): www.pittsburghlive.com/ ; www.post-gazette.com/
Smart Growth Partnership Offers Free Five-Day Charette in Westmoreland County
''People can be trusted to create good design for their community if you give them the tools and facts,'' said Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County (SGPWC) Executive Director Alex Graziani, inviting area residents to the group's free five-day charrette, October 22-26 at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, on design of a 30-acre site off Routes 30 and 981 near Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, and hoping the event will become a model for public participation in local development planning along the county's whole 40-mile Route 30 corridor.
''There's an opportunity for creative mixed-use -- maybe a town center concept,'' he told Pop City online writer Jennifer Baron. ''With plazas on both sides, it creates connectivity and could keep people from having to get on and off Route 30.''
Expecting future charrettes to include a stronger video component, with SGPWC putting interactive video and an blog features on its web site, Director Graziani pointed out than many public agencies ''are not willing to be transparent,'' but that ''quality of place'' matters and place-based planning is more and more important. -- Pop City, Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County
10/17/2007
Resource(s): www.popcitymedia.com/ ; www.smartgrowthpa.org/
Pocono Counties Planning Together for Smart Growth
After Pocono Mountains skiing attracted a 1960s' wave of transplants from the New York metro region to Pike and Monroe counties, municipal officials no more aware of the need to plan development and work regionally than many others elsewhere thought it best to ban local mixed-use zoning, but as traffic worsened and the steady influx escalated in a search for cheaper housing or post-9/11 stress relief, they learned their lesson and moved to correct the past mistake, reports Shamrock Times writer Daniel Axelrod, ''by setting aside conservation funds, changing zoning laws to prevent sprawl and planning together for even more growth'' -- this time for smart growth.
''This recent population boom we've been experiencing after 9/11 really got people's attention,'' said Pike County's Conservation District Manager Susan Beecher. ''We've been growing for a while, but we didn't really have the growth to see it become alarming until then.''
Vacationers and tourists add to the challenge.
''The people who live here,'' added Milford Columns Museum Director Lori Strelecki, ''don't even leave their houses, because you can't even go to the store on the weekend.''
Using its 2005 voter-approved bonds, the writer observes, Pike County earmarked $10 million for targeted acquisition of open space and development rights, while Monroe County has already saved almost 10,000 acres thanks to $25 million in its 1998 bonds.
At the same time, increased county planning staffs are helping municipalities modernize zoning, tighten conservation laws and create detailed growth-management plans, all to promote greater densities, smaller cluster lots, and housing near jobs and businesses to ease commuter and other traffic.
''People don't move here because a builder will build them a house,'' pointed out Pocono Builders Association President Bob Brown. ''They come here because it's great way of life. And if we are smart, and we manage the growth properly, the Poconos are going to continue to have a lot to offer.''
County and local officials think they are finally going in the right direction, and area Democratic Congressman Paul Kanjorski expects them to continue that way.
''If they throw their hands up in the air and allow opportunistic growth,'' he said, ''good God, the Poconos could turn out to look like New Jersey.'' -- Times
10/9/2007
Resource(s): www.republicanherald.com/
Memphis Transit Condenses Plans for Light Rail System to Eight-Mile Starter Line
In the decade since the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) completed a study on a proposed regional light-rail system for the city and its three main suburban corridors, the plan has been condensed to an eight-mile starter line between downtown and Memphis International Airport, said MATA assistant general manager of planning and Smart Growth advocate Thomas D. Fox, expecting the prospective $400 million line to spur transit-oriented development near stations, and to be extended some day from downtown some 13 miles southeast to Germantown and another 10 miles to Collierville.
As an example of light-rail potential for investments, he cited Charlotte, North Carolina, where officials are seeing ''billions of dollars of development already around station locations, before they even open'' their first light-rail line late next month.
Presently, reports Memphis Commercial Appeal writer Kevin McKenzie, the city and MATA operate a bus system at a cost of about $49 million a year.
Its most popular route, between downtown and Germantown, counts 3,000 passengers a day, mostly Memphis residents with service jobs in Germantown, which would ensure at least the same ridership for the corridor's light rail.
But Germantown Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy worries about obstacles, the biggest of which is Norfolk Southern railroad's lack of interest in sharing its right-of-way, the best path for a light-rail line to the eastern suburbs.
Therefore, ''Smart Growth's first transportation step in Germantown'' will be making its core more pedestrian-friendly, the writer observes, quoting the mayor, who said, ''Right now, walking is not doable.'' -- Commercial Appeal
10/21/2007
Resource(s): www.commercialappeal.com/
Design Competition Launched for Memphis' Shelby Farms Urban Park
A working penal and rehabilitation farm until the 1960s, subsequently chosen by the Shelby County Commission for future public recreational use, the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms site some 10 miles east of Memphis will soon reassert its status as one of the nation's premier urban parks, with the nonprofit Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, which manages 2,900 acres of the site, inviting local, national and international architectural and planning firms to seek a $450,000 contract for a park improvement master plan.
The response deadline, writes Conservancy spokeswoman Pamela Perkins in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, is October 10, with three top firms selected by November 12 to enter an ''Innovative Design Competition,'' and their plans exhibited between March 6 and 26 at the city's central library.
With the advice of nationally-known urban planner Alex Garvin, and based on extensive public input, the winning plan will be announced April 9.
County Mayor A C Wharton and the County Commission are expected to have the plan ready for approval about two months later.
Conservancy Chairman Calvin Anderson said officials and residents ''are looking for creative, sensitive designs'' and a master plan ensuring a sense of community, financial sustainability and environmental sensibility.
More about Shelby Farms, the conservancy and the park master plan competition at www.shelbycountytn.gov and www.sfparkalliance.org. -- Commercial Appeal
9/6/2007
Resource(s): www.commercialappeal.com/
Germantown Residents Disappointed With Mixed-Use Plan for Wooded Neighborhood Tract
Like most others in Germantown, about 13 miles southeast of downtown Memphis, Neshoba North neighborhood residents favor the overall Smart Growth rezoning plan just approved by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for the city's 380-acre central business district, but they wanted it to exempt the 14-acre undeveloped Owen Tract -- with old woods and occasional wildlife -- amid their single-family homes just north of City Hall, fearing the prospective effect of dense mixed use development on area character, local traffic, and the safety of children walking and biking to school.
Under the plan, reports Memphis Commercial Appeal writer Kevin McKenzie, the Smart Growth district will feature six-story buildings, stores and offices topped by lofts, a health-care facility, townhouses and pedestrian-friendly streets, most of which Neshoba homeowners see as improper for their neighborhood.
''Unfortunately, the impact of one small portion of this plan on our quiet, stable, single-family residential neighborhood will be anything but smart,'' they wrote in a letter distributed a week earlier, some 200 of them packing a standing-room-only board meeting and expecting reconsideration, but leaving disappointed and criticizing Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy and the aldermen for invoking procedural rules against public comments just before their third and final vote on any subject.
''I think our Board of Mayor and Aldermen have forgotten that they are elected officials,'' said Neshoba resident, history professor Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, who hoped for an art gallery or museum on the Owen Tract.
Mayor Goldsworthy, the writer notes, has previously pointed out that officials had made special efforts and instituted ''a rather lengthy and orderly process'' to gather and incorporate public input in the Smart Growth plan over the past 14 months, and that residents concerned about traffic and other issues will have many opportunities to seek solutions when the Planning Commission reviews specific development projects.
Aldermen Carole Hinley and Mike Palazzolo repeated that assurance at the latest meeting, the latter saying developers may submit three or four Smart Growth district projects in the next few months and neighbors should remain involved in refining these plans. -- Commercial Appeal
10/19/2007
Resource(s): www.commercialappeal.com/
Criticism Over Condo Tower Puts Spotlight on Houston's Lenient Land-Use Rules
At over 2.1 million, the nation's fourth most-populous city, and the only major one with land-use deed restrictions in a third of its neighborhoods instead of citywide zoning, Houston is often at the mercy of developers who leave unwanted projects in residential areas, including ''(r)owdy cantinas, rock-crushing operations and commercial dumps,'' observes Wall Street Journal writer Kris Hudson, reporting that now even a 23-story condo tower planned ''among the million-dollar homes of two stately neighborhoods'' has ''appalled affluent residents and put local politicians in the hot seat.''
Mayor Bill White told the writer he will do anything he can to scale down or cancel the tower project and to control development elsewhere, short of a push for zoning.
''Not on my watch,'' said the mayor, in a business, real estate and law practice before his election in 2003. ''I do think, as we are in a strong economy and we live closer and closer together, there will be both new development and more rules to protect our common interests. But we will respect consumer choice and not have some bureaucrat in City Hall become the taste patrol for the city.''
Indeed, the writer notes, citywide zoning ideas had little public support, with voters blocking such proposals in 1948, 1962 and 1993. Instead, Mayor White is proposing an ordinance that would enable the city to reject projects that could overburden local roads, but its applicability to the condo tower planned for the Southampton and Boulevard Oaks neighborhoods remains in question.
The developers, Buckhead Investment Partners President Matthew Morgan and CEO Kevin Kurtin, area natives and childhood friends, are resisting city efforts to pare the project down.
Having already paid impact fees, financed $500,000 in sewer upgrades and concluded in an initial study that traffic increases would be negligible, they are planning 187 condos or 236 apartments, a restaurant, a boutique grocery store and 450 parking spaces on their 1.7-acre site of 67 old apartments, with Matthew Morgan saying, ''Doing anything less dense is not economically feasible.'' -- Wall Street Journal
10/17/2007
Resource(s): http://online.wsj.com/home
High-Rise Urban Living Comes to Texas
''People are tired of the big house, they're tired of the big yard, and there's a real movement to simplify your lifestyle as children leave,'' says Hillwood development company chairman Ross Perot Jr., the son of an independent billionaire contender in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections and the leader of a $3 billion-plus effort to create a high-density downtown between the Dallas Convention Center and the former industrial wasteland around the American Airlines arena a mile-and-half away, where he is building his 275-acre Victory Park, with luxury hotels, and condo and office high-rises.
''You can move into a beautiful downtown home, walk to a basketball game, walk to restaurants. There is something unique in the downtown fabric that you couldn't get in the suburbs,'' he tells USA Today writer Haya El Nasser, stressing, ''Our offices want this kind of neighborhood. It's good for recruiting.''
Although the attitude reflects a trend on the rise nationwide, the writer finds it particularly indicative for Texas, a state where space ''often seems infinite'' and ''living large -- and spread out -- hasn't been just a choice but almost a birthright.''
Now, with a population of 23.5 million so far, the state has advanced to the forefront ''of a movement reshaping downtowns'' across the nation, thanks to developers like Perot in Dallas and others with similar dense mixed-use projects in Austin, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
The pressures for these land use changes were varied and unavoidable, the writer observes, summing them up.
''Gas prices soared. Traffic congestion choked highways. Air quality worsened and so did pressure from environmental regulators. Light-rail lines came online. And demographics shifted: as baby boomers became empty nesters, their desire for convenience and fun suddenly merged with those of young professionals. Both groups are flocking to urban settings.''
Encouraged by developer interest in mixed-use construction along the 45-mile Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light-rail line to Plano in the north and Garland in the northeast, with work under way to almost double the system's reach by 2013, the city adopted its first long-term growth plan -- Forward Dallas -- last year, aiming for transit-oriented development and high urban density.
Still, the writer notes, even if northern cities inspire much of the Dallas high-rise boom, they don't get the credit.
''In secret, we look at what they do,'' explains the city's long-range planning assistant director Peer Chacko. ''But we try to avoid pointing to them too much as an example. It doesn't sell very well to the public. If we say New York or Chicago, they say, 'We're Dallas.' There's a very strong level of pride.'' -- USA Today
10/3/2007
Resource(s): www.usatoday.com/
Houston Announces Plans to Build Five Light-Rail Lines by 2012
In a reversal of its 2005 intent to open four of Houston's next five transit routes with less costly rapid buses and switch to light-rail once high ridership convinces the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to pay half of the system's $1.3 billion construction costs, reports Houston Chronicle writer Rad Sallee, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) voted to build all the light-rail lines together -- not only for the University of Houston, but also for the North, East End, Southeast and Uptown -- expecting their completion by late 2012.
It will cost less to build light rail from the start than to begin with rapid buses and convert the routes to light rail later, said Metro President and CEO Frank Wilson, glad that FTA recognized the argument and agreed to evaluate the five planned lines as part of an integrated transit system instead of separately.
This will boost the four lines' cost-benefit ratio, especially with simultaneous Metro board approval of the route for the university line, the fifth and most advanced in planning, which will become a 10-mile east-west supplement to the existing 7.5-mile Main Street line.
Board Chairman David Wolff also stressed the advantages of pursuing light rail at the same time in all five corridors, pointing out that they will overlap on several segments.
For example, he said, university line passengers going west will be able to go directly to Galleria, since some of the trains will run on the Uptown line tracks on Post Oak. -- Houston Chronicle
10/19/2007
Resource(s): www.chron.com/
Developer Believes Smart Growth Is Good Policy for Corpus Christi
''There are places where good policy and good economics cross, and I think smart growth is one of them,'' said the grassroots Bay Area Smart Growth Initiative (BASG) group's new member, developer Bart Braselton, whose 300-acre Ranch Vista subdivision in an early phase of construction some 10 miles south of Corpus Christi's core may sometimes induce images of leap-frogging sprawl, but who asks purists to consider its important smart-growth features such as a walkable commercial center, a central park with a playground, and three-tier home prices, in the $140,000, $250,000 and $400,000 ranges.
He also points out, reports Corpus Christi Caller-Times writer Dan Kelly, that the subdivision was planned before sprawl and smart growth became hot issues in the area, that his partners have already owned the outer tract, and that the firm-funded sewer extension opens all the land between Rancho Vista and the denser neighborhoods in the city's south to development.
In addition, he notes that some Corpus Christi ordinances conflict with smart growth, a situation the BASG group wants to remedy to make higher-density and pedestrian-friendly projects easier.
''The way the ordinances are set up, you don't get walking paths and parks,'' he told the writer. ''That park (in Rancho Vista) took an act of God to get done.''
City Councilman Mike Hummel, the writer observes, sees Rancho Vista as a step in the right direction, especially impressed with the extent of its green space.
Corpus Christi newcomer Jeff Pollack, who is starting an environmental consulting firm, says sprawl can be battled on many fronts.
''There are tremendous opportunities for infill development in this community,'' he stressed. ''But if we are going to do green-field development, we want to see master-planned communities with multiple price points and mixed-use suburban centers where people can walk to get the basics.'' -- Caller-Times
10/14/2007
Resource(s): www.caller.com/
Legacy Parkway's Proximity to Schools Called ''Fatal Flaw''
Having won a long legal challenge and eventually obtained a Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) compromise on a better environmental design for the first stretch of Legacy Parkway from Farmington in southern Davis County to Salt Lake City two years ago, state growth-management advocates may now have to go to court over UDOT's preferred route for the parkway's west-side Mountain View Corridor segment, which would have 21 Salt Lake County public schools within its half-mile range, with their students and staff exposed to heavy tailpipe emissions and related health threats.
Sierra Club state spokesman Marc Heilson called the route's proximity to the schools a ''fatal flaw'' of the west-side segment of the parkway, planned in advance of another 500,000 residents in the area by 2030.
According to the just-issued Mountain View Corridor environmental impact study, which also mentions the lack of transit and the need for more pedestrian and bicycle trails, reports Salt Lake Tribune writer Patty Henetz, the new highway is a must, because without it congestion in western Salt Lake County and northwestern Utah County would rise by 791 percent, costing residents and the economy $1.1 million a day and causing more road accidents.
The study details the prospective emissions from the highway, but claims ''concentrations or exposures created by each of the project alternatives cannot be predicted with enough accuracy to be useful in estimating health impact.''
In contrast, Utah Moms for Clean Air (UMCA) co-founder Cherise Udell considers the preferred route a ''cancer'' corridor.
''If you know ahead of time that 'X' number of people statistically will die or be disabled in some way because of these (tailpipe) pollutants, then it is human sacrifice and we have to see it that way,'' she stressed. ''If that's morally unacceptable, we have to do something about it.'' -- Salt Lake Tribune
10/18/2007
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Williston Growth Center First to Gain Approval by Vermont Downtown Redevelopment Board
Having six months ago decided to designate 700 acres around Taft Corners as a growth center, initially with 356 townhouses and 20 acres of retail space, a proposal just endorsed by the Vermont Downtown Redevelopment Board, Williston officials became the first to take advantage of a 2005 state program's economic incentives for construction in or near urban areas, reports Burlington Free Press writer Nick Martin, noting that the program requires municipalities to fit 50 percent of development over the next 20 years into such growth centers, which must abut already developed land.
''This is an example of how Vermont can support commercial and residential development in areas that everyone can agree are appropriate,'' said Republican Governor Jim Douglas. ''At the same time, growth centers like this will be reducing development pressures on important natural resources outside the designated areas.''
The growth-center concept has been debated for more than 10 years, noted Smart Growth Vermont Executive Director Noelle MacKay, pointing to the state's tradition of downtowns and villages, and their appeal to Vermonters and vacationers alike.
''Historically we have put money into developing downtown areas,'' she said, stressing that state investments in designated centers will ''encourage growth in and around our downtown areas, so in 20 years we still have a community that looks like Vermont.''
The program, the writer observes, offers towns state funds for infrastructure and entitles center developers to lower fees than they normally pay to offset their projects' impact on rural land.
Among other towns working on growth center plans, he adds, are Bennington and Colchester. -- Burlington Free Press
10/30/2007
Resource(s): www.burlingtonfreepress.com/
Smart Growth Vermont Debuts New Name, Launches Strategy to Create Innovative Land Use Solutions
The success of its primary initial mission to raise public awareness of the costs and side effects of sprawl evidenced by a recent poll showing that 73 percent of respondents see the problem, the Vermont Forum on Sprawl, funded in 1998, changed its name to Smart Growth Vermont in line with a newly-launched three-year strategy for state and community-level work to bring together diverse interests, seek common ground and create innovative land use solutions.
''Whether we're talking about attracting business and jobs to our downtowns, taking action to reduce the threat of climate change or providing housing opportunities for all Vermonters, how we use our land is a key factor in addressing these challenges,'' says Executive Director Noelle MacKay on her group's new Web site. ''Smart growth provides a vision, framework and tools for creating land use policies that respect our unique landscape.''
Formally announced at the presentation of the 2007 Smart Growth Awards, reports Burlington Free Press writer Candace Page, the new name should also help eliminate the occasional mistaking of efforts to contain sprawl as an attempt to stop all development.
On the contrary, Director MacKay said in an interview, ''We are about enhancing what we have here in Vermont -- compact centers and a rural landscape that draws people, keeps them here and sells our products worldwide.''
Current Smart Growth Vermont's projects, the writer notes, include assisting Bristol with its master plan, helping Cornwall create village center regulations, and guiding Waitsfield in its application for a state growth center designation.
Details on its 2007 Smart Growth Award winners at http://www.smartgrowthvermont.org/news. -- Burlington Free Press
9/14/2007
Resource(s): www.burlingtonfreepress.com/
Camden County Officials Will Use Smart Growth Scoring System to Evaluate New Subdivision Plans
Since Camden County commissioners lifted a 3.5-year subdivision moratorium in April, developers have submitted plans for five subdivisions totaling 2,575 housing units, but county planners are ready to check the onrush through a newly adopted Smart Growth scoring system that rates prospective development impact on schools, roads, open space and other public assets and services.
The county's schools are already cramped, with little money for new ones, reports Norfolk Virginian-Pilot writer Jeff Hampton, noting that once schools reach capacity limits, the county's adequate facilities ordinance can stop residential projects unless developers donate land for schools or pay $10,249 per house or $3,162 per townhouse, with permitting possibly taking up to two years.
At a county open house, where officials explained the Smart Growth scoring system and residents talked with developers about their projects and could rate each subdivision in a survey, Tennessee-based Kevin Tucker Design Group principal Kevin Tucker said his proposed Camden Plantation meets the smart-growth goals.
He expects everybody ''to play by the same rules.''
Planned before the subdivision moratorium and the scoring system adoption, the writer observes, Camden Plantation would include 1,772 housing units, a commercial area, and a golf course.
Its completion could take 10 or more years. -- Virginian-Pilot
9/7/2007
Resource(s): www.hamptonroads.com/
Arlington County Tree Fund Would Support Planting, Maintenance of Trees on Private Property
In a follow-up to the Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE), the Arlington County Board created the Arlington Tree Canopy Fund to help civic associations and other community groups plant trees on private properties, with the grant money coming mostly from developers, who will be paying $2,400 for every tree they are required but cannot put on theirs sites because of topographical or other constraints.
''What is innovative about this program is the county's decision to fund, through a non-profit group, tree planting on private property,'' pointed out County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson. In establishing this fund, the board is underscoring Arlington's deep commitment to nurturing a healthy urban forest that can help keep temperatures down in our homes and businesses, and make our community an even more pedestrian-friendly place.''
Devised with the help of Arlington's Urban Forestry Advisory Commission and administered in partnership with Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment (ACE) under a Memorandum of Understanding, the program is yet another remedy for the county's loss of more than 3,000 acres of ''heavy'' tree canopy (at least 50 percent tree cover), which have been converted to ''low'' canopy (less than 20 percent cover) since the 1970s, mostly on private properties.
The program will supplement the county's aggressive tree planting on public property -- some 1,200 trees a year -- where further forester efforts are not always possible, since space is limited and soil strips between curbs and sidewalks are usually too narrow for roots to support and nourish trees. -- Arlington County
10/13/2007
Resource(s): www.arlingtonva.us/
New Smart Fortwo Vehicle Makes Seattle Debut
Shown and admired on the ongoing nationwide ''street smart'' tour in 33 cities since May, the diminutive German-made ''smart fortwo'' car has just debuted in Seattle, where it also enthralled some 700 test-drivers, including Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur, with prospective buyers, each of whom had deposited $99 through an online program to reserve the car, hardly able to wait for its January delivery to the Acura of Seattle dealership.
Originally designed jointly by the Swiss watch firm Swatch and Mercedes-Benz, bought by more than 770,000 people since its European introduction in 1998, and soon to be distributed in the U.S. by ''smart USA,'' a division of the UnitedAuto Group of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the smart fortwo is called on the distributor's web site ''a vehicle that challenges the status quo and appeals to your sense of adventure and to your desire for a unique driving experience.'' Less than 9 feet long, but meticulously built and surprisingly spacious inside, smart fortwo gets 40 miles per gallon and its prices will range from under $12,000 for the coupe to $17,000 for the convertible.
Taking the car on the streets, the Seattle Times columnist found it comfortable, easy to accelerate, even easier to park, and perfect for people ''hoping to save gas, space, clean air and money.''
It ''doesn't try to be all things to all people,'' she writes, but it will ''get you from here to there at an average speed.''
What's perhaps more important, the smart fortwo is ''build around a 'Tridiron safety cell, similar to the driver cages in race cars,'' with seat-belt tensioners and twin air bags.
YouTube, she notes, shows a ''smart car crash,'' in which a test fortwo plowed ''into 20 tons of concrete block at 70 mph'' and was demolished, but the steel cage was intact, and ''the passenger door opened and closed normally.''
In their road show, distributor teams are taking smart fortwos this month to Portland, Birmingham, Knoxville, Nashville, Louisville, Baltimore, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Charleston.
See the tour details and smart fortwo photos at www.smartusa.com and www.smartcarofamerica.com. -- Seattle Times
9/4/2007
Resource(s): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
Columnist Predicts Defeat for Puget Sound Transit Plan
Word on the street doesn't bode well for the Puget Sound area's Proposition 1, which would raise $18 billion for badly needed road and transit improvements in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties by 2030, writes Seattle Times editorial columnist Joni Balter, who decided to cast her vote against the package, because its proposed sales, car and other taxes ''to pay for so many projects at once make our region less and less affordable for middle- and lower-income families.''
Weary of congestion, area residents don't hesitate to fund transportation, the columnist observes, noting that just last year Seattle voters approved $365 million for city roads and bridges, and King County voters notched their sales tax .1 cent up to invest $50 million a year in bus service.
Still, she sees the massive taxes and fees on this year's ballot as another step in ''pricing longtime residents and seniors out,'' confident that cutting the $18 billion package in half would make it more manageable and realistic next year or in a few years.
Should the package fail November 6, the columnist envisions several possible scenarios in its wake.
Civic leaders may try ''to change the governance of the multitude of transportation agencies,'' a move seen by King County Councilmember Julia Patterson, a vigorous package supporter, as ''rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic'' in the face of unabated ''congestion and population influx.''
Alternatively or simultaneously, the columnist continues, the legislature might raise the statewide gas tax, but the money could only pay for roads, not for transit.
Or the region could adopt congestion pricing, which experts find effective in changing motorist habits, but which still lack public support.
Or maybe it could do a few smaller projects at a time, first launching the next light-rail line that has the greatest support and ridership potential and whose benefits would make voters more comfortable about approving funds for more rail mileage.
In addition, the columnist predicts, the fail of Proposition 1 would be ''a campaign issue between Governor Christine Gregoire, who supports the package, and her challenger in the 2008 rematch, Republican Dino Rossi.''
Not so pessimistic as ''the gloom-and-doom crowd'' that thinks the failure would result in ''Slow Growth Choke-itopia, where residents either move closer to where they work or the region chokes on its own success,'' she writes, ''Maybe fewer people move here because they hear you can't afford a house or the traffic jams are hell on wheels.''
See arguments for the package at www.yesonroadsandtransit.org/faq/faqs.html. -- Seattle Times
10/25/2007
Resource(s): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
Voters to Decide Fate of Tacoma Transit Plan
''We can't allow our businesses to come to a standstill,'' said Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce President David Graybill at the Tacoma News Tribune's transportation forum, focused on the November 6 election, urging voters in Pierce, King and Snohomish counties to approve .6 and .8 percent increases in sales and motor vehicle taxes, respectively, which would let the region raise $10.8 billion for transit, including another 50 miles of Seattle's light-rail system, and $7 billion for road expansion.
''We are at the crossroads in Pierce County,'' concurred County Republican Councilman Shawn Bunney, stressing the urgent need to pass the long-term funding. ''One way leads to prosperity; one leads to decline.''
Critics of the ballot measure, reports News Tribune writer David Wickert, were of two minds, some worried that too much money would go to roads; others, that it wouldn't be enough.
''The new freeway miles are just going to fill up with more vehicles,'' observed Sierra Club representative Tim Gould, while former state Senator Tom Horne complained that the regional plan ''(c)osts too much, does too little.''
According to his estimate, the improvement package would really cost about $157 billion if true construction costs, debt interest and other expenses were taken into account.
County Executive John Ladenburg called the estimate ''wildly exaggerated,'' pointing out that the package's price has been verified by independent experts. -- News Tribune
10/11/2007
Resource(s): www.thenewstribune.com/
Newspaper Offers Readers Glossary of Terms for Smart Growth, Sustainability Issues
With the broad smart growth and sustainability movement increasingly incorporating higher energy-efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions among its long-term quality of life goals, and with all these issues entering the mainstream land use and development debate throughout the Puget Sound region and elsewhere, Seattle Times staff is offering readers a glossary of some common terms for ''green building and living.''
A sample follows.
Carbon footprint: ''The total amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full cycle of a product or service.''
Energy Star: ''A joint program through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy that sets energy efficiency guidelines for products, homes and businesses.''
Green building (a verb): ''Also known as sustainable or environmental building, this definition varies depending on the agency or group. Generally it means to construct a building to the highest environmental standards by minimizing the use of energy, water and materials.''
Greenwashing: ''A term playing off 'whitewash' that is used to describe projects that are labeled as energy-efficient and sustainable when they're really not. It's also a term sometimes used to describe the distribution of misleading information by a business or an organization to conceal its abuse of the environment.''
LEED: ''A certification program through the U.S. Green Building Council that stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.''
Shades of green: ''A term used by officials in the green industry to describe the varying levels of sustainability achieved in residential and commercial projects.''
Smart growth: ''Basically describes environmentally sensitive land development that takes into account minimizing dependence on auto transportation and reducing air pollution.'' -- Seattle Times
9/22/2007
Resource(s): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
Glendening Addresses West Virginia Conference on Smart Growth
''Smart Growth can reduce significantly the ratio of how many people commute far distances for jobs when they can find the same jobs right here'' and that would boost ''the overall wealth of the area'' and its quality of life, said Smart Growth Leadership Institute President, former Maryland two-term Democratic Governor Parris N. Glendening, in a keynote address at the annual West Virginia Conference on Smart Growth in Martinsburg, an event sponsored by the Department of Environmental Protection to explore and promote ways to protect the state's air, water, land and other crucial resources.
As pollution gets worse, gas prices escalate, and climate change looms, people all across the country are challenging the fiscal wisdom of ignoring present infrastructure and expanding roads, sewers and other infrastructure into the urban fringe, the former governor stressed. ''In the long run, we have to ask ourselves where we will be at the end of another decade.''
Other speakers, reports Martinsburg Journal writer Michael C. Lewis, shared these concerns and elaborated on the best solutions, especially pedestrian-friendly measures and designs.
EPA Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation's Community, Development and Environment Division senior analyst Matthew Dalbey focused on the need to update zoning ordinances and development codes for mixed uses, and to use conservation easements and tax policies as tools against sprawl.
''Create a small-town feel with narrow streets, short building setbacks, dispersed parking and rental mixed in,'' he told the audience. ''You want to initiate smart growth principles in your community to preserve your rural character and charm.''
Like the governor and the analyst, West Virginia American Institute of Architects President Thom Worlledge would like to see public policies for more mobility and place choices.
''Encourage mixed-use development. Preserve urban centers,'' he advised. ''Give people the option to walk, bike or use public transit. Build vibrant public spaces -- in the city. Citizens need welcoming, well-defined places to stimulate face-to-face interaction.''
And Martinsburg's Small Business Development Center official Christina Lundberg hoped for a ''density by design'' program to enhance the city and save the countryside.
One of the issues for Martinsburg is how to work with Berkeley County ''on a big picture plan to make this happen,'' she said, adding, ''We have a wonderful downtown. To attract small business, we need to work toward having a downtown area that is full of people.'' -- Journal
10/17/2007
Resource(s): www.journal-news.net/
Regional Transportation Authority Could Bring Commuter Rail to Dane County by 2014
Passed by the Dane County Board 22 to 13 last month and now 18 to 2 by the Madison City Council, a plan to create a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which would charge a half-cent sales tax for road and transit improvements, still requires ''at least five major make-or-break decisions at the local, state and federal level,'' reports Madison Wisconsin State Journal writer Matthew DeFour, but if all goes well, the plan's key commuter rail project could be completed by early 2014.
For this to happen, he writes, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) should approve preliminary engineering funds, probably by next May or June, though it may view an upgraded bus system as more cost-effective; county municipalities should agree on RTA composition, procedures, external relations and sales tax use by March 2010; state lawmakers should pass RTA enabling legislation; voters should endorse the authority in a November 2010 referendum; and FTA should approve up to $175 million in grants for the proposed commuter rail, likely to cost between $250 million and $285 million. The 20-mile commuter line would link Middleton northwest of Madison and Sun Prairie at its northeast.
RTA plan proponents, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, along with other transit advocates, consider the rail necessary to ease the area's ever-worse congestion. -- Wisconsin State Journal
9/5/2007
Resource(s): www.madison.com/wsj/
$25 Million I-94 Interchange Still on the Boards for Pabst Farms Project
The controversial development of historic 1,500-acre horse and dairy Pabst Farms -- set up by Milwaukee beer magnate Frederick Pabst in 1906 -- into a master-planned enclave of 1,200 varied-type homes, offices and stores was to be anchored by a 110-acre regional shopping and entertainment center, but even after Chicago-based General Growth Properties suddenly dropped that proposal, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT), Waukesha County and Oconomowoc are still ready to fund a $25 million I-94 interchange for the center, with Political Environment blog writer James Rowan urging local officials to quit the deal now and state lawmakers to investigate the WisDOT rush to ''use public funds to build an interchange to nowhere.''
Under the deal, reported Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers Amy Rinard and Scott Williams earlier, WisDOT would put in $21.1 million, the county and the Pabst Farms Development Inc. $1.75 million each, and Oconomowoc $400,000 from its $24,000 million Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district created for the project.
Since General Growth Properties' withdrawal, Pabst Farms Development President Peter Bell has been looking for another company to build the massive shopping component of Pabst Farms, hopeful it will open in 2010, while Oconomowoc Mayor Maury Sullivan tried to allay fears that big-box chains may instead move in, promising to wait as long as it takes for the envisioned upscale retail.
''We've adopted a master plan and zoning for that location, and it does not have big boxes in it,'' he said.
Nevertheless, asks Political Environment writer James Rowan, if General Growth Properties realized the area may not sustain a regional mall, ''why should the state, county and the city of Oconomowoc press ahead with the fast-tracked construction of the interchange?''
Both the county and the city, he points out, can still reconsider and save their money, but ''WisDOT operates with such insularity and arrogance that it can't be counseled to do the right thing with any expectation of a reasonable outcome -- which in this case is simply to pull the plug on having earmarked money for a road to nowhere without permission.''
That's why, he stresses, ''quick and unambiguous pressure delivered by legislators and watchdog auditors at the State Capitol is a necessity to get WisDOT's attention, and action.'' -- Political Environment, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
10/1/2007
Resource(s): www.thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/ ; www.jsonline.com/
Biking Resurgence Leads Cities to Combine Transportation, Recreation Plans
''In the past couple of years, you're seeing a resurgence in the bicycle as a mode of transportation, rather than just recreation,'' observes Fox Cities Greenways Inc. board Member and Bike to Work coordinator Tom Walsh, who bikes some 15 miles both ways between his home in Buchanan and job in Grand Chute, certain that the ''whole push toward Smart Growth and planning'' will make other Appleton region cities combine transportation and recreation plans, like Kaukauna recently did in moving to create a street bike-lane system for its four key routes.
''You will get people who will start to use it for their day-to-day activities, like say going to the store, going to work, going to school,'' he predicts, expecting the system eventually to get connected to New London and Oshkosh, some 25 miles northwest and southwest, respectively.
Kaukauna leaders have envisioned those bike routes since around 1995, with Alderman Lee Meyerhofer spearheading the action partly in response to recent residential growth, reports Appleton Post-Crescent writer J.E. Espino, quoting City Planner Robert Jakel.
He and Mayor Gene Rosin also would like to extend the Outgamie County Route CE Trail about a mile east and to plan for its future link with the 20-mile Fox River Trail that runs from downtown Green Bay southwest and ends nearby.
For now, Mayor Rosin is happy about the new and planned bike lanes, telling bikers, ''now you can pick out a destination point and travel there safely.'' -- Appleton Post-Crescent
9/25/2007
Resource(s): www.postcrescent.com/
Cheyenne Creating Recreational Master Plan for 18,800 Acres of ''Wyoming History''
Having bought the 17,000-acre cattle and horse Belvoir Ranch just southwest of Cheyenne's city limits for $5.9 million in 2003 and the adjacent 1,800-acre development-restricted Big Hole property for $525,000 in 2005, city officials, business leaders, consultants and residents are now in the middle of work on a master plan for those culturally and environmentally multi-faceted lands -- the ranch now leased out for grazing, but slated mostly for diversified recreational use in the future, reports Wyoming Tribune-Eagle writer Jodi Rogstad, with wind turbines perhaps paying for the envisioned hiking, biking and equestrian trails, campgrounds, reservoirs and other amenities.
''This is a huge project,'' said City Councilman Tom Segrave about the transformation planning process, championed by Mayor Jack Spiker, hopeful for expert aid from State Parks and Historic Sites staff since he doesn't know ''anyone else who has done this as a small community.''
So far, the writer notes, Denver-based Wenk Associates consultants Jane Kulik and David Madison have outlined a five-year plan and a 15-year plan.
In the first five years, the city would build trails and a road, with parking, to the Big Hole, expected to become a ''regional magnet'' for residents and tourists.
It would also lay equestrian and mountain biking trails, with a mountain bike jump park, on the Belvoir Ranch, install wildlife spotting scopes, and host special events.
Under the 15-year plan, the city would launch construction of a visitor gateway center, with a gas station, convenience store and some outdoor retail, also building one or two reservoirs for recreation and a links golf course, which follows the natural terrain, doesn't need the usual closely-trimmed grass, and could be self-sufficient within eight or ten years. Read more at www.belvoirranch.org-- Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Wyoming Business Report
9/27/2007
Resource(s): http://wyomingbusinessreport.com/ ; www.wyomingnews.com/
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