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Huntsville's Parkway Place Mall Expected to Provide Big Boost for Downtown
After years of Huntsville commercial sprawl along major highways,
the $60-million Parkway Place mall replacing its blighted
precursor just two miles from downtown is seen by Sierra Club
activist Nat Berry as a smart growth retail center the area
really needs, with City Planning Director Dallas Fanning
confident it will spark a renewal of the middle-income
neighborhood. Following Mayor Loretta Spencer's directive ''to
make it happen,'' reports Huntsville Times writer Steve
Doyle, the City Council and Madison County Commission helped the
developer, Chattanooga-based CBL & Associates Properties Inc.
(CBL), with $5.5 million for the mall's parking garage and spent
$500,000 on street and infrastructure improvements. CBL senior
vice president Michael Lebovitz says the national company, which
has built both infill and greenfield malls, opted for the
Huntsville site's redevelopment because it's passed daily by
95,000 cars and because the city arranged subsidies, getting in
exchange a trend-bucking mall and new sales-tax revenue. As the
mall will likely boost the value of nearby homes and businesses,
the city surrounded it with a special tax district, expecting to
use $10 million in property taxes to rebuild an adjacent high
school, while taking back an additional $500,000 annually to
recover developer subsidies. Noting that an Alabama A&M
University study found 82,400 rural acres -- or 28 percent of
Madison County -- paved over between 1982 and 1997, the writer
quotes local commercial developer Scott McLain, who says
redevelopment makes economic sense since it doesn't require new
roads or utility lines and usually reduces site preparation
costs. -- Huntsville Times
10/15/2002
Resource(s): http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/
Lake Cyrus Developer Envisions 1,000 Acre Mixed-Use Development
Having expanded his successful Lake Cyrus residential development
on the edges of Hoover, south of Birmingham, from 380 acres and
975 homes to almost 600 acres and 1,300 homes in a $200,000 to
$500,000 range, Prime Communities President Charles Givianpour
will soon launch a 1000-acre, mixed-use Lake Cyrus North project
nearby, saying its English Village style -- with some buildings
offering ground floor shops, second floor offices and third floor
lofts -- will ''set another standard'' for the area. Built over the
next 30 years off Alabama Route 150, the $2 billion project,
reports Birmingham News writer Michael Tomberlin, will
feature nearly 2 million square feet of retail and office space;
about 2,000 homes priced from $500,000 to more than $2 million; a
winding five-lane road with six turn circles flanked by stores;
six lakes and 10 small parks; and well-lighted trails and
sidewalks throughout the entire neighborhood. The site already
has a Jefferson County sewer main and can be easily connected to
nearby water and power lines. The writer quotes
Birmingham-Southern College retail professor Jack Taylor, who
credits the developer for ''optimistic concepts with some pretty
forward thinking,'' but also notes the growing glut of retail
along the area's roads, adding, ''The retail pie is only so big
and I wonder if we're not slicing it up too much. How much do we
need?'' -- Birmingham News
10/17/2002
Resource(s): http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/
Study Cites Income Factor in Alabama's Urban Flight to Suburbs
The Birmingham metro's two largest black-majority cities,
Birmingham and Bessemer, lost 22,500 and 3,800 residents last
decade -- or 8.5 and 11.5 percent, respectively -- many of them
affluent black professionals, which tells local Chambers of
Commerce research director Michael Shattuck that the migration to
the suburbs ''is based more on income rather than race,'' a trend
natural for black Hoover real estate agent Edward Wilson Jr.,
himself a transplant, who says, ''People want the same thing no
matter what color they are: good property value appreciation,
good schools, low crime.'' Studying 2000 Census data, Shattuck
found Birmingham and Bessemer not only increasingly black, but
also low-income black. Birmingham News writer Roy L.
Williams reports that alarmed Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid is
seeking major school and neighborhood improvements. With the
school system in the middle of a $300 million capital improvement
plan, the mayor is pinning much of his hope for neighborhood
revitalization on the new Birmingham BEST (Building Equity and
Security Together) program, under which area lenders help
low-to-middle income families with home down payments and closing
costs. ''If we improve education and housing,'' the mayor said, ''I
think we can reverse the trend and even get more people to move
back into Birmingham.'' -- Birmingham News
10/28/2002
Resource(s): http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/
Birmingham's Regional Creek Protection Plan Includes 25-Mile Pedestrian Greenway
In Alabama's first regional effort to prepare for upcoming growth
and enhance local quality of life, Jefferson County and all cities
on the heavily polluted Five Mile Creek north of Birmingham signed
an agreement to restore the creek while protecting it from further
runoff with a 25-mile-long greenway, which would create 200-foot
buffers for its banks and allow walking, hiking and biking
alongside. Noting expert estimates that the completion of major
roads within several years will open northern Jefferson County to
intense development and turn it into one ''major suburb,''
Birmingham News writer Katherine Bouma quotes Graysville
Mayor Wayne Tuggle, who says, ''We've got to have a little vision.''
Dynasty Development managing partner Mike Gilchrist shares the
vision, giving Graysville 1.5 miles of the creek bank in his
400-acre mixed-use neighborhood, now under construction, to provide
for the 200-foot creek protection buffer. This excites Black
Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust executive director Wendy Allen,
whose group is already working with the developer to make that
buffer section a reality, while buying 588 acres at the creek's
headwaters and negotiating other deals for the same purpose. The
trust is funded from the county's $30 million penalty
land-acquisition payments for having polluted water with
decades-long raw sewage discharges. The writer adds that director
Allen -- with the Nature Conservancy for the previous nine years --
can persuasively cite studies finding green space the top factor
''in helping small communities attract industry.''
11/10/2002
Resource(s): www.al.com/news/
Editorial: Mesa's 2025 General Plan Good for Smart Growth and Quality of Life
As Mesa expects to continue the spectacular decade-long
40-percent growth, which brought its population to almost 432,000
by June, an Arizona Republic editorial says voter approval
of the 2025 General Plan on November 5th would put the city into
compliance with the state's 2000 Growing Smarter Plus law and
benefit it with ''smart growth, economic development and
revitalization'' -- all vital for its quality of life. The plan,
the editorial observes, would help the city adjust growth to
community needs, generate revenue by maximizing public investment
and securing an efficient transportation system, revitalize older
residential and employment areas and improve its 34-to-100
job-to-resident ratio to 56-to-100 or better. Recommending voter
approval, the editorial points out that the plan could be
modified in the future according to the city's changing needs,
while aiming it now in the chosen direction: ''To be a community
where residents can live, work and play.''
10/18/2002
Resource(s): www.arizonarepublic.com/
Phoenix Downtown Partnership Honors Copper Square Revitalization Leaders
The Phoenix Downtown Partnership honored five officials and groups
instrumental in boosting Copper Square business with its Downtown
Revitalization Effort Awards of Merit and Recognition, DREAMR,
applauding them for going ''above and beyond their professional
responsibilities to take Copper Square revitalization to new
heights.'' The award recipients are Richard Mallery in the private
sector individual category for attracting the headquarters of the
International Genomics Consortium to Copper Square; Phoenix police
chief Harold Hurtt in the public sector/nonprofit individual
category for keeping downtown safe; Phelps Dodge Tower, Phelps
Dodge Corp. and Ryan Cos. U.S. Inc., for locating a Fortune 500
company downtown; Risk Management vice president George Bevans in
the unsung hero category for ensuring safety at America West Arena,
Bank One Ballpark and Dodge Theatre; and nonprofit arts advocacy
group Artlink in the organization category for promoting arts in
the Copper Square area. -- Arizona Republic
11/19/2002
Resource(s): www.arizonarepublic.com/
Californians Approve $3.4 Billion in Bonds for Water Projects
With about two-thirds of the $3 billion from 1990s water-related
bonds already spent or committed, more than 55 percent of
California voters passed a ballot measure that authorizes another
$3.44 billion in 30-year general obligation bonds for similar
projects, including $950 million for coastal protection, $825
million for the state-federal (CALFED) San Francisco Bay-
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary program; $640 million for
integrated regional water management, and $435 million for small
community drinking water system upgrades. Distributed as grants and
loans to local governments and nonprofit groups, the money will
help them purchase, protect and restore wetlands, watershed tracts
and other fragile habitats, and improve water use efficiency, fight
water pollution and manage stormwater and floods. The remaining
$590 million will let localities build river parkways, reduce
coastal nonpoint source pollution, expand desalination efforts,
improve water quality in Lake Tahoe and in the Sierra Nevada-
Cascade Mountain region, restore Colorado River ecosystem sites and
protect drinking water systems ''from terrorist attacks and other
deliberate acts of destruction and degradation.'' Since land
acquired by governments and nonprofits is exempt from taxation, the
total local property tax revenues will drop by a maximum of 10
million annually, about half of which will be offset by state
payments to school districts.
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov/Propositions2.asp?id=221
Smart Growth Grants Bring Affordable Housing Funds to California Cities
Under bills sponsored by State Treasurer Phil Angelides' office and
Democratic Senator Tom Torlakson, the California Pollution Control
Financing Authority awarded nine cities ''smart growth'' grants
totaling $2.5 million and promised to distribute $2.5 million more
among other winners from the 120 applicants by the month's end. The
grants will help cities spur infill, expand affordable housing,
improve transit-station areas and upgrade streets in older
neighborhoods. Senator Torlakson said ''there's a huge need and keen
interest in cities to do the right thing.'' Treasurer Angelides, who
chairs the authority, added, ''We thought these were good projects
that had value for the communities where they're located, but could
also show the rest of California, and policy-makers, too, what the
possibilities are to grow more intelligently.''
10/9/2002
Resource(s): www.signonsandiego.com
Candidates Silent on Growth Issues in California Gubernatorial Campaign
Each year California -- its current population 35 million -- is
growing by 600,000, losing 50,000 acres of farmland, falling short
of 50,000 to 70,000 residential units and hearing increased demands
for traffic relief, affordable housing and open space, but ''a great
silence'' veils the issues on the gubernatorial campaign trail so
far, observes Associated Press writer Jim Wasserman in The San
Diego Tribune, with equally baffled national experts noting
that growth management has became a strong point for other state
administrations nationwide. He quotes National Governors
Association policy director Joel Hirschhorn, who mentions Alabama,
Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Noting that
California's next governor will shape its long-term future, by
steering billions of tax dollars to transit or highways,
encouraging urban infill or new suburbs and wrangling with
municipalities over their growth patterns, the writer points out
that although slowly, both Democratic governor Gray Davis and his
Republican challenger Bill Simon, ''are staking out positions.''
Among several bills fought by builders and Realtors, but signed by
the governor, one requires proof of water supplies for subdivisions
of more than 500 homes, another bars remapping coastal properties
to squeeze in more residences and the newest one, hailed as the
state's ''most significant smart growth law'' in 30 years, ensures
coordination of agencies' infrastructure spending to support urban
infill, natural resources and efficient planning. The governor also
promises for next year the first revision of a statewide land-use
plan since 1978 and the reintroduction of a bill offering
infrastructure grant priority to cities following the state's
growth guidelines. The Republican gubernatorial contender considers
additional tollways ''imperative'' for easing traffic, proposes more
dams to store water and suggests the relaxation of the state
Environmental Quality Act and ''brownfield'' cleanup standards to
facilitate housing construction. He also wants to revoke the higher
''prevailing wages'' for workers at subsidized affordable-housing
projects as hiking the cost of a home by $2,500. But despite his
builder-friendly stance, the writer notes, the Republican received
only about $186,000 in builder campaign contributions, while the
governor obtained $945,000. -- The San Diego Tribune
10/7/2002
Resource(s): www.signonsandiego.com/
Report: Make Growth Efficient By Combining Reforms, Financial Incentives
Growth is inevitable, but state leaders should combine regulatory
reforms and financial incentives to make it less wasteful and more
efficient, recommends the ''Putting the Pieces Together: State
Actions to Encourage Smart Growth Practices in California'' report,
released by the diverse public-private Statewide Coordinating
Committee for the Urban Land Institute's California Smart Growth
Initiative. ''The report proves,'' said committee co-chairman
Greenlaw ''Fritz'' Grupe, Jr., ''that stakeholders with widely varied
interests can find common ground on shaping a better future for our
state,'' all seeking ''a more satisfying quality of life,
environmental balance and a healthy economy for the next
generation.'' The other committee co-chairman, Trust for Public Land
president Will Rogers, called the report especially timely in the
context of numerous growth-management bills taken up though mostly
shelved by the recent state legislative session, stressing that
with the current ''substantial interest in better growth, but so
far, little consensus on how to achieve it,'' the group sees the
recommendations ''as the basis for productive action.'' The state's
regulatory reforms, the report says, should ensure better
coordination of state laws guiding local development and
conservation to promote smart growth more effectively, including
the modification of the environmental quality law and the
elimination of barriers to brownfield redevelopment. Financial
incentives for local smart growth efforts should include grants and
forgivable loans to spur housing, public transit, infill, mixed
land use and open space protection, with further economic
incentives to encourage combined land-use and transportation
decisions and with future infrastructure funding priority for
communities meeting smart growth goals. The report is available at
www.smartgrowthcalifornia.uli.org
10/1/2002
Resource(s): www.sacramento.bizjournals.com/
Voters Approve California Housing Program, Reject Plan to Shift Vehicle Revenue to Transit
Two California growth-related ballot measures drew different
responses on November 5, with 57 percent of voters approving a $2.1
billion bond issue to expand affordable housing and homeless
shelter programs, but 59 percent rejecting a proposal to shift 30
percent of vehicle sales and lease tax revenue toward transit,
congestion relief, environmental mitigation and school bus
projects. Passed earlier by the legislature as SB 1227, the voter-
approved Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2002
allocates $1.11 billion for three-percent loans to help localities,
nonprofits and developers build multifamily rental housing, mostly
apartments in urban areas and near public transit; $405 million for
similar loans and grants to help low-to-moderate income residents
with downpayments on their first homes; $200 million for developer
loans and grants to spur construction of housing for farmworkers;
and $385 million for new homeless shelters, high-risk homebuyer
mortgage insurance and other housing aid to local governments.
Slated for distribution within three to five years and used
together with other housing assistance money, the bond funds are
expected to subsidize about 25,000 multifamily and 10,000
farmworkers households annually, provide downpayment assistance to
60,000 homebuyers and expand homeless shelters by 30,000 beds. The
rejected Traffic Congestion Relief and Safe School Bus Trust Fund
would receive $420 million in 2002-03, $910 million in 2003-04 and
gradually more in the following years from general revenues mostly
to improve transit, traffic flow and safety, and school bus fleet
modernization, with an additional focus on environmental and
pedestrian-oriented projects. -- San Diego Union-Tribune
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.signonsandiego.com/news/
Bay Area Housing Targets Draw Criticism from Local Officials
Having issued its latest regional growth forecast based on local
plans and economic data in 2001, the Association of Bay Area
Governments (ABAG) followed with a year-long series of community
workshops to gather input for the first ''smart growth'' overlay
projections, under the current version of which the region's nine
counties would increase their annual housing targets by 5,000 to
7,500 units each until 2030, while shifting most of the new housing
and most of the 1.5 million new jobs toward urban centers. Drafted
by ABAG demographer and computer expert Paul Fassinger as part of
the federally funded Regional Livability Footprint Project -- to
envision development in balance with the environment -- the ''smart
growth'' projections, due for a formal ABAG vote in March, will
likely draw a lot of municipal fire at housing targets even though
those got reshuffled since the so-called ''preferred alternative''
was first shown to city leaders in July. Setting specific numbers
of units for each city -- lower than previously planned for some
cities, but much higher for others -- the preferred housing
alternative upset many local officials. Alameda city planning and
building director Greg Fuz objected to the increase in the number
of units the city should build within 30 years from the planned
2,000 to 18,666, telling ABAG that his city ''is committed to
working cooperatively toward a regional smart growth plan,'' but its
housing decisions ''cannot be made by a consensus at a public
workshop by those who are not familiar with our community goals and
policies.'' Contra Costa County Council director Sunne Wright McPeak
called the 2001 housing forecasts ''pretty accurate'' and smart
growth projections too ''far off,'' adding, ''you can't just summarily
put things on the map that defy economic forces.'' The ABAG's
demographer said advocates hope his smart growth projections will
encourage land use changes, new legislation and more housing
construction.
11/12/2002
Resource(s): www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/
Adams County Could Expand Affordable Housing for Local Residents
Presented with a task force report on the growing gap between the
Adams County median income of $50,000 -- sufficient for a loan on
a $186,000 house -- and the county median home price of $215,000
plus, county commissioners expressed willingness to expand
affordable housing for residents working locally, but not for those
who commute beyond county lines. The commissioners pointed out that
some counties promote mostly big houses as tax revenue boosters,
reports Rocky Mountain News writer Berny Morson, quoting
Commissioner Elaine Valente, who said ''I'm not willing to have all
the affordable housing in Adams County'' and urged other counties to
provide a greater regional share of lower-income units.
Commissioner Marty Flaum noted that Adams County also needs more
upscale housing that generates enough property taxes to pay for the
parks and sports fields its residents demand. -- Rocky Mountain News
11/19/2002
Resource(s): www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/
Compact Development Could Reduce Water Needs by 35 Percent, Says CPIRG Report
A decisive move from sprawl to compact development could reduce
Colorado water needs by 35 percent and save it 20 to 40 percent on
construction of water and sewer treatment facilities, says the
Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CPIRG) in a new report,
calling for integration of land-use and water-supply planning,
which would also help improve water quality. With the report
finding that sprawl degrades water quality, since new roads and
pavements increase polluted runoff, CPIRG executive director Matt
Bakes said, ''By failing to plan for land use in connection with our
limited water resources, we are in danger of letting Colorado's
water future go down the drain.'' CPIRG land use attorney Ann
Livingston noted that the past 20 years of the state's fast
suburban growth were ''a wet period,'' when unusual rainfalls
provided plenty of water, which invited development far from urban
services. But now ''we have a drought,'' she said. ''We're using more
water than we need to use, we're polluting what we have and we're
spending too much on infrastructure.'' The need for water planning,
she added, may finally became obvious to the legislature, where
seven months ago a committee killed a bill requiring localities to
enforce their master plans and anticipate future transportation,
water and sewer demands.
10/15/2002
Resource(s): www.insidedenver.com/drmn/
Douglass County and Parker, Colo., Agree on Joint 20-Year Growth Management Plan
The fastest-growing county nationwide and its fastest-growing town,
Douglass County and Parker, announced an agreement on a joint 20-
year growth management plan, with county community development
director Peter Italiano saying they both are ''on the same page'' and
now ''just debate the details instead of the philosophy.'' Parker
Councilman Lance Wright, one of the promoters of joint planning,
noted that the 30,000-people suburban town southeast of Denver
wants to preserve its character and hold residential expansion to
80,000 to 100,000 in the next 20 years, which would have been
difficult with ''unlimited boundaries.'' Under the joint plan,
reports Rocky Mountain News writer Tillie Fong, Parker will
limit future growth to a new ''urban service area,'' where all
projects will be subject to town approval. Douglass County will set
a one-mile-wide buffer zone between Parker and other
municipalities, with all zone projects subject to county approval.
Each project in the urban service area and the buffer zone must
meet the joint plan's conditions, which will supersede town or
county terms. Parker and the county will reciprocally review and
comment on some projects in the urban service area and the buffer
zone. Any change to the joint plan must be approved both by Parker
and Douglass County. -- Rocky Mountain News
10/15/2002
Resource(s): www.insidedenver.com/drmn/
Connecticut Falls Short of Traffic Reduction Goals
From 1997, when Republican Governor John Rowland signed a law
aiming for a five-percent cut in state traffic congestion by this
October 1, through late last year, congestion increased by about 10
percent, a setback attributed by gubernatorial chief of staff Dean
Pagani to Fairfield County's ''dramatic'' population growth, but seen
by Democratic candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, Bill
Curry and George Jepsen, as resulting from a serious transportation
policy failure. The Democratic gubernatorial contender promised to
start working on the congestion problem ''immediately'' if elected,
while his running mate said, ''What we need is a real commitment to
public transportation so people can get to work without clogging
the highway.'' Norwalk Hour writer Dirk Perrefort notes that
the state Department of Transportation surpassed its five-year
goals for rail use -- gaining 2,581 instead of 1,400 passengers --
and for interregional bus service and full-time telecommuting, but
fell short of goals for ridesharing, vanpooling, alternative work
schedules and ferry ridership. He adds that the Democratic
gubernatorial candidate promised to diversify state transportation
funding, launch emergency construction of railroad parking lots,
encourage business use of flexible work schedules and boost rail
and ferry freight. -- The Hour
10/2/2002
Resource(s): www.thehour.com
Transport Board Looks at Rush Hour Toll Levys to Discourage Car Use, Boost Transit Ridership
''You can't build your way out of congestion,'' said Coastal Corridor
Transportation Investment Area board co-chairman Franklin Bloomer,
briefing an audience of local lawmakers and civic, business and
environmental leaders in Stamford on Connecticut's urgent need to
focus on trains, buses and ferries instead of highways to relieve
the region's paralyzing traffic. ''We are going to have to decide
between what we want and what we're willing to pay for,'' added
co-chairman Oz Griebel, warning that since most federal aid -- or
about 72 percent of the state transportation budget -- is reserved
for highways projects, the state alone will likely have to fund its
new transit programs. Working on its recommendations, due to the
state Transportation Strategy Board by mid-December, the investment
area board sees high-tech electronic tolls, with ''value-priced''
fees going up during rush hours, as a means to discourage car use
and boost transit ridership. Norwalk Hour writer Abigail
Tucker reports that this approach is supported by the
Stamford-based Southwest Area Commerce & Business Association
(SACIA), whose president and CEO Chris Bruhl said, ''We live in a
market-driven society. These would be price signals for
price-conscious consumers.'' -- The Hour
10/9/2002
Resource(s): www.thehour.com
Waterford Subdivision is New England's First ''Laboratory'' for Natural Stormwater Management
Once a chicken farm, the just-opened 18-acre Glen Brook Green
subdivision in Waterford became New England's first and the
country's 23rd laboratory for rainwater collection, treatment and
reuse, as University of Connecticut agricultural researchers
prepare to compare its runoff with that of a typical suburban
street nearby and to calculate the difference in pollutants they
carry to area waterways. ''While we've done a great job cleaning up
our waterways,'' said U.S. EPA New England regional administrator
Robert W. Varney, ''we still have many challenges with residential,
commercial and industrial developments and contaminated runoff from
everyday activities.'' Instead of the usual curbs and gutters,
reports Associated Press writer Stephen Singer in The Boston
Globe, the environmentally friendly Glen Brook Green
neighborhood features contoured gardens with gutters run into the
ground, narrow roads and broad grassy areas, water-absorbing soil
spaces between road sections and water-collecting roadside ditches.
With $1 billion in federal money spent since 1990 on national
pollution-reducing and monitoring programs, EPA officials have
found such natural stormwater management solutions not only
beneficial for water quality, but also less costly. They estimate
that typical ''curb and gutter'' drainage systems cost $45 to $50 a
linear foot in comparison with $10 to $15 for grass-lined ditches.
But even with the Glen Brook Green success, the writer notes,
administrator Varney doubts builders will be required to adopt
similar practices, which likely will be ''an option.'' -- The
Boston Globe
10/11/2002
Resource(s): www.boston.com/
Delaware DOT Eases Municipal Burden for Urban Transportation Enhancement Programs
The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) modified its
urban transportation enhancement program, making it more flexible
and effective in helping municipalities with their historic
preservation, scenic landscaping and sidewalk or bike-path
improvements. Authorized by Congress in 1991, the program
requires states to put at least 10 percent of their federal
transportation funds into non-road improvement projects, reports
Dover Newszap news service writer Bill Potter, quoting DelDOT
transportation coordinator David Petrosky, who mentions its three
money-distribution changes. The 20-percent municipal match for
each project was replaced with ''a sliding scale,'' under which
municipal contribution goes down or up, depending on the
project's size. The two-year project submission and review cycle
was eliminated, which means municipalities can now submit
projects any time for an immediate review, advice and
authorization. The maximum reimbursement for a project was raised
from $500,000 to $1 million. Municipal officials praise the
changes, with Milton town clerk Jocelyn Jenkins seeing another
helpful change in DelDOT's readiness to ''accept more of the
administrative burden for small towns that can't afford an
administrative staff.'' -- Dover Newszap
10/25/2002
Resource(s): http://www.newszap.com/dover/
Smyrna Mayor Revives New Road Idea to Ease Industrial Park Traffic
Just before a group of Smyrna and Clayton residents filed a court
appeal against the Smyrna Town Council's recent approval of a huge
Wal-Mart distribution center near both towns on Route 300 as
procedurally flawed and glossing over traffic and pollution issues,
Smyrna Mayor Mark G. Schaeffer revived the idea of building another
road, writing state Secretary of Transportation Nathan Hayward III
that a new road is needed ''as a result of increased development in
the Smyrna/Clayton area and limitations of the existing
transportation system.'' Citizens for Smyrna-Clayton First leader
Michael McGrath said his group doesn't intend to stop the Wal-Mart
project entirely, but wants the city to revisit the issue and apply
thorough review procedures, because now ''We don't have the best
project we could have.'' This, pointed out plaintiffs' attorney
Richard L. Abbot, includes questions about Wal-Mart adherence to
zoning code ''performance standards'' for noise and air pollution
control and about the center's real traffic impact. In separate
reports, Dover Newszap News Service writers Tom Eldred and Drew
Volturo noted that according to a state transportation study the
Wal-Mart center would increase Route 300 traffic by 750 vehicles a
day -- mostly truck trailers -- an estimate downgraded later by the
company's consultant to about 250 to 300 vehicles daily. Mayor
Schaeffer didn't mention Wal-Mart in his letter asking for a state
feasibility study on a new road, but reminded reporters that he and
other town officials floated the idea for over a year, adding that
the new road ''would substantially relieve a lot of the pressure on
Del. 300 from the area of the industrial park.''
11/13/2002
Resource(s): www.newszap.com/s-c/
Miami-Dade Voters Approve Tax to Fund County-Wide Transit Expansion
Having rejected several tax-for-transit proposals in the past 25
years, the increasingly congestion-wary Miami-Dade County voters
reversed the trend through a 69-percent approval of a half-cent
sales tax increase for a massive expansion of Metrobus and
Metrorail systems as detailed in the long-range People's
Transportation Plan (PTP), with officials immediately allowing free
use of the downtown area's 4.4-mile automated Metromover line,
eliminating bus and train fares for riders 65 years old and older,
and adding and improving bus service in several neighborhoods.
Strongly backed by civic and business leaders, the tax increase
should generate $150 million a year, leveraging the substantial
state and federal funds necessary for the advancement of the $17
billion plan, its outlays almost equally split between bus and rail
transit. Officials, reports Miami Herald writer Andres
Viglucci, envision the county fully covered with a tightly
integrated transit network, which they expect to be ''reliable,
convenient and attractive'' enough to lure many commuters out of
their cars. Specifically, the plan will let the county almost
double its bus fleet from 675 to 1,335 vehicles, including many
minibuses on new routes and neighborhood circulator lines; provide
around-the-clock bus service on major routes and increase frequency
to 15-minute intervals during peak times; build 89 miles of rail
lines; introduce 24-hour rail service next June; and allocate a
total of 20 percent of the new tax revenue to 31 municipalities for
their transit-related projects. The tax-for-transit plan was
engineered by County Mayor Alex Penelas and Commissioner Bruno
Barreiro, the writer adds, quoting the mayor who says, ''Twenty
years from now, this community will look a lot different. You will
have Metrorail and Metrobus to every corner of Miami-Dade County,
and even into Broward County.''
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.trafficrelief.com/rapid_transit_projects.htm ; www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
Gainesville's East Side to See Long-Awaited Revitalization
Having spent hundreds of hours at planning workshops, residents
of Gainesville's neglected 21,000-acre east side are expecting it
to be revitalized this decade as a mixed-use corridor of houses,
condos, offices and stores, with a high-tech ''Bus Rapid Transit''
system and much of the land near Newnan Lake slated for
preservation. Commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation
Planning Organization (MTPO) and drafted by the Renaissance
Planning Group of Orlando, the Plan East Gainesville would cost
about $80 million, mostly in federal funds and private
investments, reports Gainesville Sun writer Ashley
Rowland. Unveiled at a community meeting, the plan was well
received, but residents pointed out that a new east-west road,
meant to relieve congestion at a crucial Five Points
intersection, would create ''incredible, nonstop traffic'' in the
Lincoln Estate neighborhood and damage local wetlands. They
advised extensions for two nearby avenues as a much better
solution. The writer notes that the MPTO, the Gainesville City
Commission and the Alachua County Commission will likely review
and approve the plan in January. -- Gainesville Sun
10/30/2002
Resource(s): http://www.sunone.com/
Alachua's Strategic Plan Seeks to Retain Small-Town Atmosphere
After a year-long series of community vision workshops, the Alachua
City Commission unanimously passed a strategic 2010 plan, which
will balance economic development and job creation with open space
protection and bike-pedestrian trail expansion, to save the city's
small-town atmosphere and keep it from becoming ''a big box
marketplace.'' Mayor Bonnie Burgess is determined to implement the
plan, stressing, ''The citizens came together and poured their heart
out into this.'' Happy with the plan process, its steering committee
member, Duane Helle, credits the outcome to the absence of ''the
extremists who just want to grandstand'' and to the cooperation of
''both ends of the spectrum.'' Planning and Zoning Boar chairman Gary
Hardacre also praises the collegiate spirit of the broad-based
steering committee, but notes that now officials ''have to figure
out how to pay'' for what the community wants. The top goal, reports
Gainesville Sun writer Cindy Swirko, is to form
public-private partnerships for bringing in new firms, especially
small businesses and clean industries. To help it happen and at the
same time address local quality of life concerns, the plan tells
the city to improve biking and walking trails, protect the
environment, build a community swimming pool, reopen a senior
citizen center, designate future commercial areas, enact a
mega-store ordinance, establish equitable code enforcement and
promote urban infill. -- Gainesville Sun
10/8/2002
Resource(s): www.sunone.com/
Creative Workers Key for Cities to Attract High-Tech, High-Wage Jobs
Convinced that America's economy will increasingly depend on the
''creative class'' of workers sought by high-tech and high-wage
companies -- research, health, law, management or marketing
professionals, scientists and artists, whose numbers grew from 10
to 30 percent of the work force over the past century --
Pennsylvania Carnegie-Mellon University professor, urban planner
Richard Florida said, ''Places where the weird and the uncommon are
accepted are places with a social ecosystem that attracts creative
people,'' ranking Gainesville as the nation's second-most-creative
and tolerant city with a population under 250,000. Gainesville
Sun writer Tim Lockette reports that professor Florida, author
of a new book entitled ''Rise of the Creative Class,'' in which he
uses his Bohemian Index, Gay Index and other data to rank 268
American cities on their attractiveness to creative workers, is
touring the country, advising university cities to integrate
campuses with the urban fabric and telling all they will need gay
bars and punk bands rather than smokestacks and tax breaks to cash
in economic growth in this century. The theory is based on his
research following the move of the Internet company Lycos from
Pittsburgh to Boston, when he found, the writer continues, that the
company couldn't recruit enough young professionals, because they
were repelled by Pittsburgh's ''Rust Belt reputation'' and ''a stodgy,
1950s-style corporate culture,'' preferring cities like Boston, San
Francisco and Austin, ''where they could wear their nose rings to
work and retire to coffeehouses in their off-work hours.''
Gainesville officials' reaction varies. New Urbanism proponent,
Commissioner Warren Nielsen, who has long argued that the city's
economic growth will depend on a robust downtown culture instead of
highways and big-box stores, agrees with the advice. Commissioner
Tony Domenech praises creativity, but thinks people getting excited
about these ideas, ''kind of lose track of the basics,'' such as the
need to provide the infrastructure for thriving business.
Commissioner Ed Braddy agrees that more ''creative class'' workers
may stimulate the area's economy but is not sure how this
''trickle-down theory'' will help elevate those flipping burgers. In
response, Florida tells officials to raise low wages, adding,
''steelworkers get paid well because they unionized and fought for
good pay. This is going to have to happen in the service sector.'' -- Gainesville Sun
10/6/2002
Resource(s): www.sunone.com/
New Alachua Commission Could Revisit Comprehensive Plan
Although the Alachua County Commission remains fully Democratic
after November 5, its two newly elected members, Cynthia Chestnut
and Lee Pinkoson, who ''ran on promises to encourage job growth and
reverse the county's anti-business image,'' will pull the commission
''back to the political middle,'' predicts a Gainesville Sun
editorial, giving it ''the opportunity to prove that environmental
protection and economic development are not mutually exclusive
goals.'' Both newcomers, reports Gainesville Sun writer
Janine Young Sikes, expect to form a majority with prospective
commission chairman Rodney Long, who envisages a commission more
sensitive to the needs of people lacking ''better economic
opportunities.'' The test of wills, the writer observes, may first
revolve around the county's newly revised comprehensive plan, with
the two newcomers arguing during their race parts of it should be
revisited, in the interest of farmers and others affected by some
growth restrictions. They include proposals to surround the
Gainesville city limits with an ''urban service line, impose wider
setbacks around wetlands and require rural owners to leave up to 80
percent of their land undeveloped. A group of rural landowners and
local builders has been asking the county for a month in an ongoing
state-mandated mediation process to revise these proposals, in vain
so far. But for the new commission's first meeting on November 26,
Commissioner Chestnut is counting on Commissioners Long and
Pinkoson to tell the county's attorneys to move the negotiations
forward, since ''a protracted litigation'' would delay action on
other priority issues. Several area groups instrumental in crafting
the comprehensive plan, including Sustainable Alachua County, Women
for Wise Growth and the Suwannee-St. Johns Sierra Club -- are
seeking seats at the negotiation table, to prevent any diluting of
the plan. The writer quotes University of Florida physics professor
Dwight Adams, an activist and Sierra Club member, who fears ''a
full-court press to get the county on the road to growth,'' saying
these groups must try to keep the plan ''from going down the tubes.''
-- Gainesville Sun
11/10/2002
Resource(s): www.sunone.com/
Smart Growth Critic Addresses North Central Florida Building Forum
Since all outside experts invited by the Alachua County to
comment on its comprehensive plan revisions in the past two years
hailed Portland, Oregon, and advised ''smart growth,'' the Builders
Association of North Central Florida brought to its Gainesville
forum a former Portland resident, outspoken smart growth critic
Randal O'Toole, who fulfilled association president Howard
Wallace's wish ''to get some balance in the discussion,'' by
blasting Portland for traffic jams, high housing prices and
squeezing many residents into ''Soviet style'' apartment buildings.
Author of a book entitled ''The Vanishing Automobile and Other
Urban Myths,'' O'Toole told the forum's almost 300 participants
that residents of his former Portland neighborhood won a fight
against rezoning it for higher density, but other neighborhoods
are facing similar pressures under a banner of more walkable and
livable city. He also argued, reports Gainesville Sun
writer Janine Young Sikes, that ''incremental changes over the
years have created a heavy-handed regulatory system that
disregards individual property rights.'' Short on solutions, the
writer observes, O'Toole advocated building more roads and taking
a regulatory page from Houston, Texas, by replacing all
government zoning with neighborhood power to decide on
development projects. Noting that many area builders would like
to persuade the County Commission, which will have two new
members after the November election, to make changes in the
comprehensive plan, the writer found the group of county planners
and administrators in the audience skeptical about the speaker's
arguments. ''There needs to be an overall vision despite what he
said,'' stressed county senior planner Jerry Brewington. ''It's a
very complicated issue that he distilled down to simple solutions
when I don't think there is one.'' -- Gainesville Sun
10/30/2002
Resource(s): http://www.sunone.com/
Slow-Growth Newcomers Victorious in Alachua County's Local Commission Elections
In an emerging nationwide trend, voters in Alachua County's cities
of High Springs, Newberry and Archer passed over longtime or
lifetime residents seeking local commission seats and elected
relative newcomers Kirk Eppstein, Joe Hoffman and Lenny Torres, all
having lived there less than five years, but all involved from the
beginning in community service and all dedicated to better growth.
All three, reports Gainesville Sun writer Cindy Swirko, promised to
attract more business, while stressing the need for the
compatibility of development with their small towns' atmosphere and
the environment. An expert from the Washington-based Smart Growth
Alliance, David Goldberg, says, ''What's going on (in Alachua
County) is absolutely classic,'' with old-timers focused on economic
development and newcomers on local character. University of Florida
political science professor Bert Swanson attributes the power shift
to demographic changes in small towns, where many recent residents
still commute to job centers like Gainesville, but want to protect
the town's ambience and quality of life. The newcomers, the
professor says, ''are frustrated because the good ol' boys are so
pro-growth they would sell their grandmother,'' and this frustration
translates into votes for new faces and growth curbs. The Newberry
election winner, Joe Hoffman, puts it this way, ''(The) majority
knew that since I'm from a bigger city, I've seen how industry and
growth can take over a place and that I know how to prevent some of
those pitfalls. I think the younger people here were the majority
of my support.'' -- Gainesville Sun
11/18/2002
Resource(s): www.sunone.com/
Gwinnett County's First Mixed-Use Overlay Ordinance Emphasizes Public Spaces, Allows Higher Density for Large Redevelopment Projects
As Gwinnett County's suburban panorama of one-acre lots recently
became marred by patches of decayed ''big boxes'' and half-empty
malls, the County Commission set out on the path of smart growth,
with unanimous approval of its first mixed-use overlay ordinance,
under which builders proposing to redevelop already-paved sites
of at least 10 acres may push the current maximum density from 13
to 32 units per acre, and mix condos, apartments, offices, shops,
restaurants and parking decks both vertically and horizontally.
Under the ordinance, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution
writer Brian Feagans, any mixed-use overlay project must reserve
one-fifth of the site for public space, while no single use --
retail, office or residential -- can exceed 70 percent of the
site, with specific standards for building materials, landscaping
and parking, and with incentives for plazas, sidewalks, benches
and fountains to make it pedestrian-friendly. In response to
suggestions of expanding the mixed-use ordinance to some
undeveloped areas, County Commission Chairman Wayne Hill said he
wants to see how the first projects will look. Commissioner John
Dunn invited metro Atlanta developers to take advantage of a new
opportunity, saying, ''Gwinnett County is open for the
revitalization business.''
10/23/2002
Resource(s): www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Revitalization Expert Offers Strategies, Urges Citizen Involvement at Henry County Quality Growth Hearing
As metro Atlanta reaches southeast into Henry County, a downtown
and Main Street revitalization expert, Bruce Green, urged all at
the county's Council for Quality Growth public hearing to
challenge the status quo and prepare for the future by ''knowing,
seeing, thinking and caring'' about shaping their community
differently, with a vision of smart growth. ''As southerners, we
don't want to ruffle any feathers,'' he told an audience of area
officials, builders, bankers, realtors and residents. ''Get over
it. Ruffle some feathers. If we don't, what we treasure as
southern life will change dramatically.'' Council executive
director Judy Neal, reports Daily Herald writer April
Avison, said the guest's ''knowledge of smart growth strategies
and creative zoning'' will help the public realize their
importance for quality growth and sense of community. Council
president Stan Cameron added, ''As a council, we've done a lot of
things, but we haven't done a great job of defining quality
growth -- and Bruce just did that for us.''
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1100
Urban Villages Are Focus of Fulton County's Chattahoochee Hill Development Plan
In an effort to protect southern Fulton County's forests, meadows
and riverbanks from sprawl and pollution, county commissioners
unanimously approved a grassroots-inspired plan to steer
Chattahoochee Hill area development into three mixed-use,
pedestrian-oriented urban villages and their hamlets -- with
developers allowed to exceed the current one-home-per-acre limit up
to 14 times, under a purchase of development rights formula
requiring them to compensate for each additional unit by saving an
acre elsewhere. Since the development rights will be traded like
stocks, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Ty
Tagami, all area property owners stand to profit from the plan, not
only those who own land in the villages. ''That's why you saw not
one voice of opposition here and saw a unanimous vote,'' said plan
initiator, local resident Steve Nygren, who began rallying others
for his idea two-and-half years ago and helped flesh it out during
community meetings with county planners. Having agreed in August on
the location and composition of the three villages, the
commissioners also followed with guidelines for their designs.
Noting that the county won't extend sewer lines to the villages,
expecting developers to ensure local sewage treatment, the writer
quotes Commissioner Bill Edwards, who said, ''When you start digging
pipes somewhere, development follows the pipes. Ain't going to be
no pipes to follow.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
10/3/2002
Resource(s): www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Gov. Barnes Hopes Water Protection, Green Space Preservation Continues in New Georgia Government
As he prepares changes in Georgia government, led by Democrats for
more than 100 years, Republican Governor-elect Sonny Perdue told
top agency officials to resign and reapply for their jobs if they
share his management ideals, while outgoing Governor Roy Barnes
urged the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) to hold new leaders ''to
a standard of making tough calls no matter what the price'' and to
continue efforts to preserve the state's quality of life, natural
resources and open space. The governor-elect, reports Atlanta
Journal-Constitution writer Duane D. Stanford, asked all agency
chiefs willing to stay in his administration to read a book
entitled ''Principle-Centered Leadership,'' by corporate management
guru Stephen R. Covey, who also advised former President Clinton
and his wife, Hilary, after Republicans won a Congressional
majority in 1994. Many agency heads intend to reapply for their
jobs, crediting the governor-elect with a good business approach.
The outgoing governor, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution
writer Julie B. Hairston, praised the Georgia Regional
Transportation Authority (GRTA) for its successful cooperation with
ARC, the Department of Transportation and county governments in
advancing metro Atlanta bus service projects and for its role in
redeveloping a former midtown steel-mill site into the mixed-use
Atlantic Station. He said the region's future growth will depend on
water protection and conservation of water resources, and called
for continuation of his $30-million-a-year green space preservation
program as crucial for ''water purification needs and for our
quality of life.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11/22/2002
Resource(s): www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Task Force Unveils Atlanta Parks Expansion Plan
The Atlanta Parks and Green Space Task Force unveiled a $400
million plan to improve and expand area parks by 2012, with task
force chairwoman Barbara Faga saying, ''If we want to be a world
class city, we need world class parks.'' Under the plan, the city
would seek voter approval for a $200 million park bond issue in
2004, to leverage equal private donations. The plan calls for
creation of an Atlanta Park District to manage the program, whose
centerpiece would be a new 500-acre urban park, almost three times
the size of Piedmont Park, the city's biggest. Mayor Shirley
Franklin said, ''We want to start with the best ideas, then figure
out what is good.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11/22/2002
Resource(s): www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/atlanta/
Ordinance Aims to Protect Coeur d'Alene Hillsides from Environmental Degradation
With Coeur d'Alene's four-month suspension of home construction on
nearby slopes expiring next month, its Planning Commission approved
an ordinance to save them from erosion and other environmental
degradation caused by unbridled development and to preserve their
scenic beauty. Responding to some landowners, developers and real
estate agents, who argued at the commission's hearing that building
restrictions would infringe on private property rights,
Commissioner Tom Messina, himself a builder, said, ''We're not
saying you can't develop the hillsides. You can. But you got to do
it so your neighbors are protected.'' The opponents, reports
Spokesman-Review writer Erica Curless, were especially upset
by requirements for tree preservation, rooftop designs and
low-reflective home painting to maintain the aesthetic value of the
slopes and the water quality of Fernan and Coeur d'Alene lakes. The
ordinance would also require soil stability studies and erosion
control plans for each construction project. Opponents said all
these requirements would drive up home costs, but nearby resident
Mike Verbillis pointed out that people ''buying these lots can
afford proper infrastructure.''
11/13/2002
Resource(s): www.spokesmanreview.com/
Kootenai County Rejects Lost Creek Subdivision Project
To the applause from more than 150 residents fighting to protect
their rural quality of life, the Kootenai County Commission
unanimously turned down a proposal to build 184 homes on 256 wooded
acres west of Rathdrum, with its just-reelected chairman, Gus
Johnson, saying the Idaho Forest Industries' (IFI) Lost Creek
subdivision project would create water, sewer and traffic problems.
He was especially concerned over the IFI plan to construct a 10
million gallon sewage lagoon near the creek that helps recharge the
Rathdrum Prairie/Spokane Valley Aquifer. Residents' attorney Scott
Poorman called IFI ''a first-class organization,'' but one with ''a
big hammer,'' and applauded ''the commissioners' courage to deny the
application.'' Resident Claudia Agate said neighbors hold no grudge
against IFI, but asked, ''If they are so environmentally conscious,
why would they destroy such a beautiful piece of property?'' --
Spokesman Review
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.spokesmanreview.com/news
Coeur d'Alene Seeks Input on Hillside Development Ordinance
Having reacted to an August collapse of a hillside road near a home
construction site with a four-month development moratorium for the
area, Coeur d'Alene will now seek developer and public input on a
proposed ordinance that would govern all home-building on the steep
slopes to prevent their degradation and keep the city's eastern
skyline evergreen. Drafted after evaluation of hillside
growth-control efforts by such cities as Ashland, Oregon, and
presented by Growth Services Director Gordon Dobler, reports
Spokane Spokesman-Review writer Thomas Clouse, the ordinance
would require larger lots, to keep their environment relatively
intact, and would bar development on slopes with more than
35-percent decline, unless lots have already been platted.
Developers would have to submit soil stability assessments and
erosion-control plans; save or replace most trees; and hydro-seed
and replant all exposed areas, to spare them the look of ''scarred
hills.'' Also, homeowners may be required to paint dwellings with
low-reflective paint, to make them blend into the background.
Noting that people are moving to the Coeur d'Alene area because of
its lake and mountains, City Councilwoman Deanna Goolander said,
''If we allow our hillsides to degrade, we are losing some of our
assets.'' She added, ''We don't want to tell anybody they can't
develop their hillsides or land. But we can tell people this is the
way you can do this.'' -- The Spokesman-Review
10/8/2002
Resource(s): www.spokesmanreview.com/
Public Support for Wal-Mart Slim at Kootenai County Planning Commission Hearing
Despite Wal-Mart fliers and phone messages telling many Kootenai
County residents that more than 2,000 of their ''friends and
neighbors'' support a Wal-Mart supercenter proposed along Highway 95
in Hayden, only developer representatives and three of 600
attendees at the city Planning and Zoning Commission's hearing
pushed for the necessary change to the city comprehensive plan,
while the rest applauded opponents who said the increased traffic,
noise and light pollution would undercut property values. Speaking
on behalf of local developer Al Eberoll, landscape architect Dean
Logsdon argued that the 223,000-square-foot supercenter wouldn't
cause more traffic or nuisance than a 260-unit apartment building
or townhouses, which are allowed under current zoning, and that the
developer would separate it from adjacent homes with a 50-foot
buffer of trees and berms. The site's owner, developer Steve
Ridenour, told Hayden residents to recognize that ''growth has come''
and to get their own shopping center instead of leaving sales tax
revenue and other profit in nearby Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls.
Spokane Spokesman-Review writer Erica Curless adds that the
planning and zoning commission will present its recommendation to
the City Council in mid-December. -- Spokesman-Review
11/21/2002
Resource(s): www.spokesmanreview.com/
Nova Scotia County Launches Smart Growth Initiative
The Pictou County District Planning Commission (Nova Scotia)
launched its countywide Smart Growth initiative in Trenton to
coincide with the town's periodic Municipal Planning Strategy
review and help it list assets, set goals and specify actions for
business, housing and livability improvements -- a cooperative
process that will gradually reach the county's other four towns,
New Glasgow, Pictou, Stellarton and Westville. The commission, said
its executive director Vernon Parker, will have the towns ''look at
themselves within the overall Pictou County context, and see what
they bring to the table.'' Noting that Trenton's park is the largest
urban green space in the county, he suggested the possibility of
linking it with the New Glasgow trail system two miles to the
south. But the crucial task for the town, he stressed, is to became
proactive.
11/18/2002
Resource(s): www.canada.com/newglasgow
China Set to Build Aqueducts in Water Diversion Project
In the world's largest water-diversion project, China is ready to
build three aqueducts between the Yangtze River in the south and
the densely-populated and drought-plagued north, with water
reaching Shandong province by 2005 and Beijing by 2010, but the
whole construction taking 40 years more, due to the difficulty of
building the third aqueduct along the Tibetan plateau mountains.
Once completed, the three aqueducts will carry 12.6 trillion
gallons of water a year, enough to fill New York City's taps for 25
years, reports the Associated Press. Water Resources Vice Minister
Zhang Jiyao said, ''The south-to-north water diversion project is a
mega project that is strategically aimed at realizing the optimal
allocation of water resources.'' The cost of the first two aqueducts
is expected to exceed US$18 billion. -- Environmental News
Network
11/27/2002
Resource(s): www.enn.com/news/
Pollution Among Factors Threatening Italy's World Heritage Sites
Having studied 36 Italian cities, monuments and archeological sites
from UNESCO's World Heritage List, the Legambiente environmental
group warned that a third of them -- including Venice, the historic
centers of Rome, Florence and Naples, Pisa's Leaning Tower,
remnants of Pompeii and Agrigento Temples -- are threatened by
pollution, poor maintenance and illegal construction. Associated
Press writer Alessandra Rizzo quotes Legambiente President Ermete
Realacci as saying it is ''one of the great Italian paradoxes -- the
fortune of having a unique heritage of art, culture and history ...
and the inability to protect it.'' The writer notes that Premier
Silvio Berlusconi's government plans to raise cash for historic
preservation by selling some state property or granting concessions
for its private use. -- Environmental News Network
11/21/2002
Resource(s): www.enn.com/news/
British Columbia Continues Educational Growth Management Campaign
Seeking greater public involvement in regional growth-management,
SmartGrowthBC (British Columbia) followed its online and media
educational campaign focused on the November 16 municipal elections
with open forums in Vancouver, New Westminster and Surrey, to let
all local candidates answer tough questions directly and to help
voters realize that their choices will strongly influence how the
region handles sprawl, traffic, housing and other quality of life
concerns. ''The municipal government is the level of government most
likely to be called upon to deal with most of these issues,'' said
SmartGrowthBC executive director Cheeying Ho, noting that the 1996
Greater Vancouver Regional District's livable region strategic plan
envisages most growth around Surrey's SkyTrain stations, but the
city builds mostly office parks. Vancouver Sun writer Dan
Rowe adds that SmartGrowthBC was created by the University of
Victoria Eco-Research Chair of Environmental Law and Policy and the
West Coast Environmental Law Association in December 1999. --
Vancouver Sun
11/5/2002
Resource(s): www.canada.com/vancouver/news
British Columbia Office Park Gets the Gold
Vancouver Island Technology Park (VITP) in Victoria, British
Columbia, is the first project in Canada to achieve gold
certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating
system. John Juricic, co-owner of E-Traffic solutions, one of the
tech park's tenants, is stunned that his company's productivity
levels have increased by 30 percent since taking occupancy in April.
Juricic attributes the improvement to an increase in work space and
the park's positive environment -- including walking trails, a
basketball court and high-tech lighting. Probably the greatest lesson
the building's design team came away with was the importance of
having a ''mindset that you can do things differently and it won't
cost you more,'' says Joe Van Belleghem, VITP development manager.
Van Belleghem's team worked with an $11.9-million (Canadian) budget
to develop the 165,000-square-foot building. Instead of spending
$600,000 on a conventional storm-sewer system to carry stormwater
offsite, a series of bioswales and biofiltration ponds was created
that cost only $125,000. The developer also worked with BC Hydro to
create a plan to convert the landfill gas from a local landfill site,
run it through combustion engines and create electricity.
''It's a very profitable venture and we just went out for a proposal
call to the private sector to design, build, own and operate it,'' Van
Belleghem says. ''We're hoping that we're going to get green power
cheaper than you usually do.''
Saanich News (BC), 9 Oct. 2002, by Vern Faulkner; and Business in Vancouver, Aug. 2002, p.18, by Alison Northey.
10/9/2002
Resource(s): www.vitp.ca
Louisville Council Candidates Focus on Smart Growth in Positive Electoral Campaign
In a rare example of a positive electoral campaign, two rivals for
a Louisville Metro Council seat from the mostly rural and largely
affluent eastern part of Jefferson County, Republican Hal Hainer
(50) and Democrat Jim Kennedy (70), declare friendship, support
''smart growth'' and urge greater public involvement in the
development process, focusing simply on who will be better for the
area, with voters able to make that decision on the merits and on
individual perceptions unaffected by negative rhetoric. Louisville
Courier-Journal writer Andrew Wolfson reports that the
Republican candidate, former top executive for NTS Development Co.
-- which antagonized residents of its 1,430-home Lake Forest
subdivision with the idea of selling an adjacent 18-acre horse
pasture for commercial use -- admits that the two huge NTS projects
he managed hardly ''offer the best of what is possible with
intelligent land use,'' but points out that an upscale business park
built later by his own Capstone Realty Inc. has won design and
planning awards. Never ''a darling of the development community'' for
his refusal to play its prevalent ''political fund-raising games,''
he says he has also shunned its contributions, with records showing
$5,400 of the $69,415 for his primary campaign coming from
industry-related interests. He notes his role in crafting the
county's Cornerstone 2020 land-use plan and agrees with his
Democratic opponent, who says, ''Residents are treated like second-
class citizens'' in the planning process, getting 10 minutes to
voice their concerns at public hearings, after developers met for
six months with planning commission staffers. The Democratic
candidate, a Harvard-trained psychotherapist drawn into the land-
use debate by the 1998 opening of a highway interchange near his
home, stresses that although the acronym of his local Old Henry
Neighborhood Organization spells OH NO, he welcomes some
development. But having raised less than $3,000 for his primary and
pledging no higher spending for the November election, the writer
notes, he sees the difficulty of winning in a district with a
seven-point Republican voter registration advantage, saying,
''obviously I know it will be an uphill battle.'' -- Courier-
Journal
10/19/2002
Resource(s): www.courier-journal.com/
Paris Pike Road Project Hailed as Model for ''Context-Sensitive'' Highway Design
The widening of the old two-lane Paris Pike between Lexington and
Paris -- fought from 1966 to 1992 by local farmers and
conservationists as detrimental to its historic character and
slated for completion early next fall -- is now praised by state
officials and former foes alike, with Kentucky Transportation
Secretary James Codell and National Trust for Historic Preservation
expert Dan Costello calling it a national model for a new
''context-sensitive'' highway design, and farmer James Brady saying
the area wouldn't have this beautifully preserved yet improved road
''if it wasn't for our opposition.'' Under the 1992 agreement with
opponents led by the Land and Nature Trust of the Bluegrass,
reports Louisville Courier-Journal writer Chris Poynter, the
state hired a landscape architect firm to help with the widening of
the 12-mile Paris Pike; saved most of roadside trees, ran power
lines around them and replaced all removed during construction;
rebuilt 3.5 miles of historic stone fences; put wooden instead of
metal railguards and grassy instead of gravel shoulders along much
of the road to make it blend with the countryside; bought a
historic farmhouse at its entrance for renovation as a tourism
center; and left the winding route unchanged despite the usual
practice of blasting a straight way through the hills. In addition,
Bourbon and Fayette counties joined in a new Paris Pike Corridor
Commission, which permits only agricultural development within
1,000 feet from both edges of the road. This, the writer notes,
''ensures the Pike won't be commercialized with strip malls.'' Last
month, he adds, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
honored Governor Patton's office, the state transportation cabinet,
the Heritage Council and the Federal Highway Administration for
their work to form the Kentucky Transportation Historic
Preservation Partnership, citing the Paris Pike widening as a
project that ''celebrates the spirit of place instead of
obliterating it.''
11/10/2002
Resource(s): www.courier-journal.com/localnews/
New Orleans Planning Commission Unanimously Approves Master Plan's Quality of Life Documents
Having approved a ''vision statement'' for New Orleans' 13-part,
long-range master plan several years ago, a land-use blueprint in
1999, and three of the seven ''quality of life'' documents earlier
this year, the City Planning Commission unanimously passed the
other four and is now ready to fine-tune the sections on safety
and the environment, community facilities and infrastructure,
critical areas and natural hazards, and environmental quality and
energy, expecting to finish the task by mid-2003. Under the four
just-approved quality of life documents, reports
Times-Picayune writer Bruce Eggler, the city will improve
social and economic conditions for the advancement of arts and
culture, which includes the French Quarter's North Rampart
Street, envisioned initially as a bar and live music
entertainment corridor; support businesses, diversify the economy
and create quality jobs; protect and promote its historic
character and its neighborhoods through preservation and
revitalization; and minimize the impact of tourism on historical
and cultural resources, while expanding the range of visitor
activities beyond the French Quarter.
10/23/2002
Resource(s): www.nola.com/t-p/
Commissioner-Elects of Carroll County Expected to Take the Slow Growth Path
With all seven candidates to the Carroll County Commission pledging
to slow residential growth, stop a controversial water treatment
plant and heal relations with the state, the predominantly
Republican area's voters once again elected three Republicans --
the always moderate incumbent Julia Walsh Gouge, former journalist
and political novice Dean L. Minnich and black Union Bridge Mayor
Perry L. Jones Jr. Widely admired for frequently opposing her two
growth-hungry colleagues on the previous boards, reports
Baltimore Sun writer Childs Walker, Commissioner Gouge
stressed after her fourth win that the county must keep growth from
overwhelming services and ''mend the relationship with the towns and
with Annapolis.'' The other two winners sounded similar themes, with
Minnich saying, ''Even though three Republicans were elected, more
people in the county will be represented by the decisions of this
boards,'' and with Jones expressing confidence in the new board's
ability to handle ''some tough challenges ahead.'' Many voters said,
the writer notes, ''they had showed up primarily to support GOP
gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and voted for the
Republican commissioner candidates out of party loyalty.'' --
Baltimore Sun
11/6/2002
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/carroll/
Maryland Gubernatorial Candidates Agree to Follow Smart Growth Policies, But Paths May Vary
Both Maryland gubernatorial candidates are taking care to confirm
a widely held view that whoever wins will have to follow Governor
Parris N. Glendening's environmental and Smart Growth policies, but
their apparent accord on some principles ends at practicalities,
with Republican U.S Representative Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. declaring,
''We have a common goal. There's just differences on how to get
there'' and Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend stating,
''It makes a difference who the governor is. You can have laws on
the books, and you can decide to enforce or not to enforce.'' Their
respective supporters feel strongly about these differences,
reports Baltimore Sun writer Stephanie Desmon. Farmers say
they are backing Ehrlich as someone who will listen to their
concerns that were neglected by the Democratic administration.
Environmentalists say they are endorsing Kennedy Townsend as
someone who will protect the air, water and open spaces that would
be sacrificed by the Republican. Even though he co-sponsored a
recent $660 million, five-year bill to upgrade sewage treatment
plants that pollute the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries,
environmentalists dismiss his promises to leave a legacy of Bay
protection, pointing to his 21- to 29-percent marks on their
legislative scorecards. In a recent Maryland poll, 50 percent of
likely voters said Kennedy Townsend would be a better steward of
the environment, with 25 percent giving the nod to Ehrlich and the
rest undecided. Observing that both candidates favor the $1.5
billion Intercounty Connector, proposed to relieve Capital Beltway
traffic and spur area business, the writer notes that Kennedy
Townsend lends her support only to environmentally friendly
construction, a condition the executive director of 1000 Friends of
Maryland, Dru Schmidt-Perkins, calls a ''nice thought,'' adding, ''But
it can't be done.'' -- Baltimore Sun
10/21/2002
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/
Editorial: Time to Privatize Maryland's Smart Growth Initiatives
In a likely preview of Republican proposals should the party win
the Maryland gubernatorial election next month, its 1998 candidate
for the U.S. Senate, Baltimore lawyer George Liebmann, writes on a
Baltimore Sun opinion page that the state's current Smart
Growth practice ''has reached its limits'' and that the time has come
to privatize the fight against sprawl. He outlines a host of
measures for recharging Smart Growth and increasing its
effectiveness. School construction funds should be cut, because
''The state payment for each new building relieves counties of the
financial consequences of the sprawl they permit.'' Inner city
redevelopment should be made easier by letting local property
owners ''organize to buy out dissenters who are not
owner-occupiers,'' an approach called ''land pooling'' or ''land
readjustment,'' popular in the Far East and Europe. Instead of
''knee-jerk hostility'' to improvements in suburban roads, the state
should minimize curb cuts, which congest roads with new traffic
''entering every few feet,'' require greater use of parallel service
roads and allow counties to charge higher rush hour tolls.
Furthermore, local zoning should be liberalized to eliminate the
need ''to drive five miles to buy a bottle of milk;'' mass transit
deregulated to permit easier starts for ''new taxi, van and bus
services;'' older neighborhoods given association power and
self-control, which makes new suburban communities attractive; and
state tax breaks and payments for farmland conservation easements
should guarantee public access or rights of way in return.
Conceiving the possibility of ''free-market environmentalism'' --
where builders and localities bear new infrastructure costs,
developers form ''cooperative land-pooling associations,'' industries
help dispose their waste and election precinct residents may impose
''modest tax surcharges or receive modest grants'' for community
rooms, bus shelters, crime prevention cameras or speed bumps -- the
writer sums up his view. ''After eight years of centralized,
bureaucratic approach to land conservation, it's time to see what
methods involving neighbors and the private sector can do to alter
the incentives that create sprawl.'' -- Baltimore Sun
10/2/2002
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/
Outgoing Gov. Glendening Calls for Recommitment to Smart Growth Goals
Enacted into law in 1997, Maryland's Smart Growth is ''a
comprehensive effort'' to reverse decades-long patterns of sprawl
that brought the state a disproportional loss of green space, hurt
air quality, intensified polluted runoff and left older communities
with crumbled infrastructure and pockets of concentrated poverty,
writes Democratic Governor Parris N. Glendening in a Baltimore Sun
opinion as he prepares the transfer of power to Republican
Governor-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., calling for recommitment to
Smart Growth goals, greater expectations and patience about
results. Rejecting views of the agenda as ''no growth,'' ''slow
growth,'' ''anti-suburb'' or ''anti-auto,'' the governor writes,
''Maryland's Smart Growth policies and programs were built around
the recognition that growth is inevitable -- and vital for a
healthy economy. The aim is to provide more choice in housing and
transportation, not less. But equally important, Smart Growth
acknowledges that the state can no longer afford to support
development anywhere and everywhere, at any cost.'' Instead, the
state is using fiscal policy and incentives to make development
follow infrastructure and concentrate within designated growth
areas. As an example of the policy's effectiveness, the governor
cites Baltimore, which almost stabilized its population after a
more than 30 percent decline since the 1950s, attracting about $135
million in private commercial investment over the past two years,
completing major rehabilitation projects with 2,650 jobs so far,
and pursuing redevelopment of the historic and long-neglected west
side. Noting that grants and other aid are also helping revitalize
small cities and suburban communities across the state, the
governor concludes: ''Development patterns are a long-term
phenomenon shaped by the complex interplay of public policy and
private enterprise. We have a decision-making framework that is
fiscally responsible and realistic about market forces. Going
forward, we need to build on it. The health of our economy, our
environment and every Maryland community is at stake.'' -- Baltimore Sun
11/20/2002
Resource(s): www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/
Baltimore's Country Roads Straining Under Increased Traffic
Residents trading a lot of road time for bigger and cheaper homes
in rural areas, along with car and truck drivers escaping highway
congestion through rural shortcuts, are turning the Baltimore
region's once-empty two-lane country roads into part speedways,
part bottlenecks, with safety and gridlock problems worst in
southern Carroll County, western Howard County and most of
Montgomery County northeast of Washington, D.C. Over the last
decade, the Baltimore region's population grew by 9 percent, its
highway system by 11 percent and vehicle miles traveled by 22
percent, reports Baltimore Sun writer Sandy Alexander.
University of Maryland's School of Architecture and Planning
professor Tom Downs says highway expansion keeps up with population
growth and the sharp increase in driving ''is the result of location
choices.'' This, the writer observes, also contributes to rural
roads' accident rate, more than six times higher than on urban
interstates. According to Howard County public works director James
Irvin, the county tries to help rural roads by fixing major
highways, because it's ''easier,'' and by building intersection
traffic circles, or roundabouts, because they reduce accidents by
60 to 90 percent. But some rural residents, who often oppose
widening of secondary roads as certain to invite more traffic, also
question the need for costly traffic circles when stop lights could
do the job. In the end, the writer finds many people ''just
accepting the traffic as a part of life,'' with local farmowner
Barbara Cook saying, ''It's the price of development.''
11/10/2002
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/news/local/howard/
Outgoing Carroll County Commissioners Vote Against Rezoning of Rural Maryland Land
Handed pink slips by their own primary voters last month, Carroll
County Republican Commissioners Donald I. Dell and Robin Bartlett
Frazier finally abstained from their trademark land use clashes
with the state and joined renominated Commissioner Julia Walsh
Gouge against 15 of 16 long-pending rezoning requests, even if
they called a bipartisan appeal by her and the other seven
commissioner candidates to let the next county board make major
policy decisions ''asinine'' and failed to acknowledge a similar
letter by Maryland Secretary of Planning Roy Kienitz. ''They did
the right thing,'' the secretary said, referring to decisions
''made in the light of the day with an understanding of everyone's
point of view.'' Baltimore Sun writer Childs Walker reports
that the approval of all 16 rezoning requests would open to
development about 400 rural and protected acres, mostly in the
environmentally fragile Liberty Reservoir watershed. The only
request approved despite the state's recommendation changes the
designation of 13 acres in Finksburg from conservation to
industrial use, with no specific project proposed so far.
Nevertheless, Democratic commissioner candidate Neil Ridgely
thinks the public Finksburg Planning Area Council may ask the
state to contest the change as bad for the watershed.
10/25/2002
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/news/
Small Farms Count in Howard County Land Preservation Efforts
As large Howard County large farms become rare and developers offer
rural owners two or three times more than the county can afford,
the county's $12.5 million land preservation program still targets
''the big catch'' -- at least 100 acres alone or 25 acres next to a
minimum 50-acre farm -- but officials have also begun to pursue
smaller deals, with County Planning Director Joseph W. Rutter Jr.
saying, ''There's no sense in just sitting in the room sulking
because there's no big ones coming in.'' Baltimore Sun writer
Jamie Smith Hopkins credits the county's ''one-man preservation
division'' -- Jeff Everett, who just moved to the National Park
Service -- with initiating the effort to preserve smaller farms.
Stressing the need ''to think outside the box,'' Everett persuaded 12
owners of farms in a 10 to 40 acre range to file applications for
the state's land preservation program, which accepts small rural
tracts. The writer finds some applicants sold on the idea. The
owner of the 18.3-acre Wit's End farm in Poplar Spring, Kathy
Witty, says she always wanted to preserve the farm, but couldn't
find a way to do it, because ''We didn't have enough land.'' Another
owner, Doris Bell, who has already preserved her 93-acre family
farm in Lisbon, is happy she can also save her 18.6-acre homestead
in Cooksville, stressing the family's openness to anything ''that
will keep a developer from ever breaking it up.'' But the owner of
another 30-acre Cooksville farm, Tom Sheets, faces a dilemma. He is
willing to accept $11,000 per acre to save his farm, but the state
program is offering him $8,300 an acre paid over 25 years with
tax-free interest, while a developer bid is $22,500 an acre paid in
full within 30 days.
11/11/2002
Resource(s): www.sunspot.net/news/local/howard/
Number of Massachusetts Towns Eligible for Preservation Funds Rising
As the number of Massachusetts municipalities entitled to
property-tax raises for land purchases, historic protection and
affordable housing and to matching state funds from the Community
Preservation Act (CPA) reached 58 after the November election,
state Environmental Affairs office spokesman Doug Pizzi sought to
reassure local officials that despite a huge budget shortfall next
fiscal year, the state will strive to provide them with full CPA
funding shares. Last month, reports Boston Globe
correspondent Scott W. Helman, 34 communities shared the initial
$17.9 million in CPA grants, with several current and prospective
recipients east of Boston, where land prices are sky high, thinking
to start modestly with small projects, while putting most of their
CPA money into interest-paying accounts and hoping to acquire
larger tracts or build more low-income housing units later.
Lincoln, whose voters just passed the act, will soon create a
Community Preservation Committee, which will decide how to spend
the expected CPA total of $360,000 each year. Sudbury, its combined
CPA amount already at $1 million, will consider 12 spending
proposals next spring. Wayland, with the first $340,000 state check
raising its CPA fund to $700,000, will likely save the money for a
conservation or affordable housing effort in a few years.
11/13/2002
Resource(s): www.bostonglobe.com/
Michigan’s Smart Growth Governor and Her Unlikely Allies
Michigan Governor-elect Jennifer Granholm campaigned on a promise to strike hard at the sprawling development that clogs highways, empties cities, devours farm and forest land, and diminishes the quality of life. Both the Republican House Speaker, Rick Johnson, and the incoming Republican Senate Majority Leader, Ken Sikkema, have voiced strong support for new government activism to curb sprawl and its harmful consequences. The potential for substantive government action on sprawl is now possible in Michigan. -- Michigan Land Use Institute
11/22/2002
Resource(s): http://mlui.org/report.asp?spid=37
Grand Rapids Called ''Rising Smart Growth Star''
With renovation of its central business district under way and the
first-in-40-years master plan -- focused on revival of all older
neighborhoods -- Grand Rapids, Michigan's second largest city and
a Republican stronghold becomes ''a rising Smart Growth star'' in the
state's increasingly assertive quality of life movement and a
likely model for other municipalities, especially now, after the
decisive vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jennifer
Granholm, whose ''one Michigan'' platform included proposals for
''halting sprawl, fixing roads first before building new ones, and
conserving farmland,'' writes Michigan Land Use Institute's Grand
Rapids expert and journalist Andy Guy on the institute's web page.
In contrast to the 1963 plan, which suggested razing the urban core
and dispersing residents to suburbs along new highways, the Grand
Rapids' 2002 Master Plan, the journalist writes, ''celebrates civic
heritage,'' reduces car dependency and restores the sociocultural
urban identity rooted in ''a unique sense of place.'' The plan's ten
principles promise growth for present communities; mixed land use;
compact development; a range of housing choices and opportunities;
a variety of transportation choices; walkable and accessible
neighborhoods; preservation of farmland, open space, natural beauty
and crucial environmental areas; broad stakeholder and community
cooperation; and predictable, fair and cost-effective development
decisions. The journalist quotes city planning director Bill Hoyt,
who says, ''The ideas in our new plan come from real people not
professional planners,'' stressing that residents told officials to
devise a transit system, reclaim the Grand River waterfront as a
city centerpiece, preserve old architectural landmarks and promote
mixed-use communities. ''This is groundbreaking for Michigan,''
points out Grand Valley Metro Council planning director Andy
Bowman, excited that such a major city understood the need for
change, seized the moment and rethought ''the traditional notions of
community development.'' The Lansing-based Planning and Zoning
Center's president, Mark Wyckoff, expects the new Grand Rapids plan
to fare better than many others that faded elsewhere for lack of
political leadership and dedicated funding. He also thinks the plan
can influence the state's metropolitan agenda if there is a strong
push by such groups as the area's 12-city Urban Core Mayors
Association and by top state leaders. ''This is a major quality of
life issue and the governor has to set the standard,'' he says.
''Even if the state does not spend a dime, the governor can use the
bully pulpit to express new ideas.''
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.mlui.org/growthmanagement/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16369
600,000 Twin Cities Residents Asked to Comment on Regional Growth Plan Via Returnable Brochure
''Transportation shapes development,'' asserts Met Council Chairman
Ted Mondale as the agency targets 600,000 Twin Cities area
residents with a returnable brochure to get final public input on
its Blueprint 2030 regional growth plan, whose three scenarios
reflect the council's new policy of replacing sprawl-type
urbanization in expanding concentric circles with development along
transportation corridors. Most area officials and experts applaud
the policy, while seeking further clarification and offering their
own advice, reports Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried.
According to a report by five nonprofit groups and state Democratic
Senator Myron Orfield, the blueprint will require $8.5 billion,
mostly for transportation by 2010, and Met Council will need at
least half of the money by 2008 to make its 30-year growth-corridor
goals ''realistic.'' The report states the council should use its
funds as leverage for local adoption of these goals and ensure
during its reviews of city comprehensive plans that they adhere to
the blueprint. Also, still concerned about the potential for
sprawl, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly thinks the council should fully
utilize present infrastructure and promote infill. With an October
27 deadline for public input and unofficial voting on the
blueprint's three scenarios, Council Chairman Mondale will announce
the results during his State of the Region address three days
later, saying for now, ''The public is really driving the process.''
-- Pioneer Press
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/
''Embrace Open Space'' Campaign Launched in Twin Cities Area
''Every day in Minnesota, an area the size of the Mall of America is
paved over. Without public engagement, the trend will only
accelerate,'' said McKnight Foundation President Rip Rapson,
launching a yearlong ''Embrace Open Space'' campaign, a joint effort
with ten other groups and agencies to educate residents of the
seven-county Twin Cities metro area about threats to its forests,
wetlands, farmlands and urban greenways and to involve them in
decisions about these assets, crucial for the region's well-being
as it prepares to accommodate another half million people within
two decades. Identifying ten Twin Cities open space ''treasures,'' or
environmentally unique and irreplaceable land and wetland
stretches, the campaign partners will use advertising, direct
communication, grassroots action and other outreach means. The
McKnight Foundation's partners include 1000 Friends of Minnesota,
the Design Center for the American Urban Landscape at the
University of Minnesota, Friends of the Mississippi River, Great
River Greening, the Metropolitan Council, Minnesota Department of
Natural Resources, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy,
Minnesota Land Trust, Sierra Club North Star Chapter and Trust for
Public Land. ''Open spaces are very bit as much a part of the Twin
Cities' infrastructure as roads and sewers,'' the foundation
president stressed in a press release. ''We hope that protecting
open spaces becomes a community priority, one that is seen as an
enhancement of economic development, not a barrier.'' See details at
www.embraceopenspace.org
10/15/2002
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/ ; www.startribune.com
Lake Elmo's November Election Pivotal for Growth Issues
The November election in Lake Elmo -- St. Paul's eastern suburb,
population 7,000 -- is shaping up as a referendum on its clash with
the Met Council regional planning agency over their respective
rights to determine the city's future, with the council setting a
precedent last month by ordering it to plan for 200 houses serviced
by a sewer system by 2010 and for another 1,300 by 2020, and to
abandon the idea of cutting traffic on its Highway 5, used mostly
by through drivers. But Lake Elmo, reports Star Tribune
writer Mike Kaszuba, wants to remain rural, with large home lots,
septic tanks and little development along I-94 at its southern
edge. Those opposing the Met Council order dismiss the agency's
assurance that the city would still remain 85 percent rural,
arguing that once it accepts the regional growth targets, it will
soon be overrun by fast food restaurants, shopping centers and
frontage roads. Passions are high, the writer reports, quoting one
of the five candidates for the two open city council seats, Charlie
Schneider, who praises the city as ''an oasis in the middle of a
hectic world,'' and another, incumbent Steve DeLapp, who doesn't
want Lake Elmo to became like adjacent Woodbury, whose officials
''divide up the land amongst the developers, and whatever they do,
they do.'' One of their rivals, longtime resident Roy Rossow hates
Lake Elmo open spaces, saying, ''I've been looking at cornfields and
bean fields all my life. I'm for growth.'' A mayoral candidate, Mark
Deziel, wants the city to stand fast against the Met Council, but
he also takes some local constituents to task. Too many residents
have ''kind of an elitist ecological sense,'' he said. ''If they were
really concerned about the ecology, they'd make a law where nobody
could live in a house over $250,000.'' -- Star Tribune
10/8/2002
Resource(s): www.startribune.com/
Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council and Minnesota's Governor-Elect Differ on Growth Strategies
With the Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council under Democrat Ted
Mondale pushing for development along transit corridors, affordable
housing and a Blueprint 2030 focused on light rail, and the
Republican Governor-elect Tim Pawlenty favoring new roads,
proposing greater local control and telling radio listeners that
the council has grown ''too big for its britches,'' Pioneer Press
writer Mara H. Gottfried sees a risk for the region's planning and
ability to accommodate another million residents within 30 years.
As the governor-elect told her ''I don't like big government
organizations that are unelected,'' the writer finds him looking
into the possibility of hiring executive directors to run such
regional services as wastewater treatment, bringing the council
under the legislative commission on metropolitan affairs or
reconstituting it as an elected body. The governor-elect, the
writer continues, agrees with the council on the need to redevelop
older neighborhoods and sees ''some merit'' in mixed-use development
along transit corridors, but objects to an obsessive pursuit of the
goal, which ''excludes other needs.'' Egan Mayor Pat Awada --
Minnesota Auditor-elect -- thinks there will be a council ''very
different'' from the one ''that has tried to push their philosophy
down everyone's throat.'' On the other hand, former Democratic
council chairman Curt Johnson wouldn't be surprised if the incoming
governor pulls the council back wherever it may be overreaching,
but his impression is that ''he doesn't act in haste and he won't do
anything knee-jerk with the council.'' Chairman Mondale remains
optimistic. ''Every governor in the country would die to have a tool
like the Metropolitan Council,'' he says. ''Smart growth, the idea
that cities need to take charge and build the way they'd like, is
not a novel idea.'' -- Pioneer Press
11/17/2002
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/
Government Vouchers Offered as Solution to Affordable Housing
The solution to the affordable housing crunch lies in closing the
gap between low incomes and high rents with government vouchers
rather than in building more subsidized units or reducing local
regulations, contended Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis vice
president Ron Feldman, telling a media forum ''If people need food,
we give them food stamps,'' not complain about ''a food crisis'' -- an
argument disputed by Minnesota Housing Agency Commissioner Kit
Hadley, who said it can't explain ''why the rental housing
production dropped off by two-thirds in the metro area in the 1990s
during a time when we had increasing vouchers,'' adding, ''You can't
use a voucher on housing that doesn't exist.'' Citing U.S. General
Accounting Office data from his analysis of the 13-county metro
area's housing, Feldman called vouchers cheaper, with total
per-unit costs for housing production programs 32 to 59 percent
higher in the first year and 12 to 27 percent higher over 30 years.
Noting that 65 percent of area renters spending more than 30
percent of their income on rent were below the poverty line in 1998
-- $17,000 for a family of four that year -- and that 36 percent of
renters paid too much for housing in 2000, Feldman said the federal
government could boost its rental voucher program by diverting
funds from housing production subsidies. Based on 1998 data,
reports Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried, he calculated the
cost of vouchers for all area households spending more than 30
percent of their income on rent at about $370 million. -- Pioneer Press
11/22/2002
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/
Minneapolis Approves ''Density Bonus'' for Multifamily Housing Developers
Under a ''density bonus'' approved by the Minneapolis City Council in
a 9-to-2 vote, multifamily housing developers of at least five
units who make a fifth of them affordable will be able to build 20
percent more units than the code permits -- a zoning change
spearheaded by Council Member Gary Schiff as ''a powerful new tool
to put affordable housing in neighborhoods that have no affordable
housing, without spending a dime of public money,'' but opposed by
Council Members Robert Lilligren and Natalie Johnson Lee as likely
to concentrate higher densities in already overcrowded poor
neighborhoods while sparing wealthier areas. Heritage Neighborhood
Home Owners Association co-founder Al Kelly voiced similar
concerns, especially over the graffiti, litter and crime ''that come
with increased density,'' pointing out that for most urban core
residents, ''their home is their biggest investment and often their
retirement.'' Councilman Schiff thought opponents have ''specific,
complicated problems'' in their neighborhoods, but shouldn't fear
the bonus density because the market for multifamily housing isn't
there anyway. He argued that developers will use the bonus
downtown, in the future Hiawatha Avenue light-rail corridor and
other areas letting them mix affordable housing with upscale
condos. Pioneer Press writer Judith Yates Gorger notes that in
contrast to Minneapolis' citywide zoning change, a similar density
bonus considered in St. Paul would only apply to three districts
hurt by decline in industrial use. -- Pioneer Press, Star Tribune
11/23/2002
Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/ ; www.startribune.com/
Kansas City Voters Approve Infrastructure Bond, But Reject Streetcar-Trail-Park Measure
In a confidence surge seen by Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes as ''a
real turning point'' for the city, voters approved a $35 million
infrastructure bond they killed three months ago and a $74 million
increase in hotel and restaurant taxes for the Bartle convention
hall overhaul -- a feat marred by rejection of a half-cent city
sales tax raise for a 20-mile streetcar line, a 100-mile trail
system and Penn Valley Park improvements. Paid from the fast-
growing property value assessment revenue, the infrastructure bond
would require a property tax increase only if the revenue had
dropped, report Kansas City Star writers Lynn Horsley and
Rick Alm, noting that officials want to spend $16 million downtown
and $19 million in other neighborhoods. Funded by a one percent
increase in the hotel tax and a quarter-cent increase in the
restaurant bill tax, both taking effect in January, the Bartle Hall
overhaul will include interior and exterior renovation, with high-
tech equipment upgrades, a new ballroom and an outdoor plaza, all
to make it more competitive with other city convention centers. As
to the failure of the streetcar-trail-park measure, its champion
Clay Chastian said, ''We tried to show the advantage of a more
balanced transportation system, a more pastoral urban environment,
and a downtown with excitement and soul. But our vision was
distorted by opponents, neglected by the media, and rejected by the
majority. So be it.'' -- Kansas City Star
11/6/2002
Resource(s): www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/
Comprehensive Study Details Sprawl's Effect on Quality of Life
Characterized by dispersal of low-density development; separation
of homes, jobs, and services; absence of strong urban activity
centers; and poor connectivity of local streets, sprawl hurts
people's quality of life by making them drive more, breathe dirtier
air, risk higher traffic fatalities and depend mostly on cars,
write Rutgers University Professor Reid Ewing, Cornell University
Professor Rolf Pendall and Smart Growth America Executive Director
Don Chen in a transportation-focused ''Measuring Sprawl and Its
Impact'' report -- the first on their three-year comprehensive
study, undertaken to clarify and delineate both the conceptual and
empirical content for the growing public debate on sprawl's costs
and consequences. The researchers applied their novel four-prong
Index of Metropolitan Sprawl -- whose total of 22 measurable
variables allowed a far more incisive and academically rigorous
analysis than ever before attempted -- to 83 metro areas, with
almost half of the country's population. Their list of the ten most
affected by sprawl includes Riverside-San Bernardino, CA;
Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, NC; Raleigh-Durham, NC;
Atlanta, GA; Greenville-Spartanburg, SC; West Palm Beach-Boca
Raton-Delray Beach, FL; Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury, CT;
Knoxville, TN; Oxnard-Ventura, CA; and Fort Worth-Arlington, TX.
Smart Growth America offers six policy recommendations to sprawling
urban regions seeking quality of life improvements. It tells them
to reinvest in neglected communities and provide more housing
opportunities; rehabilitate abandoned properties; encourage new
development or redevelopment in already built-up areas; support
growth management strategies; and craft transportation policies
that complement Smart Growth. Available at
www.smartgrowthamerica.org/sprawlindex/sprawlindex.html, the report is highlighted by the
nation's major newspapers, quoting the organization's director Don
Chen, who says three years of research shows that ''sprawl has a
direct and negative impact on our everyday lives.'' The Raleigh
News & Observer notes that a public health professor at the
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Richard Killingsworth,
will join researchers in the January release of the next report,
illustrating how sprawl affects obesity, heart disease, high blood
pressure and diabetes. -- News & Observer
10/15/2002
Resource(s): www.newsobserver.com/ ; www.mysanantonio.com/
Labor Unions Find Common Interests in Smart Growth Efforts
Alarmed by the long outflow of jobs from cities to the sprawling
suburban fringe, where labor unions, wages and benefits are
generally weaker, organized labor has become increasingly aware
that ''urban density is also good for 'union density','' or a
higher unionized worker ratio, with more and more unions
nationwide joining the anti-sprawl and urban-revitalization
movement and bringing their political clout into the campaign for
Smart Growth. Noting that the 17-percent population growth
between 1982 and 1997 was accompanied by a 47-percent increase in
land consumption and a 7-percent decline in the unionized worker
ratio, the director of the capital-based Good Jobs First center,
Greg LeRoy, writes on the Michigan Land Use Institute web page
that labor leaders realize the key issue ''is whether growth
patterns will continue to thin jobs out, de-unionize America, and
keep fueling our nation's tragic rise in inequality.'' They also
find sprawl harming their political agenda. ''Labor's non-partisan
ratings of elected officials show that politicians from sprawling
areas seldom vote with unions on a range of issues from 'fast
track' trade agreements and workplace safety to collective
bargaining rights and pay equity for women,'' he writes, quoting
Chicago Federation of Labor official Don Turner, who says sprawl
looks like ''one giant anti-union conspiracy.'' With their common
interests in urban growth boundaries, compact development, mass
transit and better job access, affordable housing, and secure
urban jobs, tax bases and services, the challenge ''for union
leaders and others in the Smart Growth movement,'' the writer
concludes, ''is to build new bridges around specific issues and
establish the trust necessary for long-term campaigns.'' -- Michigan Land Use Institute
10/25/2002
Resource(s): http://mlui.org/index.asp
Sprawl Threatening Economic Benefits of Military Bases
Increased sprawl pressures around 80 percent of the nation's
military bases -- injecting millions of dollars into local and
state economies -- makes some of them restrict or eliminate
testing and training as impractical or too dangerous in close
proximity to civilian communities, a trend risky both for
national security and for area jobs and revenues, warns the
National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices in
a Natural Resources Policy Studies issue brief, urging local
governments to ''anticipate future urban growth patterns and
create a strategic land use plan that prevents encroachment near
military installation'' and to ''establish high noise and accident
potential zones near military installations and develop zoning
codes that support compatible development of land located within
these zones.'' Calling Arizona ''a national leader in protecting
its bases from encroachment'' -- its new laws currently covering
only military airports serving ''as a model of how states can
influence and encourage compatible development around all
military installations'' -- the brief also mentions similar
legislative efforts in California, Florida and Colorado. In
addition, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin,
Utah and Colorado have created model land-use codes, which offer
an opportunity to tackle the encroachment issue in the future.
Stressing that a comprehensive long-term approach and application
of ''local smart growth tools'' will let communities balance
development with the military's training and defense missions,
the brief concludes: ''In the aftermath of September 11, 2002,
balancing the war on terrorism and homeland security needs with
civilian and military land uses is more important than ever.'' -- National Governors Association
10/18/2002
Resource(s): www.nga.org/nga/newsRoom/1,1169,C_PRESS_RELEASE^D_4535,00.html
Capitol Think-Tank Releases Study Questioning Value of Smart Growth
None of the smart growth ''amenities and efficiencies'' have been
proven yet, while econometric analysis of federal data and Portland
smart growth policies finds that had these policies been applied by
other metro areas in the past decade, ''over a million young and
disadvantaged families, 260,000 of them minority families, would
have been denied the dream of home ownership,'' the average home
price would have risen by $10,000 and the average rent by six
percent, contends a ''Smart Growth and Its Effects on Housing
Markets: The New Segregation'' study, done by QuantEcon, Inc. of
Portland for the Center for Environmental Justice of the National
Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), which identifies itself
as ''a non-profit, non-partisan Capitol think-tank established in
1982,'' saying it used no ''corporate or housing industry funds to
finance the study.'' Noting that ''smart growth'' could be more
objectively called ''restricted growth'' and describing the ''process
of site restriction'' as ''Portlandization,'' the study stresses that
poor and minorities ''pay a disproportionate amount of the social
and economic costs of growth restrictions.'' According to anonymous
NCPPR sources, which note the shift of power in the U.S. Senate,
the study will be followed by a push for legislation to limit
agency smart-growth efforts as ''taking away opportunities for
people.'' Smart Growth advocates dismiss the study as ''shoddy'' and
its claims as ''bogus,'' pointing out that a recent Brookings
Institution study showed no correlation between land scarcity and
housing prices and that the 2000 Census found Portland among the
most economically integrated cities nationwide.
11/21/2002
Resource(s): www.nationalcenter.org/Sprawl.html
Education, Communication Necessary to Overcome Citizen Opposition to High-Density Urban Development
With neighborhood opposition to high-density downtown development
-- especially to mixed-use or mixed-income projects -- often as
intense as in the suburbs, panelists at the recent Urban Land
Institute intown housing conference in Chicago agreed that the best
urban housing levers are strong local government support for growth
pattern changes and public-private ability to educate residents
about integrated land uses, less car dependency and other benefits
of smart growth. These include more tax revenue, job opportunities,
housing options and public amenities, along with revitalization of
blighted areas, said San Diego planning director Gail Goldberg,
crediting the acceptance of the local ''City of Villages'' plan,
which envisages inter-connected, mixed-use, clustered development,
to intense public outreach, saying, ''It doesn't matter if you have
the best development site or the best plans -- if community
opposition is strong enough, you're not going to get anywhere.''
Panelist Maurice Walters, principal of Torti Gallas and Partners,
CHK, Inc. in Silver Spring, Maryland, told listeners that full
local support ''may not always be possible,'' but urged them to learn
about a community before designing a project, do something
beneficial to win its goodwill, incorporate public input into
design drafts for follow-up presentations, present visual concepts
from different vantage points and prepare to negotiate and
re-negotiate. ''The key is to frontload the process with
informational sessions and keep your word,'' stressed Green Street
Properties president Katherine Kelley of Atlanta, whose firm won
popular support for a mixed-use project just outside the city's
core by talking to residents in groups and individually several
months before its zoning application and by involving their leaders
in each step of development process. Chicago's Farr Associates
principal Douglas Farr detailed his firm's similar outreach to
opponents of its mixed-use project near Minneapolis' light-rail
Hiawatha Station, who ''went from chaining themselves to trees to
being comfortable with a five-story building,'' because they saw
''the potential for a true small town feel.''
10/6/2002
Resource(s): http://experts.uli.org/Content/PressRoom/press_releases/2002/PR_029.htm
Home Builders Association Wants Housing Affordability, Choices Added to Quality of Life Factors in Sprawl Study
Agreeing with much of the ''Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact'' report
by Smart Growth America, especially with the key role of infill,
mixed-use and high-density development for urban revitalization,
National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) President Gary
Garczynski expressed disappointment over its omission of ''the
importance of housing affordability and choice to the quality of
life for working Americans.'' In a brief statement, the NAHB
president noted that although the report mentions Portland, Oregon,
with its urban growth boundary as a solution to sprawl, ''not all
communities want urban growth boundaries, and few want skyrocketing
housing prices as a byproduct.'' He also said local and regional
government agencies ''are best qualified to set transportation
funding priorities'' and the ''appropriate role for federal
government is to help communities fund their individual plans.''
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.nahb.org/news_details.aspx?newsID=175
President Bush Hopes to Boost Minority Home Ownership by 40 Percent
With 2001 homeownership rates of 71.8 percent for white Americans,
but only 48.1 percent for blacks and 48.8 percent for Hispanics,
President Bush restated his January proposals to boost minority
homeownership by more than 40 percent this decade, noting
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that if
15 percent of the projected 5.5 million minority buyers get a newly
built home, they would help create 4.1 million jobs and pump a
total of $256 billion into the national economy. ''This project is
not only good for the soul of the country, it's good for the
pocketbook of the country, as well,'' said the President, wrapping
up a daylong White House Conference on Increasing Minority
Ownership at the capital's George Washington University. Featuring
panels on affordable housing, low-cost mortgages and the mortgage
industry, the conference was designed to explore new ideas and
recommit lenders and nonprofit groups to helping minorities with
more credit and capital. HUD Secretary Mel Martinez said, ''When
people own their own homes, they not only build their own future,
they transform entire communities in ways that have enormous social
and economic benefits to all Americans.'' The Associated Press notes
that the Congress still has to act on the President's proposals to
increase government funds for 40,000 low-income families lacking
down payments on their first homes, provide $2.4 billion in
developer tax credits for low-income housing construction or
repair, and let federal rental aid recipients use the money for
down payments or mortgage payments.
10/15/2002
Resource(s): www.cnn.com/ ; www.rebuz.com/
November Elections Show Strong Support for Smart Growth
The November 5 election was a good day for Smart Growth, writes
Michigan Land Use Institute program director Keith Schneider in an
Elm Street Writers Group web commentary, citing Trust For Public
Land data that voters in 79 jurisdictions across 22 states passed
80 percent of their open space protection ballot proposals -- at
the cost of about $2.6 billion in long-term sales tax and property
tax increases -- along with several local and four of seven
statewide measures to fund transit and pedestrian-related
improvements. ''At the state and local levels,'' he writes,
''partnerships are displacing bitter partisanship and voters are
apparently more ready than they've been in decades to really ensure
homeland security'' by ''improving energy efficiency, being more
scrupulous about how communities are built, and becoming more
intent on producing a durable prosperity that is based on the
quality of places they live.'' These results show that voters ''don't
hate government as much as the right says and the left fears,'' he
points out, confident the public understands that the ''emerging
priorities of the 21st century -- relieving congestion, stopping
sprawl, improving water quality, redeveloping neighborhoods,
investing in downtowns, and making urban areas safe -- can only be
solved with politics based on consensus, and on decisions made as
a community.'' See this and other Elm Street Writers' commentaries
on the election and Smart Growth goals at www.mlui.org
11/14/2002
Resource(s): www.mlui.org/growthmanagement/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16371
EPA Presents National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement
''The driving force of Smart Growth is to provide all Americans with
a greater quality of life by developing healthy communities with
flourishing economies, open space for parks and recreation, and
convenient transportation choices,'' said EPA Administrator
Christine Todd Whitman at Washington's National Museum Building
ceremony for the first four winners of EPA's National Award for
Smart Growth Achievement. Created last January to ''recognize and
support public entities'' that promote and achieve smart growth, the
EPA award program drew 102 entries from municipalities, counties
and local, regional and state agencies. In the Built Projects
category, the winner is the Planning Department in the resort town
of Breckenridge, Colorado, for having spurred the neotraditional
Wellington Neighborhood on a reclaimed 22-acre brownfield site near
downtown jobs, with 58 of the 122 homes already built -- 80 percent
of them for sale at about one-third of Breckenridge's $725,000
median home price -- and 20 acres left as parks, trails and open
space. In the Policies and Regulations category, the winner is the
City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County,
California, for its Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Incentive
Program, which helps local governments coordinate land use with
transportation by offering them up to $2,000 for each bedroom in
housing projects of at least 40 units per acre within a third of a
mile from a BART or Caltrain rail station, with a total allocation
of more than $5.2 million between October 1999 and February 2004,
to facilitate construction of 3,689 bedrooms in 15 high-density,
transit-focused projects. In the Community Outreach and Education
category, the winner is the Massachusetts Executive Office of
Environmental Affairs for the Community Preservation Initiative,
under which the state created buildup maps of its 351
municipalities, along with its Fiscal Impact Tool and Alternative
Futures Tool software, to involve all residents in growth decisions
while helping them visualize the social, economic and environmental
advantages of infrastructure optimization, urban redevelopment and
higher density, an educational goal pursued in partnership with 60
affordable housing, historic preservation and open space protection
groups. In the Overall Excellence in Smart Growth category, the
winner is Arlington County, Virginia, for its dense, mixed-use,
two-square-mile Rosslyn-Ballston Metro Corridor, with over 21
million square feet of office-retail-commercial space, more than
3,000 hotel rooms and 22,500 housing units concentrated in ''urban
villages'' around five underground Metrorail stations and tapered
off at the edges of old neighborhoods and green areas. All four
winners ''are true example for other communities around the country
to learn from,'' said Administrator Whitman, stressing that Smart
Growth is not ''anti-growth'' or even ''slow growth'' and reaffirming
EPA's commitment to broad efforts ''to achieve a landscape of
smarter growth throughout the nation.''
11/18/2002
Resource(s): www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/awards.htm
Federal Reserve Governor Cites Cost Benefits of Smart Growth
Citing ''compelling data'' from a non-partisan study on fiscal
advantages of Smart Growth, Federal Reserve governor Edward
Gramlich told participants in a Cincinnati forum held by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland that ''the application of
smart-growth strategies over a twenty-five year period could save
as much as $250 billion, mainly in the form of infrastructure
investment.'' Entitled ''Linking Vision With Capital: Challenges and
Opportunities in Financing Smart Growth,'' the study was launched in
2000 by the Research Institute for Housing America, in partnership
with Rutgers University's Center for Urban Policy Research
professors Robert W. Burchell and David Listokin, for the Mortgage
Bankers Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The
researchers found the general need ''for market innovation and new
products to finance new growth patterns and redevelopment'' and ''for
tools and subsidies for affordable housing.'' Convinced that smart
growth policies will ''increasingly frame'' many local real estate
markets, the researchers showed that the ''growing demand for smart
lending presents lenders with an unparalleled chance to chart their
future business growth,'' while helping localities save up to $250
billion ''in public and private costs'' by 2025. See
www.housingamerica.org
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.forbes.com/markets/
Lincoln City Council Approves Water Bond, Delays Decision on Developer Impact Fees
In starkly divergent votes, the Lincoln City Council passed a $58
million water-system bond issuance and a 7 percent water rate
increase, but split 4-to-3 to delay a decision on long-debated
developer impact fees starting at $2,500 for each single-family
home next year and reaching $4,500 by 2007, with parallel fees for
multifamily and commercial projects. The council's three
Republicans tried to postpone the fee vote until they review a
mayoral infrastructure-financing study expected in June, but agreed
to leave the date open when joined by Democratic Councilwoman
Annette McRoy, whose three party colleagues wanted to vote
immediately or early next month. Democrat Terry Werner chided the
council for the water and impact fee votes inconsistency, saying,
''One minute you say you can't move forward without the whole plan,
the next minute you say you can'' and adding ''It blows my mind.''
Lincoln Journal-Star writer Nate Jenkins notes that the
Homebuilders Association of Lincoln appreciates the delay as
allowing it more input and that fee proponents object to a poll by
an unidentified firm asking residents such manipulative questions
as ''Would you be more or less likely to support impact fees if the
impact fee prevented young new families from affording their first
home?'' -- Lincoln Journal-Star
11/19/2002
Resource(s): www.journalstar.com/
$2.7 Billion Tax and Developer Fee Measure Would Fund Road, Transit and Air Quality Projects in Clark County, Nevada
Alarmed by Las Vegas Valley smog and traffic, 53 percent of Clark
County voters passed a $2.7 billion tax and developer fee package
to fund road, transit and air quality projects in the next 25
years, but the advisory measure depends on legislative approval to
become law. Along with an aviation fuel tax raise, reports Las
Vegas Review-Journal writer Joelle Babula, the package includes
proposals to increase sales tax by a quarter cent and developer
impact fees next year from $500 to $650 for a home and gradually to
$1,000 by 2025, and from 50 to 65 cents and eventually $1 per
square foot for commercial construction. The money would let
officials complete the Las Vegas Beltway within 10 years, build
roads and highways, improve traffic flow, create seven Citizens
Area Transit routes and buy 225 modern buses to replace old
vehicles. ''Without this measure, year by year, we'll see the
community evolving into a situation of almost total gridlock on our
freeways and major arterial roads,'' said Clark County Commissioner
and Transportation Commission member Bruce Woodbury. ''Without it,
we'll have a deteriorating quality of life, and it will cost people
a lot more in terms of gasoline and wasted time.'' -- Las Vegas
Review-Journal
11/6/2002
Resource(s): www.reviewjournal.com/
Bureau of Land Management Under Fire for Land Nevada Swaps
''End the land swaps,'' urges a Las Vegas Review-Journal
editorial in the wake of recent findings by the independent
Appraisal Foundation that the federal Bureau of Land Management
(BLM), which commissioned the report, ignores frequent criticism,
continues ''to give 'special treatment' to developers in land
trades, and surrenders land to private owners at below-market
value.'' Noting a 90-day BLM moratorium on pending land trades in
the West, the editorial ridicules the agency's claim of
''aggressive action'' to improve oversight of its deals. The
editorial points out that Nevada's congressional delegation
anticipated the problem years ago, succeeding with the 1998
Southern Nevada Land Management Act, which shifts BLM focus in
the area from land trades to public auctions. This secures the
disposal of some of the agency's Southern Nevada land at market
value, the editorial says, stressing that ''the practice should
become the principal means the BLM employs nationwide to get rid
of property.''
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.reviewjournal.com/
Nevada Bond Measure Will Fund Variety of Open Space and Cultural Preservation Projects
In a big win for Nevada's environment and quality of life, 59
percent of voters approved a $200 million general obligation bond
issue to preserve water quality, protect lakes, rivers, wetlands,
open space and wildlife habitat, and restore and improve parks,
recreational areas, and historic and cultural resources. As
proposed in Assembly Bill 9, the state will distribute $65.5
million through its Division of State Lands as grants to state
agencies, local governments and nonprofit groups for recreational
trails, urban parks, habitat conservation, open space and
protection of other natural resources. The state Department of
Cultural Affairs will receive $35 million for a new museum at the
Las Vegas Springs Preserve; the Division of Wildlife, $27.5 million
for site acquisitions, facility construction and renovation and
habitat improvement; and the Division of State Parks, $27 million
for land purchases or capital improvements and renovations. Clark
County and Washoe County will get $10 million each for creation of
a regional wetland park and for enhancement and restoration of the
Truckee River corridor, respectively. Depending on the interest
rates and the state economy, the bond repayment may require a
slight increase in the state property tax, up to 2.6 cent per $100
of assessed value, which would raise tax on a $200,000 home by
$18.20 a year.
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.sos.state.nv.us/nvelection/2002_bq/bq1.htm
Concord Council Votes to Amend Housing Policy, Support Affordable Housing Construction and Rehabilitation
Unpersuaded by City Manager Duncan Ballantyne's arguments that
Concord already offers a fair share of low-income housing, would
weaken its tax base by providing more and should let the region
take care of this regional issue, the City Council accepted Mayor
Mike Donovan's description of the city's housing policy as
''elitist'' and voted 14-to-1 for amending it with a provision to
support affordable housing construction and rehabilitation.
Backed by the Concord Area Trust for Community Housing, the
Concord Chamber of Commerce and the Capital Regional Development
Council, reports Concord Monitor writer Jennifer Skalka,
the amended policy will let the city apply for up to $500,000
annually from the federal Community Development Block Grants
program, administered by the Office of State Planning. Quoting
Councilor Katherine Rogers, who said, ''I've never known our
community to say, 'We don't want you here unless you can afford
to pay more property taxes','' the writer points out that the city
realizes it must provide more housing for workers to attract new
businesses.
10/25/2002
Resource(s): www.concordmonitor.com/
Editorial: N.J. Smart Growth Summit Is A ''Good Start''
It was a ''good start'' for New Jersey's fight against sprawl,
opines a Newark Star-Ledger editorial, commending Governor
James E. McGreevey both for his persuasive call for broad
cooperation on smart growth and for raising the crucial question
of how to make the state's 566 municipalities, ''all jealous of
their home-rule powers,'' coordinate their 566 zoning plans among
themselves and with the state master plan, which directs
development to older and new growth centers. That uneasy task
will require balancing many contrary interests, the editorial
says, because New Jerseyans like neither sprawl nor density and
want ''solid economic growth and pristine water and air.'' Also,
the editorial agrees with the development community, ''we cannot
accommodate all our future growth just by rebuilding our cities''
and must make ''tough choices to expand rural centers and create
new ones.'' And finally, the editorial stresses the need to end
''the overreliance on property taxes to support schools and local
governments,'' which fuels a municipal chase after commercial and
other projects that can boost tax revenue, but also ''undermine
wise planning.''
10/23/2002
Resource(s): www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/
Rutgers Team to Study Land Use and Climate Change; Experts See Dramatic Implications for Debate on Open Space and Sprawl
In a first full-scale multidisciplinary effort to identify and
quantify the links between land use and climate change, a Rutgers
University team of historians, biologists, urbanists and other
scientists, led by meteorology professor Alan Robock, is
scrutinizing New Jersey population growth, land consumption and
regional weather since the 1890s and envisaging a computer
modeling program that would use these data and other variables to
project scenarios of the state's future throughout this century.
Noting that earlier studies have shown how deforestation affects
rainfall, how urban heat islands spawn or redirect storms, and
how pavement increases stormwater speed and pollution rates,
New York Times writer Kirk Johnson quotes state officials
and environmentalists, who expect the Rutgers research, partly
funded by the state Department of Environmental Protection, to
have ''huge political implications for the debate about open space
and suburban sprawl.'' Scientific evidence about how a housing or
shopping mall project can affect regional water supply or even
weather, he writes, will transform local zoning and development
battles, with regulators and courts gaining powerful arguments
and with global warming becoming an aspect of urban planning and
''an aspect of politics.'' Professor Robock expresses similar
views. ''Once we get our tools working, we can say, 'What if the
future of New Jersey 100 years from now is this, or what if it's
this other plan -- how will that affect the climate?','' he notes,
hoping to give policy makers information ''that will actually help
them decide what the future development will be like.'' A Rutgers
doctoral candidate, Paul Stuart Wichansky, who is digitalizing a
1980s topographic state map for the climate modeling program,
observes that the past 12 months were the state's warmest in the
last 120 years and expects to find out ''how much of this warming
may actually be due to changes in the land surface itself as a
result of human modification.''
10/24/2002
Resource(s): www.nytimes.com/
Governor's Water Allocation Moratorium Draws Ire of New Jersey Builders
Days after construction industry representatives at the state
Smart Growth Summit applauded Governor James E. McGreevey's
commitment to urban redevelopment and Transportation Commissioner
Jamie Fox's remark that neither are developers ''the enemy'' nor
can sprawl be stopped with ''a building moratorium,'' the Builders
League of South Jersey tied up traffic around the Statehouse with
a motorcade of hundreds protesters against last month's
gubernatorial moratorium on water allocations for new projects in
Atlantic County's townships of Egg Harbor, Galloway and Hamilton.
According to the Associated Press, the Pinelands area's building
restrictions have resulted in such a construction pace in those
three townships -- at a time of statewide drought emergency --
that it could overwhelm the aquifer and deprive other communities
of water. The temporary ban on water for new projects in the
three townships was urged by their own Republican Senator William
Gormley, who stressed that the governor is ''right for saying we
have to slow down.'' Department of Environmental Protection
Commissioner Bradley Campbell pointed to a hardship exemption for
projects under way, adding, ''At the end of the day, neither
builders nor the communities are served if new building is being
approved that can't be supported by the current water supply.'' -- Star-Ledger
10/29/2002
Resource(s): http://www.nj.com/statehouse/ledger/
''Stop Subsidizing Sprawl,'' Says New Jersey's Governor McGreevey
Citing the successful smart growth policies of Maryland Governor
Parris N. Glendening and the implementation of similar land-use
control measures in Europe, Governor James E. McGreevey writes in
a Star-Ledger opinion piece that New Jersey, the nation's
most densely populated state, ''must stop subsidizing sprawl, and
focus on redevelopment and smarter regulation.'' His
administration, he writes, already reversed the last decade's
trend of spending 20 percent of the transportation capital budget
on new roads, focusing instead ''on projects that improve the
overall quality of life, particularly fixing the bottlenecks that
unduly congest our roads.'' It will include expanding the Transit
Villages initiative to reward municipalities for
''transit-friendly, smart-growth land use practices'' and
controlling development spills along roads with restrictions on
''major highway access.'' Pointing out that urban redevelopment
efforts will require faster brownfield reclamation, also for
residential projects, and the establishment of school renaissance
zones, with state funds leveraging substantial private
investment, the governor promises a package of ''super-incentives''
for smart growth developers and a triple increase in Green Acres
funds for downtown parks. The state must also ''strengthen
environmental protection, empower communities to foster
thoughtful planning, and streamline the regulatory process to
target smart growth,'' he adds, noting his administration's
''historic'' proposals to protect drinking water supplies and
wildlife habitat, and its new legal ''defense shield'' for
communities pursuing smart growth, with the Attorney General's
Office offering them help in ''precedent-setting'' cases. ''As
Governor,'' he concludes, ''I am committed to the adherence to
smart growth principles in the state budget.'' -- Star-Ledger
10/27/2002
Resource(s): http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/
Governor McGreevey Outlines Growth Proposals at New Jersey Smart Growth Summit
''Smart growth has to be the core value by which we shape the
future of New Jersey,'' said Governor James E. McGreevey at his
Smart Growth Summit of lawmakers, officials, developers,
conservationists and activists, stressing the need to curb
sprawl, boost urban growth and fight road congestion, and citing
projections of another million residents and 800,000 jobs by
2020, while New Jerseyans are already wasting 261 million hours a
year stuck in traffic, which costs the state economy $4.7 billion
in lost time and $400 million in lost fuel. Key smart growth
proposals outlined by the governor and seven Cabinet members,
reports Bergen Record writer Alex Nussbaum, would let the
state use highway money to ease congestion in older urban areas
rather than in sprawling new suburbs; expand parking around
transit stations to encourage ''pedestrian-friendly downtowns;''
shift $82 million from unused environmental funds to speed up
brownfield reclamation; expand a developer brownfield cleanup
reimbursement program from commercial and industrial to
residential projects; create ''School Renaissance Zones'' in cities
and older suburbs, with public and private funds for home, shop
and park rehabilitation around new schools; triple urban park
funding; adopt new planning and zoning laws to help
municipalities phase in and otherwise control growth; increase
environmental protection for drinking water supplies; and make
developers or municipalities pay for utility line extensions to
projects outside growth centers. The audience liked what the
governor envisioned, the writer reports, though some wished he
had also proposed to deal with the property tax system and
affordable housing rules, often blamed for pushing sprawl into
rural areas; others questioned the state's ability to dissuade
municipalities or local residents from fighting high-density
projects in their areas; and still others saw a potential clash
between further protection of urban riverfront areas and
targeting them for denser development. Acknowledging these
concerns, the governor's deputy policy director, Marty Bierbaum,
pointed out that in exchange for higher growth, targeted
municipalities will get more money for transit, parking and
schools, which should mean jobs, economic advance and lower
taxes. ''Smart growth doesn't mean just shoving people down the
town's throats,'' he said. It means promoting density ''delicately
... in a way that makes sense.''
10/23/2002
Resource(s): www.bergen.com/
Asheville's Smart Growth Partners Presents Second Annual Smart Growth Awards
The Asheville-based Smart Growth Partners of Western North
Carolina, ''a grassroots nonprofit organization working to achieve
livable, healthy and economically robust communities through
compact and orderly development and redevelopment,'' honored several
area jurisdictions, agencies, companies, groups and individuals
advancing these goals with its second annual Smart Growth Awards.
The winners and honorable mention recipients were selected from
numerous entries in eight categories: Economic Development,
Environment, Government Policies, Housing, Neighborhoods, Public
Spaces, Town and Cities, and Transportation. In addition, a Smart
Growth Award in the special Most Burning Issue category went to two
Democratic state lawmakers, Senator Steve Metcalf and
Representative Martin Nesbitt, and nine other individuals for their
key roles in the passage of the state's Clean Smokestacks Act. See
www.smartgrowth-wnc.org -- Asheville Citizen-Times
11/17/2002
Resource(s): http://cgi.citizen-times.com/
Asheville Applies New Mixed-Use Zoning to Historic Broadway
To spur development along Asheville's historic Broadway -- widened
to four lanes in 1997, but still two-thirds empty -- the City
Council unanimously voted to zone it as a new mixed-use
Neighborhood Corridor District, allowing construction of four-story
buildings with stores or offices on the ground floor and
residential units above. The new district ordinance incorporates
local input to ensure that development won't infringe on the area's
planned greenway, and limits building footprints to 48,000 square
feet, reports Asheville Citizen-Times writer Melissa
Williams, but still raises some worries over their impact. Resident
Cynthia Long says she supports the ordinance and its spirit, yet
pictures herself having breakfast next to a large building and
''wondering where the sun went.'' Despite such concerns, Vice Mayor
Terry Bellamy considers the ordinance a good one. ''Sometimes
there's going to be give and take,'' she says. ''But we do that for
the betterment of our community.''
11/12/2002
Resource(s): www.citizen-times.com/
Charlotte Receives Pledge of $250,000 from EPA Administrator Whitman for ''Action Steps'' to Reduce Sprawl
''Nature doesn't recognize geo-political borders,'' said EPA
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, applauding officials from
11 counties and 15 cities of the Charlotte region -- its
population up from 1.6 to 2.1 million since 1990 -- for their
extraordinary cooperation under the EPA Regional Sustainability
Demonstration Project, launched with a $100,000 EPA grant in
2000, and for devising 25 ''action steps'' to fight the area's
urban sprawl, traffic congestion, water pollution and other
environmental ills. Administrator Whitman also promised another
$250,000 in federal money to help them deal with those
challenges. According to the Associated Press and Charlotte
Observer writer Peter Smolowitz, the project's participants
agreed to reduce cul-de-sacs, require sidewalks and set minimum
tree planting standards in new residential projects; promote
greenways, bike paths and pedestrian trails; maintain buffers
along rivers and creeks; and encourage carpooling. Project
co-chairman, Mecklenburg County Commission Chairman Park Helms
said the action steps will prove the region's leaders are its
''good stewards.'' The other co-chairman, Charlotte Mayor Pat
McCrory, noted that some of the steps will be controversial in
some areas, but urged officials to take them now, before the
situation worsens. And in response to a question about
implementation deadlines, Statesville Mayor John Marshall said,
''Smart growth is something you put in place, and you build, and
you build, and you build. There is no end to this. This is the
way it's going to be from now on.'' -- Charlotte Observer
10/31/2002
Resource(s): http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/
Voters Reject Measure to Fund Light-Rail in Greater Cincinnati
Despite strong support by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit
Authority and a diverse coalition of civic, business and
environmental groups, 68 percent of Hamilton County voters rejected
a half-cent sales tax increase, which would have raised about $60
million annually over 25 years for the $2.6 billion MetroMoves
plan, to build a Greater Cincinnati light-rail system and expand
regional bus service. The plan's supporters argued, writes
Cincinnati Post reporter Barry M. Horstman, that the tax
increase would cost the average family only $68 a year, with 50
percent of the MetroMoves cost covered by federal government and
another 25 percent by the state. They cited estimates that the plan
would not only relieve congestion, cut air pollution and provide
transportation for poor residents, but also create 36,000 jobs and
pour $5 billion into the local economy. Governor Bob Taft was
receptive to paying the state share of the plan's cost, but days
before the election admitted that the expected budget deficit might
obstruct this commitment. Opponent used it as an additional
argument. After the plan's defeat, the leader of the Alternatives
to Light Rail Transit group, Stephan Louis, said: ''I think a lot of
people felt this was a good idea that just didn't pencil out. There
was uncertainty about the financing, no specificity about exactly
what would be built and no definite timeline on when it would be
built. That's just not enough to ask people to give you $60 million
a year for the next 25 years or so.'' -- Cincinnati Post
11/6/2002
Resource(s): www.cincypost.com/2002/11/06/atransit110602.html
Cincinnati Streetcar Proponents Look for Local Money to Secure Federal Funds
Supporters of the defeated $2.6 billion MetroMoves transit plan for
Greater Cincinnati confirm that Hamilton County's vote against a
half-cent sales tax raise shattered its prospects for federal funds
from the pending five-year transportation bill, but aware that
other metro areas failed repeatedly before winning tax-for-transit
approvals, they will renew the push for a countywide light-rail
system sometime before 2008, while proponents of streetcars as a
replacement for shuttle buses on the four-mile loop from downtown
Cincinnati to Covington and Newport in Kentucky feel unaffected and
continue their search for local money to secure federal funding.
They expect federal dollars to cover 50 to 80 percent of the $130
million streetcar cost, writes Cincinnati Post reporter Bob
Driehaus, noting that the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of
Governments recommended streetcars as the best option for replacing
the loop's buses and relieving both congestion and air pollution on
both sides of the Ohio River. The streetcar project is in the hands
of Southbank Partners and Downtown Cincinnati Inc., with their
joint planning committee leader, Wally Pagan, expecting local
funding to include ''some creative tax, maybe on autos using roads
and parking lots near the loop,'' adding, ''It would have to be some
way to eliminate cars on the road.'' -- Cincinnati Post
11/8/2002
Resource(s): www.cincypost.com/
Smart Growth Education Foundation Presents First Smart Growth Community Excellence Awards
''Smart growth means land use planning that involves such issues
as availability of land for housing, building to higher
densities, reviewing and revising outdated zoning laws,
preserving open space and environmentally sensitive areas, and
redeveloping cities and older suburbs,'' said R. J. ''Buz''
Buzogany, the executive director of the Smart Growth Education
Foundation, honoring six area residential developers with
its first Smart Growth Community Excellence Awards. Funded by the
regional lending and real estate industry, the awards went to BFR
Partners, Cleveland; Heartland Developers, Shaker Heights;
Maschek Construction Company, Hiram; Pulte Homes of Ohio, Solon;
Scaletta Development Corp., Avon; and Zaremba, Inc., Cleveland.
Additionally, BFR Partners received the ''Best of Show'' award;
City Architecture, Cleveland, won in the Development Proposals
category; and Zaremba, Inc. and the nonprofit Neighborhood
Progress, Inc., Cleveland, were recognized as Precedent Setters
for their early 1990s' smart growth efforts to revitalize urban
neighborhoods. ''It is important that we recognize organizations
that are making the best use of our land and our natural
resources to develop our residential areas,'' said Foundation
chairman Chris Majzun. ''There is only so much land, and it has to
be used wisely for housing, farming, retail-commercial, business,
recreation and natural preservation purposes.'' Created to present
''a unified voice'' for area builders and related industries on
Smart Growth issues, the foundation sees its mission in educating
Northeast Ohio communities about development options, seeking
consensus and forming links ''with organizations that have the
same goal -- growing smarter in the new millennium.'' See
www.hbacleveland.com/growth.html -- PR Newswire
10/23/2002
Resource(s): http://www.prnewswire.com/news/
Governor Cautious on Funding for Cincinnati's ''MetroMoves'' Transit Upgrade and Light-Rail Plans
Less than three weeks before Hamilton County votes on a half-cent
sales tax increase that would raise $61 million a year as its 25-
percent funding share for a proposed $2.6 billion Greater
Cincinnati ''MetroMoves'' light-rail system and bus transit upgrade
plan -- with another 25 percent expected from the state and 50
percent from the federal government -- Governor Bob Taft said he is
''receptive,'' but delivering the state's money may be difficult,
because of the enormous budget deficit and efforts to rebuild the
''entire interstate highway system.'' Nevertheless, the governor told
The Cincinnati Post editorial board, the approval of the
county sales tax increase on November 5 would show that voters
consider light rail ''a priority'' and would send ''a strong message
that would get some attention.'' Opponents of the proposed five-
line, 61-mile light-rail system as too costly and likely to exhaust
federal funds sought for other needs, focus on the governor's
cautionary remark as playing into their hands, with Alternatives to
Light Rail Transit leader Stephan Louis calling its funding ''a
giant Ponzi scheme on a cosmic level.'' On the other hand,
proponents stress the importance of the coming vote, reports
Cincinnati Post writer Barry M. Horstman. Downtown activist
John Schneider says no state or federal money is needed to get
started, because increased local tax revenue could be used earlier
than projected. Reduction or cancellation of the state share could
at most stretch the construction of the Hamilton County portion of
the system from 23 to 30 years, he thinks, adding, ''No city that
has ever voted to build light rail has failed to attract federal
money.'' -- The Cincinnati Post
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.cincypost.com/
Activists Seek Greenbelt Plan Support for Portland's Urban Growth Boundary
With about one month left for public input on the Portland urban
growth boundary expansion, expected from the Metro Council by
mid-December, three Damascus-Boring activists are challenging ''the
conventional view of growth'' -- that urbanization will blur the
edges between this area's northern and western edges and greater
Portland -- and urging residents to support their ''Greenbelt and
Small Towns Concept,'' which would let the towns protect their
separate identities with a permanent northwest beltway and expand
instead to the east and south. The greenbelt, write Damascus
Singing Salad Farm owners Dean Apostol and Marcia Sinclair and
Boring Community Planning Organization chairman Les Otto in The
Oregonian, would provide metro residents with more sustainably
grown fresh food, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreational
areas, while greenbelt landowners would be compensated through land
trust tax breaks and sales of development rights to builders in
adjacent growth areas. The greenbelt and small town concept,
already approved by the Boring Community Planning Organization,
contains six principles. Area residents must accept a fair share of
regional growth. Proposed projects cannot alter the character of
rural neighborhoods. Future development must ensure conservation
and improvement of local economic and environmental services. All
planning processes must be open and inclusive, to guarantee the
area's voice in shaping development. Development pace cannot exceed
infrastructure and service capacity, including transportation,
sewers, water, parks and schools, along with police, fire and
environmental protection. A local governance system must be
established ahead of any urbanization. ''This is the Oregon vision
that we think most of us want to see,'' the writers conclude.
''Small, compact, manageable towns set within a tapestry of fields
and forests.'' For more information contact wordland@aracnet.com and
leso@affectnet.com -- The Oregonian
10/10/2002
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/metroeast/oregonian
Portland's Metro Council President Outlines Plans to Streamline Agency
After 58 percent of Portland area voters picked the Metro Council's
peer-chosen presiding officer David Bragdon as the first regionally
elected council president, he outlined his vision of streamlining
the agency, telling hundreds of its employees to take heart from
the electoral successes of like-minded candidates, but also
promising efforts to win over ''doubters,'' the 42 percent who voted
for his opponent Kate Schiele and her pro-roads and anti-density
platform. Noting that Bragdon won by a landslide in Portland, but
just barely in the outlying suburbs, where many see the council as
''urban-centric,'' Oregonian writer Laura Oppenheimer quotes
him as saying suburban residents are frustrated by growth because
they feel its traffic effects more directly. She adds that voters
approved overhaul of the council in 2000 to make it more efficient,
eliminate internal frictions and save money, and that Bragdon
called for a new regional economic strategy to influence land use
and transportation, and for further purchases of open space, once
the economy improves and the agency increases its operational
funds. -- Oregonian
11/20/2002
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/metro/oregonian/
Portland Growth Boundary Expansion Ready for Final Vote
Having expanded the three-county Portland area growth boundary by
just 6,000 acres since 1980 and held numerous public hearings on
its further growth needs, the Metro Council is ready for a final
December 5 vote to expand the boundary by 18,300 acres, considering
it sufficient for 37,400 new housing units, along with commercial
and industrial projects in the next 20 years. In a series of split
votes earlier this month, the seven-member council resisted the
outgoing Executive Mike Burton's suggestions for an even larger
expansion -- with more land for parks and a half-percent lower
increase of urban density -- while accepting the need to urbanize
a larger acreage than some members proposed. The majority voted
tentatively for the 18,300-acre expansion, assuming that 68 percent
of Portland area newcomers will live within the urban growth
boundary, expecting its population growth rate to be 1.6 percent a
year and deciding to increase the share of new development sent to
present neighborhoods from 26.5 to 29 percent. More than half of
the housing and job growth, reports Oregonian writer Laura
Oppenheimer, is projected for the southeast Portland suburb of
Damascus, which has little farmland, but enough rough tracts to
build communities from scratch. The area lacks sewer service and
adequate roads, and the council expects local residents to lead the
development planning process, which will take several years. --
Oregonian
11/21/2002
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/metro/oregonian/
Land-Value Loss Compensation a Hot Issue in Oregon Gubernatorial Campaign
Although the Oregon Supreme Court barred a move to compensate
owners for land-value losses incurred under Oregon land-use laws --
invalidating Measure 7, passed by voters in 2000, as using one
amendment for multiple constitutional changes -- the compensation
remains a potent issue in the state gubernatorial campaign, with
Republican Kevin Mannix willing to send the measure's ''technically
correct'' version back to voters, Democrat Ted Kulongoski arguing
for a legislative solution and Libertarian Tom Cox proposing to
study the effectiveness of land-use laws in preserving farmland and
curbing sprawl. Endorsed by the Oregon Farm Bureau, Republican
Mannix, a Democrat until 1999, worries that too narrow an
interpretation of land-use laws by state agencies may prevent some
advisable and community-supported projects in such fast-growing
areas as Washington County, saying the legislature should consider
them on a case-by-case basis. Backed by environmental groups,
Democrat Kulongoski pledges an educational campaign on the value of
the state's 30-year-old land-use laws, pointing out that many
Oregonians, including newcomers, have ''no memory of why we did it.''
Libertarian Cox sees the need to take a ''sober look at all the side
effects of our land-use planning laws,'' suspecting Portland's
growth boundary for causing home cost increases and affordable
housing shortages. Otherwise, reports Oregonian writer R.
Gregory Nokes, the candidates gloss over the environment, which
respondents in a recent poll ranked eighth among their concerns.
Oregon League of Conservation Voters Jonathan Poisner considers it
understandable in the context of everything ''going on in the
world,'' but also unfortunate. ''The governor has a tremendous impact
on Oregon's environment,'' he says. ''It's very important to have a
governor committed to the basic safeguards to make Oregon a great
place to live.'' -- The Oregonian
10/21/2002
Resource(s): www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Editorial: Pennsylvania Law Hinders Smart Growth
''Pennsylvania law hinders smart growth,'' asserts former long-time
York County Planning Commission director Jack Dunn in two
consecutive weekly columns in the York Daily Record, calling
the county's and most local plans ''realistic,'' but insufficiently
effective due to both the lack of tools and the lax implementation
process set by the state's 1968 Municipalities Planning Code (MPC).
Despite extensive revisions in 2000, the MPC remains ''deeply
flawed,'' the writer argues, its biggest flaws being weak
enforcement, which lets municipalities ignore their own plans, and
week consistency, which allows discrepancies between municipal
zoning and planning and between local and regional plans. In
contrast to states whose ''planning legislation provides broad
parameters for the process of managing growth and leaves the
details up to local governments'' as true ''enabling legislation''
should do, Pennsylvania has ''prescriptive legislation,'' with land-
use micromanaged in Harrisburg. But state lawmakers lack expertise
in many growth-management issues and depend on factual information
from varied sources, most notably, he writes, from the Pennsylvania
Builders Association and the Pennsylvania State Association of
Township Supervisors. The builders usually oppose legislation
believed to impede development or increase its costs; the
supervisors are ''lukewarm'' toward regional planning and sometimes
think ''the world ends at the township boundary.'' On the other hand,
he continues, the Pennsylvania Planning Association lacks ''a broad
constituency and financial resources'' and its recent efforts to
form a partnership with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and
the 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania weren't highly successful.
Stressing that effective growth-management lobbying ''requires a
continuing and sustained effort to create a relationship of trust
and informed opinion,'' the writer points activists to the most
urgent solutions. The MPC should be simplified and many of its
provisions clarified. The relationship between counties and
municipalities should be redefined. Members of local planning
commissions, zoning boards and other agencies should receive proper
training. The State Planning Board should be reactivated with
sufficient professional staff, he concludes, and its ''basic mission
should be the preparation of a General State Plan.'' -- York
Daily Record
10/23/2002
Resource(s): www.ydr.com/
Charleston Reviews Impact Fees to Fund Expansion of City Services; Exemptions Offered for Affordable Housing Projects
Anticipating the Charleston metro population's jump from about
97,000 to more than 145,000 by 2015, most of this growth in the
Cainhoy and West Ashley areas and on Daniel Island, the city
planning commission wants to cushion the cost of expanding
services through one citywide and three sectional developer
impact fees, with an exemption for affordable housing projects.
Post and Courier writer Jason Hardin quotes planner Tim
Keane, who says growth will be paying ''for the facilities made
necessary because of that growth, as opposed to spreading the
cost across the entire city.'' Likely to be considered by the City
Council next month, the citywide fee of $97.71 per each new
housing unit would pay for additional garbage trucks, while the
sectional fees of $594.24 in Cainhoy, $321.26 in West Ashley and
$424.60 on Daniel Island would cover the cost of new public
safety facilities, including police and fire stations. Commercial
projects would be charged the new fees on a square-foot basis.
The writer adds that the current impact fees currently charged by
Charleston Commissioners of Public Works total about $2,500 for a
new house and fund water and sewer services.
10/17/2002
Resource(s): www.charleston.net/
Isle of Palms' House Size Caps Reflect Trend in Charleston-Area's Barrier Islands
Concerned that the spread of bigger and bigger homes from the Isle
of Palms' waterfront to the residential center may destroy the
character of this barrier island community, its City Council voted
7-1 for a hotly-debated ordinance that caps house size at 7,000
square feet, limits a house footprint alone or in combination with
other impervious surfaces to 40 percent of a lot and requires extra
side-yard setbacks for the portions of a house extending 25 feet
above ground to prevent a ''boxy'' look. The sole dissenter,
Councilman Dee Taylor, took the side of several property owners,
arguing that the restrictions infringe on their property rights.
But Mayor Mike Sottile spoke for the rest of the council and most
residents, calling the ordinance fair for both sides and ''a good
balance all the way around.'' As growth pressures mount across
barrier islands, other communities also try to protect themselves
with building restriction measures, reports Charleston Post and
Courier writer David Quick. Earlier this year, Edisto Island
restricted house size to 3,800 square feet and Sullivan's Island
limited house footprints to 15 or 20 percent of a lot, depending on
its size. Folly Beach, Kiawah Island and Pawley's Island are
studying similar options. -- Post and Courier
11/27/2002
Resource(s): www.charleston.net/
New Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Underway for Utah's Legacy Highway
As ordered by the 10th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Denver
three months earlier, the Utah Department of Transportation began
preparatory work on a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
(SEIS) for the proposed 14-mile, four-lane Legacy Highway, which
would destroy 144 acres of wetlands in southern Davis County.
Salt Lake Tribune writer John Keahey reminds readers that
the original Environmental Impact Statement, conducted over three
years and completed in 2000 at the cost $15.5 million, was
challenged in court by the Sierra Club, Utahns for Better
Transportation and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson as
insufficient, with appeals court justices agreeing it glossed over
other route options, likely effects of commuter rail slated for the
area by 2007, and the possibility of adding lanes to I-15. SEIS
Project Manager Andrew Gemperline said the court-ordered study will
take at least a year, asserting, ''We want to continue to maintain
an open mind through this new process'' of evaluating options and
their environmental impact. Utahns for Better Transportation
spokesman Rober Borgenicht commented, ''If they are going to do as
the court demanded, and have an objective process without
pre-conceived solutions, then we will have faith in the process.''
-- Salt Lake Tribune
11/22/2002
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Salt Lake's Growing Downtown Population Has Officials Hopeful for Faster Main Street Revival
The increase in condos and apartments from 1,900 to 3,300 since
1997 has boosted Salt Lake City's downtown population to more
than 4,500 -- still far behind Portland's 12,000 and Seattle's
16,000 plus, but enough to make officials hope for faster
reinvigoration of the struggling Main Street corridor and step up
their efforts to encourage more housing throughout the city.
Salt Lake Tribune writers Joe Baird and Heather May quote
Mayor Rocky Anderson's chief of staff, David Nimkin, who says the
city is identifying sites for eventual purchase and resale to
builders of mixed-use projects, while being ready to assist
nonprofit developers financially. But many think the city should
also put more money directly into downtown housing. Sam Weller's
Books owner Tony Weller says he can't convert his Main Street
store's upper floors into condos because seismic upgrades would
cost him up to $2 million. A resident of the affordable New Grand
Hotel, Darla Ball, worries, ''We can't afford condos. We're all on
fixed incomes, but the rent keeps getting raised; costs keep
going up.'' Real estate agent Babs De Lay stresses that any
two-bedroom downtown units in an $80,000 to $150,000 range would
''go so fast you wouldn't believe it.'' Like other downtown
residents, she enjoys urban living. ''I like the fact that in my
own neighborhood there's a Russian population, an Asian
population and a Hispanic population,'' she tells the writers. ''It
makes me more culturally aware every time I drive down the road
or talk to another human being.'' So do others. Young couples like
Paul and Stacey Richards, who are having ''such a great time that
we kind of have to force ourselves to stay home;'' empty-nesters
like Sandra Lee and Bill Sterns, who can do anything they want
''on short notice with ease and convenience'' and like ''not having
to maintain a yard;'' retirees like Dan Livingston, who likes
''being where the action is;'' and professionals like KTVX anchor
Randall Carlisle, who sums it all up, saying, ''I have the best of
all worlds. I can't say there's a downside to living here, unless
you're threatened by people who are different than you.''
10/21/2002
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Strong Support for Foothills Development Restrictions in Eastern Davis County
With rooftops creeping up ever higher in Davis County's eastern
foothills, 92 percent of county residents wish to preserve much of
them as open space, 73 percent want to limit how high development
can reach and 67 percent think those living farther on the slopes
should pay more for such services as fire protection, waste
collection and snow removal. A poll conducted by Dan Jones &
Associates for the Davis Council of Governments also found, reports
Salt Lake Tribune writer Lori Buttars, only 36 percent of
respondents seeing present foothills development as about right,
but 55 percent considering it already excessive and almost 70
percent willing to pay up to $20 a household for a foothills open
space and trail program. In a series of three workshops this month,
county officials are gathering more detailed public input on
hillside preservation and development, hoping to devise a plan
resembling the one crafted a few ago to preserve the Great Salt
Lake shores. One of their goals, the writer adds, is to link
sections of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail into a 25-mile long
cross-county recreational area. -- The Salt Lake Tribune
10/4/2002
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Partnership Hopes to Preserve Portions of Southern Jordan River Corridor
A partnership of Utah agencies, Salt Lake County, the Great Salt
Lake Audubon Society and the cities of Draper and Riverton launched
the South Valley Open Space project to protect the southern part of
the Jordan River corridor from looming development pressures, with
an initial goal of preserving at least 370 acres on both sides of
a two-mile stretch of the river between State Route 71 and
Bangerter Highway. In 2000, the Jordan River Natural Areas Forum,
created by more than two dozens public and private agencies and
groups, identified about 1,500 acres of wetlands and uplands along
the river for preservation, most of them south of SR 71 down to
Lake Utah. The new project's managers, reports Salt Lake
Tribune writer Karyn Hsiao, will work with the forum and the
Jordan River Parkway Committee to align recreational trails and
find ways to preserve local wildlife habitat areas. Riverton Mayor
Mont Evans, who sees open space and riverfront preservation as a
priority for the fast-growing city, said the task is difficult
because there are ''multiple land owners, multiple jurisdictions and
multiple purposes for land,'' adding, ''That's why it's important to
bring all the stakeholders together.'' The writer notes that the
project partners also met with area residents to get their input on
land and wildlife preservation. -- Salt Lake Tribune
11/21/2002
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/
Details Emerging for Salt Lake City-Ogden Commuter Rail Line
The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is fleshing out a five-year plan
for a 35-mile commuter rail between Salt Lake City and Ogden, with
the current environmental study reaching another 25 miles toward
Weber County's northern edge, to have the results ready for a
possible extension of the line to Brigham City and beyond. Salt
Lake Tribune writer John Keahey reports that UTA construction
and engineering manager Steve Meyer expects the commuter train to
run by the end of 2007 if the federal government covers about half
of the projected $450 million construction cost. UTA has already
spent $120 million for access to Union Pacific's freight corridor,
counts on a $20 million state contribution and hopes to get the
rest from bond sales and from sales tax revenue, which is growing
thanks to a half-cent hike passed by voters in 2000. Former Layton
City Councilman Stuart Adams, newly elected to the state
legislature, says the northern Wasatch Front commuter rail ''is
badly needed,'' especially since the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Denver upheld the suspension of the 14-mile, $451
million Legacy Highway project in southern Davis County until the
state completes a more thorough environmental study. The writer
notes that UTA also hopes to extend the future commuter rail line
south of Salt Lake City within 10 years, provided that Utah County
residents approve a tax-for-transit increase, perhaps in 2004.
11/13/2002
Resource(s): www.sltrib.com/11132002/utah/16042.htm
Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads Voters Reject Tax Plan for Road and Transit Projects
The state's increasingly congested capital and southeast shore
regions can't expect any relief soon, as 55 percent of Northern
Virginia voters rejected a half-cent sales tax increase that would
bring in $5.9 billion over two decades for regional road and
transit projects, while almost 62 percent of Hampton Roads area
voters turned down a one-cent sales tax increase that would yield
$2.8 billion for regional highways. Governor Mark R. Warner, most
state lawmakers, business leaders, developers and newspapers
advocated the sales tax increases in both regions as crucial for
fighting traffic gridlock, saving quality of life and ensuring
economic prospects. But opponents, including ''a sometimes uneasy
alliance of anti-tax Republicans and environmentalists,'' reports
Washington Post writer R.H. Melton, fueled the pervasive
resentment toward tax hikes, road-induced sprawl and the state's
long inability to manage its transportation funds. Piedmont
Environmental Council president Chris Miller sees the measures'
defeat as ''a huge win for smart growth'' and related efforts to end
''the domination of the political environment by the development
industry.'' Coalition for Smarter Growth director Steward Schwartz
calls it ''a rejection of the status-quo approach to land use and
transportation,'' which shows voters understand that ''you can't
build your way out of sprawl.'' He adds, ''Tomorrow, we roll up our
sleeves to fight for better land use practices, going back to the
General Assembly to tie any additional transportation funding to
where and how we develop.'' -- Washington Post, Richmond Times-Dispatch
11/7/2002
Resource(s): www.washingtonpost.com/ ; www.timesdispatch.com/
Ballot Phrase Change Issued for ''Popular'' Seattle Monorail
Attesting to the sensitivity of phrasing in public documents, King
County Superior Court judge Jim Doerty removed the adjective
''popular'' from the title and text of the November ballot on the
proposed 14-mile Seattle monorail and made it specify that the
construction would require up to $1.5 billion in bonds and that the
1.4 percent motor-vehicle tax would be levied annually. Instead of
''Seattle Popular Monorail Authority,'' the ballot is now entitled
''Proposed Seattle Monorail Authority,'' even though the original
initiative approved by voters two years ago not only authorized $6
million for the Elevated Transportation Company (ETC), but also
called for a ''Seattle Popular Transit Plan.'' The suit to change the
wording and clarify the costs was brought by the Citizens Against
the Monorail group, whose member Henry Aronson asked later, ''Why
are the supporters of the monorail fighting so hard for the public
not to know this?'' ETC board chairman Tom Weeks expressed
confidence that voters ''know it is a winning plan'' and ''want to
solve traffic problems in Seattle.'' A member of the pro-monorail
Rise Above It All group, Peter Sherwin, commented, ''You can take
the 'Popular' out of the ballot, but you can't take the popular out
of the monorail.'' Seattle Times reporter Mike Lindblom notes
that both sides will present their arguments in official voter
pamphlets. -- Seattle Times
10/4/2002
Resource(s): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/
Seattle's Monorail Approved by Slim Margin, But Other Transit Programs Fail to Win Votes
While Washington state officials, stunned by a 62-percent vote
against $7.8 billion in new taxes and fees for transportation
(Referendum 51), announced likely service and personnel cuts, and
their three-county Sound Transit counterparts signaled a probable
suit to save a $2.4 billion light-rail project despite a 51-percent
vote for revenue cuts (Initiative-776), proponents of Seattle's
$1.7 billion monorail waited two excruciating weeks before the last
absentee ballots pulled them ahead by two-tenths of a percent, or
877 votes. State Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald said the
failure of Referendum 51 -- which would have increased gas taxes by
9 cents, vehicle sales taxes by one percent and truck-weight fees
by 30 percent -- will force layoffs and clip road building
projects, with most of the reduced funds going to repairs and
maintenance, especially in the absence of new state funding
legislation or the expected federal dollars. Sound Transit
spokesman Lee Somerstein said the passage of Initiative-776 --
which deprives the agency of much anticipated revenue by repealing
a $15 vehicle-registration surcharge and a four-tenths of a cent
vehicle sales tax in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Douglas counties,
while limiting annual license-tab fees in their urban areas to $30
-- affects its ability to issue bonds in the future. With the
Pierce County Council already committed to legal action against the
$15 surcharge loss, County Executive John Ladenburg pointed out
that voters in the three-county Sound Transit district supported
their taxation for Puget Sound area roads and transit by a 57
percent margin and shouldn't be barred from this choice by
unaffected voters in the rest of the state. State and local
agencies intend to collect the area's taxes and fees until a court
decides otherwise and Sound Transit officials hope to get enough
money to build the initial light-rail segment at least. In a
comment on the narrow monorail win, Secretary of State Sam Reed
advised proponents to proceed with confidence, because if they are
tentative, they are ''asking for trouble.'' The 14-mile cross-town
elevated monorail line between Ballard, downtown and West Seattle
is slated for operation by 2009. -- Seattle Times
11/22/2002
Resource(s): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/
Kitsap County Candidates Provide Clear Choices on Growth Issues
In contrast to the political mimicry evident in some electoral
races around the country, the two opposite-party contenders for a
Kitsap County Commission seat couldn't be farther apart on Smart
Growth, with Democratic incumbent Tim Botkin telling a local Home
Builders Association audience that the movement seeks optimal
development in the context of public costs, environmental impact
and community goals, and his Republican challenger Patty Lent
declaring herself against Smart Growth, because it infringes on
individual choices about where to live. ''People want to live
outside urban growth areas,'' she stressed. ''They're willing to pay
to live out there ... and to drive their cars.'' As for public
costs, reports Bremerton Sun writer Christopher Dunagan, she
said developers pay for their site roads and utilities. She stated
her opposition to an impact fee increase, currently under
consideration, noting that she would prefer to eliminate the fees
altogether, since they may raise home costs and discourage
construction. Criticizing the county for spending beyond its
revenue and for taxing people out of their homes, she promised to
cut expenses, adding, ''Maintaining your individual rights will be
my primary and sacred duty.'' The Democratic incumbent pointed out
that he helped halve the county's property tax to 2.8 percent last
year, that only a fourth of rural property tax goes into the
general fund, which doesn't pay for roads, schools and most
recreational facilities, and that residents must decide whether
they want them and how to pay for their construction. The Kitsap
Smart Growth Coalition, including homebuilders, Realtors and
environmentalists, he said, is seeking common ground and smarter
ways to develop. -- Bremerton Sun
10/5/2002
Resource(s): www.thesunlink.com/
Seattle Transport Summit to Focus on Congestion Relief
Doing nothing isn't an option, concluded Governor Gary Locke after
voters rejected the proposed $7.8 billion tax and fee hikes for
transportation improvements (Referendum 51), but instead of calling
a lame-duck legislative session to scramble for solutions, he
consulted privately with key lawmakers, deciding to gather state
and regional leaders, business and labor representatives,
environmentalists, activists and legislative staffers at a
transportation summit December 19 in Seattle. The summit should
outline a strategy for a leaner congestion relief plan, the
governor told Associated Press writer David Ammons, convinced that
the new funding package must contain smaller tax and fee increases,
along with strict accountability provisions to give voters
confidence in efficient spending of their tax dollars.
Gubernatorial aide DeLee Shoemaker added, ''The idea is to talk
about the next step, and the next step will be more collaborative,
not just the governor throwing out a proposal and the Legislature
reacting to it. It has to be a joint effort.'' -- Spokesman-
Review
11/26/2002
Resource(s): www.spokesmanreview.com/
Plan Commission Will Begin Work on Draft of Smart Growth Ordinance for Green County's Town of Adams
Aware of the labor, time and cost involved in preparation of a
comprehensive long-term development plan, required under the
state's Smart Growth law from each jurisdiction by 2010, a
Citizens Advisory Committee on land use in Green County's tiny
town of Adams moved from year-long exploration toward forming an
official plan commission, which should present its draft for the
town board's approval and enactment of a smart growth ordinance
in about three years. Advisory committee leader Stephanie Elkins
told Monroe Times correspondent Linda Wyeth that her group
and the plan commission will work with the Southwestern Wisconsin
Regional Planning Commission to make the draft reflect common
interests. Among its required elements, she said, the plan must
include provisions for land use, housing, transportation,
economic development and agricultural, natural and cultural
resources. She also noted increased resident involvement in
shaping the rural area's future, with individual preferences
ranging from no growth to unrestricted growth, saying, ''I don't
think there has been a meeting where I didn't see a new face.''
10/16/2002
Resource(s): www.themonroetimes.com/
Germantown Plan Commission Seeks Balance for Land Uses, Considers 20-Year Population Growth Limit
With half of Germantown's 35-square-mile area still mostly open
space zoned for agricultural use, the Plan Commission preparing a
state-required Smart Growth blueprint may let the village
population increase from 18,200 to about 28,000 by 2020,
indicated village planner Jason Gallo, stressing that officials
are ''not against development,'' while pointing out that ''To
control growth, you have to look at land use planning as a tool
for incremental growth.'' Village President and commission
chairman Charles Hargan said its decisions on extending water and
sewer services will shape future growth paths. Helped by a
$30,000 state Smart Growth grant, reports Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel writer Peter Maller, the village is seeking
''a balance'' between residential, commercial, industrial and
recreational land use. Their draft due to the Village Board early
next year, planners are also looking at transportation, agency
cooperation, cultural facilities and other community issues,
including the provision of housing for all income groups. -- Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel
10/22/2002
Resource(s): http://www.jsonline.com/
Expert Suggests Options to Garner Smart Growth Support from Rural Residents
Declaring himself a New Urbanism and Smart Growth supporter, but
also ''a realist,'' national land-use expert and conservation
subdivision advocate Randall Arendt told Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel urban landscape writer Whitney Gould that
few rural residents ''want to adopt Smart Growth,'' because it
means they ''can't do anything with their land except farm it,''
which they see as unfair, ''like taking away their 401 (k).''
Interviewed before his November 7 workshop on ''Growing Greener in
Wisconsin'' at the Ruekert/Mielke Conference Center in Pewaukee,
Arendt said clustering homes on smaller lots and setting aside at
least 50 percent of any subdivision as greenspace can save ''a lot
of farmland,'' while providing other benefits. The green space can
be used for fruit and vegetable planting, with ''pick-your-own''
operations; left as grassland or meadow it can help sustain
wildlife, store flood water and recharge aquifer; and managed
otherwise it can be turned into wetlands or woodlands -- all this
with research showing that conservation design ''creates higher
property values than standard-size lots.'' Having planned
conservation subdivisions in 16 states, including Wisconsin,
Arendt said the design isn't ''a major player on the grand stage
of development,'' but ''it's moving forward in fits and starts,''
with him working ''on a dozen right now,'' some of them in
Caledonia and the Lake Geneva area. Asked about the main
impediments, he mentioned inflexible local regulations and
insufficiently creative developer thinking. -- Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel
10/23/2002
Resource(s): http://www.jsonline.com/
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