Sprawl vs. Smart Growth...critical issues

I read an interesting interview by Grist.org with Anthony Flint, whose book This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America is a chronicle of the fledgling smart-growth movement and the challenges it faces from entrenched interests. For 20 years, Flint was a journalist covering urban development, planning, and transportation, primarily for The Boston Globe. Recently he left behind the daily beat: at the end of July, he will move to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank devoted to land issues.

Over the years I've picked up a few insights as I have migrated across America.

• After WWII, the rural population migrated to the city.
  
• Cities are becoming more dense than is healthy for family life.
  
• Sprawl increases energy consumption, which increases pollution, etc.
  
• Homes have been eviscerated of almost all functionality except sleep....and that's even decreasing.
  
• We need new ways to cope with our escalating population!
  

Anthony's insights coincide with my own...so of course, I like what he has to say...following are excerpts from his interview. I encourage you to read the entire interview on GRIST.ORG.

CAUSES...before SOLUTIONS...

Urban Migration(s)

Dispersed suburban development, particularly housing, was encouraged by government policies: low-cost mortgages, the interstate highway system, and road-building practices generally. And zoning in this country, the rules that govern development, is geared toward promoting dispersed patterns.

The Automobile

The government saw suburban areas as a great hope for housing and organizing settlement. Energy was cheap, and the car was seen as a terrific mode of transportation (and it is in many ways).

Zoning

Zoning actually guarantees separated use and dispersal, because it came into being at a time when cities were messy, unhealthy, crowded places. Social reformers came in and said, hey, we need to make sure this slaughterhouse isn't near this tenement house. That encouraged this process of separating all the functions.

The Status Quo

There are homebuilders and road builders and others who have an obvious vested interest in the status quo. It's a very automated system. It's automatically financed; it's automatically ushered through because of the zoning in place around the country. It's a very easy thing to defend and maintain as the status quo, because it's very difficult to develop in any other way. You have lobbyists and the big homebuilders and others aligned with libertarian think tanks and critics of smart growth who are making sure, with op-ed essays and letters to the editor and blogs and the like, that this smart-growth stuff doesn't take hold and start to eat away at the bread and butter of the conventional development industry.

Affluence and Affordability

If you can afford a big house on a big piece of land, well, chances are you'll head out to get yourself that kind of property. What's driving sprawl, of course, is affordability -- the way home prices, at least at first, seem within reach.

SOLUTIONS

Even some of the big homebuilders whose bread and butter has been single-family subdivisions are establishing high-density units: KB Homes, Pulte, Toll Brothers in Manhattan. Lennar is doing urban infill and redevelopment. All of these homebuilders see the writing on the wall, that there's going to be demand for something other than single-family-home subdivisions.

But I'm convinced that there are an equal number of enticements to come back in: a better sense of community, more convenience, better quality of life, and perhaps most importantly now, lower cost in terms of not having to fill up the tank of the car all the time.

Americans are discovering that sprawl is a false bargain. These costs and inconveniences reveal themselves only over time, so there's a kind of bait-and-switch quality to sprawl that leads people to see the sticker price and buy the home -- but then, a year later, it's costing an awful lot to heat or cool that 2,500-square-foot home. A year later the taxes are higher because the county or the local government has had to extend infrastructure to such far-flung areas. A year later, filling up the tank is costing $70, $80, $90 a week. That adds up to some real money for the family budget.

There has been a demonstrated revival of interest in living in cities. Now, a good part of that is retiring baby boomers selling the big house in the suburbs, moving into the city for the cultural amenities and convenience. Young professionals, certainly. But also families that are rediscovering older suburbs, moving into new urbanist projects that are more like the neighborhoods we used to build in this country before World War II. But it's early. Gas prices in particular need some time to really sink in.


What is this "INFILL" stuff?


A lot of the resistance to density and infill comes from current residents of those areas. They fear bigger taxes, crowded schools, crime. How do you get past that?

Smart growth is harder. It's harder to do than sprawl. You have to deal with existing neighborhoods, and you have to make it a participatory process. Otherwise it doesn't work and you're clashing all the time. You have to make it really well designed, to show that these kinds of developments and redevelopments are pleasant and vibrant places. And, by the way, they add value. Density and mixed-use and development around transit are good for the individual homeowner who's already there, because all of these trends add value.

In terms of statewide initiatives to address growth, things are changing rapidly. About 40 states have one form or another of smart-growth policies and initiatives. The most successful are those that emphasize incentives rather than focusing on restrictions on bad development.

Smart growth is actually a conservative notion, because it saves money. It saves money because cities and towns don't have to extend infrastructure so far. You're taking advantage of existing infrastructure with redevelopment, and you're also leveling the playing field.

Are there ways to improve sprawling suburbs and make them more like the kind of communities people want?

This is particularly true in the older suburbs, so-called mature or first-ring suburbs. These places are getting rediscovered because they have good bones; they have reasonably human-scaled street blocks and grids, and the infrastructure is all there. With those kinds of places, it's a matter of working on the transportation systems, making sure there's a town center that allows mixed use, making sure that you maintain a good open-space and parks network, because the great value of living this way is that you should be able to walk with your kid to a park.

For the closer-in suburban areas, you're already seeing a lot of reinventing going on. Example: Plano and Richardson, Texas, north of Dallas. These are becoming hotbeds for transit-oriented development and town-center living, as folks take advantage of a commuter rail network. I wouldn't necessarily have said 10 years ago that Plano would be a hotbed for smart growth, but it's being reinvented. It's possible.

There is an incredible sea change under way in terms of environmentalists embracing the basic principles of smart growth. Sierra Club is coming out now with the 12 best redevelopment sites in the country. That's really noteworthy.

Environmentalists -- and anybody who's concerned about global warming -- recognize that cities are, per capita, the most energy-efficient human settlements. Manhattan is one of the greenest places on Earth. They're working hand in hand with people concerned about affordable housing, planners, architects, labor, communities of faith -- there's a big coalition behind smart growth and new urbanism.

We're all realizing we put tons of carbon into the atmosphere, all of us, every year. It's primarily because of driving. Why do we drive so much? Well, it's the physical environment and the way it's dispersed. So let's address our physical environment. I see a new generation of environmentalists focused on how we've arranged our landscape for ourselves.

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SOURCE:
What an amazing, lengthy discussion. That's why I love Grist.org! To read the complete article, go to grist.org/