Smart Growth's Misunderstood Message

Washington Post ^ | 16 October 2004 | Roger K. Lewis

[Lorianne]

In the rancorous political environment of this year's presidential election campaign, American voters seem to be polarized as never before. In the environment of real estate development and land-use planning, opinions about "smart growth" are becoming just as polarized.

Smart growth proponents and opponents are drawing ever sharper lines, honing ever narrower definitions and more assertively taking sides. "Either with me or against me" attitudes seem to prevail among both advocates and critics.

Unfortunately, overly polarized discourse is inherently obstructive and misleading. It distorts and oversimplifies, obscuring rather than illuminating complex realities that are variable with time, place and resources.

Sharp division into factions inevitably occurs when people resist dealing with complexity. Unwilling or unable to analyze the multiple, substantive aspects of a complex issue, some people are naturally drawn to boiled-down versions. Never mind the facts -- just a few, succinct black-or-white highlights.

Regrettably, smart growth is suffering this fate. The term is being used more and more as a defining label, as if it were a code word for a specific cause or movement zealously espoused by faithful adherents.

[hedgetrimmer]

fighting sprawl

Your beef should with your politicians who make corrupt deals with developers to promote smart growth. When individuals are allowed to develop their own land, and individual lots are sold for individuals to develop, you get reasonable densities and usually the character and charm that an individual can apply to their property.

When you "fight sprawl" you are allowing the government to control the housing market and development and you tempt elected and other officials to corruption when they start making sweetheart deals with large developers. New London Connecticut is a prime example.

In California, "green developers" cut deals with corrupt politiicans and shut the individual single family home buyer out of the market for land (not pre-built homes).Because the government is controlling the housing market, individuals who wish to purchase homes have to buy homes on the postage stamp sized lots that the government considers appropriate density. There is no choice in these developments if a person wants 1/3, 1/2 or a one acre lot.

If you love your county and the land you live on, you would oppose the high densities that smart growth requires. High densities create more pollution, more congestion and less privacy than most Americans want. By creating unnatural "edges" around cities and neigborhoods (smart growth principles do not allow town to merge into country but must have well defined boundaries) you create a fortess look and psychology for the town or neighborhood,rather than a more natural blending of the two. This psychological feel is intended by smart growth developers, because their goal is behavior modification.

Smart growth promoted by government is out of place in a free country populated by free people. It is very much in place with the Soviet Union and collective centralized government control of housing.

[hedgetrimmer]

conserve the organic neighborhoods of the county

There is no such thing as an organic neighborhood in smart growth. You are not allowed to change your home in a smart growth development the way you wish. You are restricted by numerous covenants and regulations. Most smart growth developments are identical to each other, they have restrictive covenants on property, they limit your ability to use and drive cars, they force you into public spaces because smart growthers don't believe in privacy or private property. By trying to preserve a "view" as in the beautiful environment, you are stealing private property rights from individuals protected by the Constitution.

[tacticalogic]

My own neighborhood, the tree-filled Palisades area of Washington, could be a model. In this older, moderately dense Northwest neighborhood there are single-family houses, duplexes, row houses and apartment buildings. I can comfortably walk or bike to the grocery store and drugstore, several restaurants, numerous convenience stores, a full-service gas station, two banks, three dry cleaners, a Starbuck's, a travel agency, a public elementary school, a federal park and a D.C. park with tennis courts, playground, tot lot and recreation center. Although the nearest subway stop is a bit far, the bus stop is one block away.

The only thing I really care about having within walking distance of my house is the mailbox. I won't mess with yours if you don't mess with mine.

[Wallace T.]

What will likely happen in your county, if land use restrictions work as they have in other places is that the old time residents, many of whom are descendants of colonial settlers, who are the GOP voters, will leave the county for the Eastern Shore or rural Virginia, where they can still live a rural lifestyle. Rich liberals will move in from the closer in suburbs of Washington, gentrifying the antebellum housing stock or meeting stringent building codes. In 15 years, your county will be an East Coast version of Marin County. It will be as reliably Democrat as is Baltimore.

"Smart growth" clears areas of lower income whites and blacks as effectively as "uncontrolled" growth. Agriculture and blue collar operations suffer because lower income people can no longer afford to live there. Additionally, Bubba and Bubette are just not comfortable around Biff and Buffy, and vice versa. Gentlemen farmers buy out traditional farmers to obtain "protected" farm land for their weekend retreats. Real farmers retire or move to other locations. The country ceases to be in crop or livestock production and reverts to forest or brush. This development brings in wild animals. Since Biff and Buffy obtained their view of animals from "Bambi" and "Born Free," they are anti-hunting. Not long thereafter, the countryside is overpopulated with deer, which bring coyotes and other predators. Sometimes, those predators will just as soon snack on the family's dog or cat, or even an unfortunate jogger or two.

Socialism in the name of conservation works no better than socialism in the name of the proletariat.

[hedgetrimmer]

Well said, Wallace T.

[Edmund Burke]

Most "sprawl" is caused by local zoning ordinances adopted after WWII. Get rid of zoning and developers will use land in a more efficient manner and "sprawl" will be minimized.

[Lorianne]

Correct, as it should be. Let the market decide.
Unfortunately, zoning laws over the last 50 years have not let the market decide.

[Lorianne]

Zoning laws infringe on the free market. People should be able to live on smaller parcels of land if they wish. And developers should be able to develop their properties in the way they see fit.

Zoning laws are more coercive than "smart growth".

[xcamel]

I think there is a big difference between Maryland and NY where plans to depopulate the Catskills (NYC watershed) have been afoot for years, Economic disenfranchisement of the communities in the Adirondacks, Draconian EnCon requirements and building moratoriums abound. You just can't decide one day "I got mine, now screw you!". Equal protection under the law is just as important as equal rights. And without steadfast property rights laws, you have no rights at all.

[Lorianne]

Zoning laws for the last 50 years have created the same havoc you mention in relation to "smart growth". Telling people how to use thier property is the same coercive anti-property rights thing ... no matter who does it.

[Lorianne]

Correct !

[Lorianne]

Zoning laws of the last 50+ years are no different than current "smart growth" proposals. Both limit the free market and private property owner's discretion.

[tacticalogic]

Correct, as it should be. Let the market decide.

If the day comes when "the market" decides I need to move, how will that decision be manifested?

[1Old Pro]

In reality, smart growth is a broad term encompassing a broad public policy goal: to wisely plan, distribute and manage physical growth to achieve objectives on which most citizens agree.

NOPE, "Smart Growth" deserves the perjorative connotation. It's a 60's Utopian concept designed to redistribute funes from red suburbs to blue cities so that the cities can afford to pay their bloated public payrolls. It's also anti- personal property rights. It's basically an anti-capitalist concept and deserves to be mocked and denied.

[Wallace T.]

No comparison is perfect, of course. Your county is still a bit distant from Baltimore or Washington. That is not the case with Marin County, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. However, the same dynamics are likely to take place in Queen Anne's County. The watermen and other blue collar types are probably going to head out due to the chance to make a profit on real estate, increased taxes due to the greater demands of the exurbanites for schools and public works, and general discomfort with people that are "not their kind" culturally, though not racially. Thus, a large chunk of the Republican base will disappear into Virginia or more rural parts of Maryland. Then people from places like Montgomery County, who blame increasing problems in their home county on uncontrolled growth rather than excessive spending by local governments on anything other than highways and transit will see Queen Anne's County as the new frontier. Throw in some Federal or public school retirees, especially those with dual incomes into the mix.

Counties do not stay static politically. Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York were Republican bastions, regularly the latter, which represents the eastern half of Long Island. Due to demographic changes, they went from solid "red" to reliably "blue". Queen Anne's County will change politically. But if your zoning laws discourage the middle class with families, who tend to be more conservative from settling, but invites upper middle income, often childless couples, often with graduate degrees, who lean toward liberalism, to move in, the change will away from the GOP.

Impelling lower class families to leave and discouraging the middle class from moving in to offset the upper class migrants will have the likely consequence of creating another silk stocking, liberal jurisdiction.

[Lorianne]

Smart Growth is only a new term for a new type of zoning. It is just as bad as, but not worse than, other types of zoning.

The problem is the concept of zoning, which is not a new thing.

My take: Let the market decide. Zonging laws of the last 50+ years have prohibited developers from providng a variety of products ... which the property buying public would choose the way they wish to live.

[Lorianne]

I do not know who Russell Kirk is. Any information?