It’s little wonder that the issue of managing growth was a central theme at last week’s National Governors Association Conference in Providence.
Controlling urban sprawl has been a pet issue of Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening, the outgoing NGA chairman. The conference’s opening sessions centered on how states can preserve open spaces, revitalize urban areas and protect natural resources.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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There was adulation for states that have implemented “smart-growth” measures — including Rhode Island, which was praised for its open-space preservation and redevelopment of Providence.
But an NGA task force on growth convened Aug. 6th for a panel discussion of a less-cheery reality: Despite efforts to curb sprawl, there are some hefty institutional barriers that are keeping the movement from getting off the ground.
“The majority of people in America have only known sprawl,” said Anton C. Nelessen, of Princeton, N.J.-based Nelessen Associates, a community-design and planning firm. “It’s something we inherited and it’s been programmed.”
The theory espoused by planning experts at the panel discussion is that U.S. municipalities abandoned many of the time-tested elements of community design during the Depression, deferring to the notion that any development is good development.
The lingering result has been a proliferation of office parks, strip malls and one-dimensional residential subdivisions – all hallmarks of suburban sprawl. Experts say these design features now are ingrained in the zoning and building codes of local governments across the country.
“In the post-World War II era, suburban tract housing gave the impetus to suburban sprawl,” said David S. Cordish, Chief Executive Officer of The Cordish Co., a Baltimore-based development company that specializes in mixed-use projects. “Unfortunately that hasn’t stopped yet.”
At the NGA’s panel discussion on growth – attended by about 100 people – governors heard a solution to sprawl that is simple in theory but difficult in practice: Let people decide the fate of their communities.
“What people really want in Americathey can’t have, because zoning codes won’t let it happen in most cases,” said Nelessen.
He maintains that Americans generally want the same things when it comes to community design. Most people think mixed-use development and green spaces are good; suburban strip malls and downtown surface parking lots are bad.
To illustrate his theory, Nelessen used a visual survey accompanied by a slide show, asking participants to rank how they felt about dozens of random scenes taken from communities across the country – everything from a lonely stretch of farmland to inner-city public housing units.
A photo of a five-lane arterial road crammed on both sides by vast parking lots and strip malls rated poorly, as did an image of a sterile, treeless subdivision with streets lined by rows of cookie-cutter homes.
Images rated favorably by participants: shots of leafy urban parks, examples of mass transit and photos of tidy apartments perched above brick retail shops in a redeveloped downtown.
Nelessen estimates that a million people have taken the visual survey throughout the country and results have been fairly consistent.
So if it’s that easy to figure out what Americans want, why is sprawl still such a problem?
“There are economic and government realities that make if difficult for the will of the people to assert itself,” Cordish said.
Zoning ordinances encourage single-use development and often restrict or prohibit mixed-use projects, such as apartments above retail shops, according to “New Community Design to the Rescue,” a recent report commissioned by the NGA’s task force on growth.
Building codes generally make it easier to construct new buildings instead of rehabilitating older ones. And – despite the high cost of building new roads, schools and water lines – developers find it easier to work with a fresh patch of earth than to revitalize a dilapidated structure.
In short, the U.S. real estate development market “has been biased toward sprawl,” the NGA report says.
“There’s a lot of demand for these (smart-growth) changes, but there’s totally insufficient supply,” Nelessen said.
His solution is to simplify the process by letting residents see the possibilities and decide for themselves. Nelessen’s company uses computer-generated images of scenes such as a neglected urban street corner to show residents the possibilities.
The keys to the process, he says, are to keep it simple and tailor the images to their own neighborhood.
“Policy is fine, but what really gets to people’s hearts and minds is their house, their block, their street, their town,” Nelessen told the panel.
While a growing number of people are clamoring for alternative approaches to development, planners acknowledged the difficulty in getting people to sign onto certain elements of smart-growth designs – namely the higher densities that are at the core of many such projects.
Gov. Glendening acknowledged this fundamental contradiction in the battle against sprawl. “There are two things Americans hate: They hate density and they hate sprawl.”
The NGA recent report includes several recommendations for states and local governments to combat sprawl:
Governments should create design centers where citizens can see and computer-generated design alternatives.
States can help local governments adopt new zoning and building codes that encourage mixed-use projects and other smart-growth designs
States can charge higher impact fees to developments that require substantial new infrastructure and public services, while earmarking more money for designated growth areas.
