State land plan aims to curb sprawl

Over the past 40 years, development in Rhode Island has sprawled into the countryside, eating away at the state’s scarce forests and farmlands. A new statewide land use plan seeks to reverse that trend.
State planners early this month completed a draft of “Land Use 2025” – the first update of the state’s land-use plan since 1989 – which points out the consequences of suburban sprawl.
“There’s a strong likelihood that, if we keep going like we’re going, we will essentially be out of land in the next 40 or 50 years,” said Kevin M. Flynn, associate director of the state Division of Planning.
Flynn said the updated plan encourages development in areas where buildings and infrastructure already exists, for example, unused commercial sites. The state is already seeing its mills converted into housing and other uses, he said, but development continues to spread into rural areas.
“As that kind of growth occurs in the more rural areas then the commercial development … will follow,” he said. “Then you get strip mall development in rural locations.”
According to the plan, 67,000 acres were built up in the state from 1970 to 1995, increasing developed land here by 47 percent even though the state population only grew 5 percent.
Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island, an anti-sprawl nonprofit, said the state cannot afford to lose its forests and farms to development. “One of the selling points of living in Rhode Island is that you can have urban sophistication and rural charm at the same time,” he said.
This rural-urban balance has become an economic development tool in the state, which has trouble competing in other areas – such as taxation and cost of living – that attract companies.
The plan says Rhode Island ranks high among states in terms of percentage of forested land, with almost 60 percent. About 75 percent of the population lives in a 20-mile wide corridor that flanks Narragansett Bay to the Blackstone and Pawtuxet rivers, leaving most of the western side of the state covered in green. Losing this makeup threatens more than aesthetics and the economy.
“Too much development in rural areas can endanger our drinking water supply,” said Wolf, who is familiar with the draft land-use plan.
“That’s another practical argument for maintaining forestland in the state.”
The plan highlights the following conditions in the state that promote sprawl:
n There are 450,000 privately owned parcels that could be developed.
n About 60 percent of the state’s land remains zoned for two-acre housing lots, despite that the rationale for this is outdated due to advances in septic systems.
n Municipalities are dependent on property taxes to fund rising education expenses, pressuring towns to expand their commercial tax base with more development (it also discourages affordable housing construction, which is thought to increase education costs by boosting the school-age population).
n Many state and municipal regulations would not allow the level of density prescribed in the plan, particularly with current limits on building heights and infrastructure expansion.
Subject to revisions, the plan is expected to undergo a hearings phase in February and March. The Rhode Island State Planning Council, made up of state officials and planning experts, will conduct the hearings and decide the plan’s fate.
Like the 1989 plan, the updated version will serve as a guide on which the state’s 39 cities and towns must base their comprehensive plans.
The local plans stipulate the zoning schemes that regulate what, if any, developments are permitted.
Flynn said he expects the state council to adopt the guide plan some time in the spring.