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Slide 1: T he type of planning and community development described by the term Smart Growth continues to evolve. When the term was first introduced in the mid-1990s, Smart Growth’s focus was on reducing or mitigating the environmental degradation brought by development—consumption of land and the accompanying negative effects of degraded water and air quality and loss of natural lands, wildlife, and farmland. The term’s early use also encompassed the need to provide adequate infrastructure to handle growth’s demands and address concerns such as traffic congestion. Subsequently, Smart Growth’s vision has expanded to consider new models of how to rebuild (or build) communities to be better places. This refined vision now includes alternative transportation options (including transit and walking), the creation of “walkable,” mixed-use communities, and the revitalization of older neighborhoods and cities. From the beginning, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®’ definition of Smart Growth included the provision of a wide range of housing options and prices, and this element has been embraced by Smart Growth advocates. MEASURING SUCCESS 2 Today’s Smart Growth ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 2: Now there is an increasing recognition that Smart Growth must address the need for social equity in our communities. This means creating safer, healthier, more livable communities for all members of our communities, and embracing the full range of our diverse population in the benefits of Smart Growth, including homeownership. Are these expanding goals for Smart Growth being achieved? The scorecard is mixed. There has been significant achievement since the late 1990s in the preservation of natural lands and agricultural lands through a variety of mechanisms, including public purchase, land trust stewardship, and the use of purchase or transfer of development rights. Transit ridership is increasing, and many communities are investing in new transit systems. The downtowns of many major cities have been revived, and growth in these cities has included significant residential development. Some jurisdictions are rewriting their zoning codes to permit and encourage more compact, mixeduse development, and these projects are doing very well in the marketplace. But in most places, zoning still makes Smart Growth development illegal, and the amount of development that could be called Smart Growth is a small portion of what is being built. Low-density suburbs that require the use of a car to go everywhere are still the norm (and still required by most zoning codes), and attempts to integrate different housing types and prices are usually opposed. While homeownership rates are at an all-time high, housing opportunities for low-income households are dwindling, especially in revitalized high-cost cities. And while some older cities flourish, others—especially those whose economies were based on manufacturing—are stagnating or declining. In this issue of On Common Ground, we take a wide-view scan of the State of Smart Growth—what’s working and what challenges remain. We report on efforts to measure and promote Smart Growth, zoning codes that encourage Smart Growth, and some of the REALTORS® who have embraced Smart Growth in their business plans and in their associations’ public policy efforts. Mithun Design photo: Michael Seidl For more information on NAR and Smart Growth, go to www.realtor.org/smartgrowth. On Common Ground is published twice a year by the Government Affairs office of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, and is distributed free of charge. The publication presents a wide range of views on Smart Growth issues, with the goal of encouraging a dialogue among REALTORS®, elected officials, and other interested citizens. The opinions expressed in On Common Ground are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, its members, or affiliate organizations. Editor Joseph R. Molinaro Manager, Smart Growth Programs NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® 700 Eleventh Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 jmolinaro@realtors.org Distribution For more copies of this issue or to be placed on our mailing list for future issues of On Common Ground, please contact Ted Wright, NAR Government Affairs, at (202) 383-1206 or twright@realtors.org. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 3
Slide 3: Communities are learning to build compactly by mixing housing, stores, and offices … but outmoded zoning and other obstacles must be overcome. The LongRoad to 4 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 4: O n the Internet, the Census Bureau operates a “population clock” that gives an up-to-the-minute estimate of how people are living in the United States (www.census. gov/cgi-bin/popclock). On April 15, the clock counted 293,026,388 people on U.S. soil—140 million more than in 1950. Every 13 seconds another person is added. This near-doubling of the nation’s population in a little more than half a century— compounded by the tendency of Americans to demand more living space per person, drive more miles per person, and consume more goods per person than they did in 1950—is forcing policy makers to face an important question: How should our communities grow? Smart Growth By Philip Langdon In the 1,000-square-mile Highlands region that stretches from eastern Pennsylvania across northern New Jersey to New York’s lower Hudson Valley and northwestern Connecticut, nearly 100 square miles have undergone development during the past two decades. The spread of houses, roads, offices, and shopping centers has exerted a mostly harmful impact on agriculture, wildlife, and sources of fresh drinking water. Meanwhile, in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, development is penetrating areas that used to be far off the beaten path. In much of the United States, countryside is giving way to “rural sprawl.” What’s the answer? Part of it can be summed up in two words: Smart Growth. “Smart Growth first and foremost is plain old good planning,” says Don Chen, executive director of the national advocacy group Smart Growth America. “It means improving on what we’ve already built, rather than throwing away old neighborhoods and leaving scars in the landscape so that we go chew up the next field or forest.” SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 5
Slide 5: The goal of Smart Growth proponents is to steer development to the most suitable places and organize it into better-connected, more compact forms. If that can be done, people can live well on less land. In fact, they can live better—because their communities will be more walkable and generally more convenient. The environment will be less degraded by miles of strip commercial buildings and parking lots. Here’s a quick rundown on what’s happened so far: • Smart Growth has captured public attention. David Goldberg at Smart Growth America says that 23 governors talked about Smart Growth in their 2003 State of the State addresses, or made comments or initiated policies that apply smart growth principles. Those governors include Democrats Phil Bredesen in Tennessee and Jennifer Granholm in Michigan, and Republicans Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and Mark Sanford in South Carolina. The appeal of Smart Growth cuts across party lines. • New Urbanism has gained momentum. This movement, which calls for homes to be within walking distance of gathering places such as parks and cafes and to have sociable streets and sidewalks, “is growing as never before,” says Robert Steuteville, editor of the national newsletter New Urban News. A survey completed in December 2003 by the Ithaca, New York–based newsletter identified 648 neighborhood-scale New Urbanist communities that are being developed or are in phases leading up to development. That’s a 37 percent increase over the year before. “For the last seven years, the average increase has been 28 percent per year,” Steuteville points out. New Urban News defines “neighborhood-scale communities” as those covering at least 15 acres, featuring an interconnected network of streets and a mixture of housing types, and at least one central gathering place. “The placement of parking and buildings and the design of streets must create a pedestrian-friendly character,” Steuteville emphasizes. • Economic benefits have been substantial. A March 2004 study by Mark Muro and Robert Puentes for the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution determined that compact development patterns In much of the United States, countryside is giving way to “ rural sprawl.” 6 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 6: The goal of Smart Growth proponents is to steer development to the most suitable places and organize it into better-connected, more compact forms. can cut road-building costs nationally by $110 billion, or nearly 12 percent, over 25 years. They can reduce water and sewer costs over the same period by $12.6 billion, or nearly 7 percent. They can shave $4.2 billion, or nearly 4 percent, from the annual costs of operations and services delivery. • The building and development industry is growing more receptive. Harry H. Frampton, chairman of the Urban Land Institute, which serves developers, said his organization has “helped Smart Growth gain enough traction to move into the mainstream.” • Smart growth ideas have been incorporated into laws and government policies. Nineteen states have growth management laws and 10 have smart growth laws, according to Smart Growth America. In addition, regions such as metropolitan Portland, Oregon and municipalities such as Fort Collins, Colorado have adopted smart growth principles. “While in some areas Smart Growth initially was motivated by worries over the destruction of farms and natural areas, it has gone far beyond that now,” says Chen of Smart Growth America. “People are making the connection between SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 7
Slide 7: spread-out, disconnected development and the need to spend so much of our lives in traffic. Onesize-fits-all subdivisions just aren’t working for a population that is aging, deferring children and having fewer of them, and forming single-person households faster than any other type.” How communities respond A number of governments have decided to channel development into existing towns and cities and other areas where new construction makes the most sense from a regional perspective. Under Democratic Governor Parris Glendening, Maryland established “Priority Funding Areas”— areas designated for growth. Land outside those areas is ineligible for state financial support, including road-building and other projects intended to accommodate growth. (One exception is schools. To forestall opposition from rural legislators, schools were omitted from the Smart Growth law, but Glendening took other actions to concentrate school construction dollars in built-up areas.) Maryland’s program designated the state’s 157 municipalities and all the communities inside the Washington and Baltimore beltways as Priority Funding Areas. Many counties are beyond the beltways and have no municipalities. Every county was allowed to designate additional Priority Funding Areas, but those areas were required to have water and sewer lines, and had to achieve a minimum density of 3.5 dwelling units per acre in new residential projects. If a county designated a Priority Funding Area, it also had to be consistent with the county’s 20-year growth projections. Since construction of schools in outlying areas often entices families to move to the suburban fringe, Glendening increased state school spending and focused more of its construction and renovation budget on older, more built-up communities. In 1996–97, 43 percent of Maryland’s school construction and renovation funds went to older communities. When Glendening left office in January 2003, schools in older communities received 80 percent of those funds. Glendening’s Republican successor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., has since backed off on some elements of Smart Growth, such as using state funds to acquire open space, but he too is focusing on bolstering older communities. “The idea is to spend money renovating and fixing up these existing town centers and historic Main Streets,” says Chuck Gates, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Planning. “It has made a significant difference,” Gates says of Maryland’s effort over the past eight years. On Baltimore’s west side, large condominium towers have been springing up. “Throughout older parts of our communities, we see new life and increasing property values,” says Dru SchmidtPerkins, executive director of 1000 Friends of Smart Growth seems to work best when it encompasses an entire metropolitan area. 8 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 8: Maryland. On the other hand, Gates notes that if homebuyers want to live in more remote areas and are willing to pay a premium for that privilege, developers will heed the market and continue building at the fringe. Smart Growth, as practiced in Maryland and many other places, does not preclude outward development; it does, however, eliminate many of what effectively were government subsidies for sprawl. Smart Growth seems to work best when it encompasses an entire metropolitan area. Before Maryland embarked on its smart growth efforts, some counties acted on their own, with mixed results. Baltimore County, which surrounds Baltimore City, restricted development in some rural areas, such as the horse country north of Baltimore, where the landed gentry live. That inadvertently encouraged residential development to leapfrog to Harford County to the northeast and Carroll County to the northwest. “Both those counties have experienced enormous sprawl problems,” says Gates. The lesson is that restrictions in one area sometimes shift development into more distant places. About as close as any urban area in the United States has come to a comprehensive approach is Portland, Oregon. Portland’s directly elected metropolitan government, known as Metro, oversees expansion in a three-county area. Only the area across the Columbia River in Washington State is exempt from Metro’s growth controls. Motivated by the disappearance of prime farmland, Portland has been thinking regionally since the 1970s, when Governor Tom McCall and the state legislature took steps to control outward development. Oregon law requires Metro to keep a 20-year supply of land available for development within the growth boundary. Since the late 1970s, the boundary has moved about three dozen times, usually not far. The most recent expansion, in December 2002, added a substantial territory— 18,638 acres, enough for 38,657 housing units and thousands of jobs. Rather than expanding around the fringe, Metro concentrated two thirds of the growth in one area: Damascus/Boring. “The intent,” says Metro principal planner Raymond Valone, “is that it be all planned together as a complete community.” Portland-area housing prices have risen considerably in the last decade. How much of the price increase resulted from the growth boundary is an open question. Some areas of the U.S. with no SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 9
Slide 9: If Smart Growth is to achieve substantial results, efforts must be made at both regional and local levels. growth boundaries have experienced sharply escalating house prices. “In Portland, the housing supply is expanding in a fashion that corresponds very well with the population,” says Gerrit Knaap, executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland. In part because of restrictions on outward expansion, plenty of private redevelopment is occurring in the city. The population within the city’s boundaries has grown to 539,000 from 366,000 in 1980, partly through annexation but also through an embrace of apartments, townhouses, and other, denser forms of housing. Housing has been built on former parking lots, above stores, even atop a public library. Haggardlooking neighborhoods have improved. “There’s no blight in Portland,” Knaap says. “That’s really stunning.” As Smart Growth has become the norm, governments in the Portland area have taken steps to ensure that housing of various kinds can be produced in a range of locations. “Any corner lot in a single-family residential zone in Portland is entitled to be converted to a duplex,” notes Robert Liberty, former executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon. “All local governments [in the region] must authorize accessory apartments.” While suburbs in many sections of the United States have become less dense over the years, Portland’s suburbs have become denser. The 2000 Census found that greater Portland, unlike most American metropolitan areas, does not concentrate poor families in the city. People with modest incomes were able to disperse throughout nearly all of the Portland suburbs because every municipality and county is required to zone for a sizable number of apartments. In 2000, for the first time, more poor people in the three-county area lived in the suburbs than in Portland itself, Betsy Hammond reported in The Oregonian. The result, in the view of Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings’ Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, is that social problems are not compounded by concentration. Nor are the central city and the older suburbs emptying out, dragging down the metro area. The center, with its MAX light-rail line and a new streetcar line, is thriving. The light-rail line connects towns on the east side to those on the west. Mixed-use development has clustered close to MAX stops like Orenco Station—a popular center where residents can walk from home to coffee shops, restaurants, and commuter rail. If Smart Growth is to achieve substantial results, efforts must be made at both regional and local levels. In metropolitan Washington, D.C., the best development over the past 25 years owes its existence to the regional Metro rail system and to local initiatives. A prime example is the profusion of housing, offices, stores, restaurants, and services within walking distance of five Metro stations in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor of Arlington County, Virginia. What had been an aging, lowdensity commercial road corridor in the 1960s has become “the economic engine of Arlington County,” according to James Snyder, supervisor of the county’s Planning Section. Since 1979, when Metro opened its Orange Line in the corridor, 18,000 houses and apartments, 14 million square feet of offices, and 21.5 million square feet of retail have appeared. “Things are compact and dense,” Snyder says. The corridor, containing 7.6 percent of the county’s land area, generates 33 percent of its property tax revenue. It allows Arlington to set its property tax rate lower than other major jurisdictions in northern Virginia. Greater Atlanta, the biggest metropolis in the 10 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 10: Southeast, is now trying to combine regional and local action, both of which are badly needed after decades of uncontrolled sprawl made commuting on the region’s clogged highways maddeningly slow. In 1999, the 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission launched the Livable Centers Initiative, providing $5 million over five years for communities to devise ways to build mixed-use and residential construction with access to transit. The resulting community plans are eligible for a share of $350 million in transportation improvements. One such plan calls for turning Perimeter Center—a suburban mall and office center with three MARTA rail stations—into a transit village. Another calls for building mixed-income housing on what had been parking, near an underused MARTA station in Decatur. In Midtown Atlanta near the Georgia Tech campus, extensive development integrating offices and housing is taking place. Dan Reuter, chief of the Commission’s Land Use Division, calls Midtown “a national success story.” In most of the United States, Smart Growth is still the exception to the rule. Impediments are many: zoning codes discourage mixed uses; financiers resist integration of offices, retail, and hous- ing; and developers tend to specialize in only one or two kinds of projects. “Compared with the challenge at hand—fundamentally transforming how our communities grow—the strides that have been made are quite modest,” says Smart Growth America’s Don Chen. There is no doubt that compact, mixed-use development with extensively interconnected streets, pedestrian convenience, and access to transit is increasing. The question is whether it will become widespread enough, fast enough. “In my perspective, the ‘smart growth movement’ has been most successful at sparking a national conversation about why places matter,” says John Shepard, a long-range planner with Larimer County (Fort Collins), Colorado. That’s an important beginning. But much more will have to be done, as Hank Dittmar, president of the advocacy group Reconnecting America, acknowledges. “Our challenge,” Dittmar says, “is to scale up, and to take down the regulations, codes, standards, and habits that shackle the marketplace.” Philip Langdon is senior editor of New Urban News, a national newsletter on New Urbanism and community design. B ozeman, Montana, population 27,509, is one city that practices Smart Growth on a small scale. “We’re encouraging residential infill, taking underutilized residential lots and bumping up the density through accessory dwelling units,” says Jody Sanford, associate planner. Often the new, small units are above garages along alleys. They’re especially popular with students at Montana State University. “Most of the designs are quite nice,” Sanford says. In older parts of the city, owners are allowed to divide large lots in two to create additional housing. The more people who live in a neighborhood, the better the nearby shops and eating places fare. Along with residential additions to existing neighborhoods, small-scale commercial infill development is encouraged. A custom cabinetmaker and a maker of custom bicycle frames have built apartments above their shops. The city’s policy of trying to improve and augment what already exists is paying off in the attractiveness and vitality of the center. Says Sanford: “Downtown has experienced quite a renaissance in the past 10 years.” SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 11
Slide 11: 48 14 Urban Villages Smart Codes Smart Places 38 Light Rail Smart Growth 26 Local Alliances 22 12 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 12: On Common Ground summer 2004 2 4 Introduction The Long Road to Smart Growth Communities are learning to build compactly by mixing housing, stores, and offices … but outmoded zoning and other obstacles must be overcome By Philip Langdon 14 22 Smart Codes Smart Places By Jason Miller Local Alliances Helping to Determine Smart Growth Criteria By John Van Gieson 26 How Do You Know If It’s Smart Growth? By David Goldberg 32 Coast to Coast REALTORS® take an active role in shaping sustainable, Smart Growth communities By Steve Wright and Heidi Johnson-Wright 38 Light Rail A solid option in the transportation debate By Chris Swope 44 Housing versus Transportation Two sides of the affordability coin By Joanne M. Haas 48 Smart Growth Fuels Vibrant Urban Villages By Brad Broberg EPA Awards 54 54 And the Winner Is … EPA’s 2003 National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement Smart Growth in the States 60 On Common Ground thanks the following contributors and organizations for photographs, illustrations, and artist renderings reproduced in this issue: Haley Fleming of Atlanta Regional Commission; David Goldstein of Natural Resources Defense Council; Jody Sanford of the City of Bozeman; Christine Shenot of the Maryland Department of Planning; Howard Katz, Director of Strategic Planning, Cuyahoga County Treasurer’s Office; Tom Myer of Condo 1; Rob Steuteville of New Urban News; Janet Stone of Greenbelt Alliance; Urban Advantage; Emmaus Main Street Program; Craig Lewis, The Lawrence Group; Fisher & Hall Urban Design; Peter J. Musty, Charette Center. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 13
Slide 13: What do you do when your development codes won’t let you build or maintain the kind of town you want? You make new rules. Smart Places By Jason Miller Codes 14 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 14: ention zoning codes to the average person and the reaction is predictable: a stone-faced stare, glazed eyes, a yawn. But communities across the United States are discovering that the very fabric of their neighborhoods and towns is built on those codes—or, more accurately, because of them. And communities are doing something about these codes. Conventional zoning codes are fundamentally flawed, says Geoffrey Ferrell, a principal with Geoffrey Ferrell Associates in Washington, D.C. “Ever since the industrial years, the conventional separation-of-uses approach has been the wrong approach to control”—to keeping unpleasant uses away from the residential areas. “It has devolved to micromanagement of use and density. The [built environment] that has resulted is very, very poor about 99 percent of the time. No one’s happy with what they’ve been given.” Ferrell’s co-principal, Mary Madden, agrees. “That micromanagement of uses has resulted in a huge number of unintended consequences, namely, suburban sprawl. Everybody hates sprawl, but the builders aren’t violating rules; they’re building exactly what the codes call for. Those codes are a blueprint for sprawl. Under the existing conventional codes, you can’t help but build it.” Community frustration with conventional codes and the type of development they spawn has driven new urbanist- and smart growth–minded planners to create new zoning codes. While these new codes go by many names—form-based codes, new urbanist codes, TND (traditional neighborhood development) ordinances, smart zoning, the SmartCode© from Miamibased town planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company—they are all designed to create places that emulate the urbanism of older, well-loved places, while preserving rural areas and historic sites threatened by conventional development. Communities that have replaced their conventional codes with new ordinances have generally reported success in the process leading up to the new codes’ implementation, as well as favorable upturns in their real estate markets. Here are a few of the notable success stories. nIn the 1960s, Columbia Pike was considered Arlington, Virginia’s main street. A 3.5-mile stretch of road that runs from the Pentagon to the Arlington County/Fairfax County border, Columbia Pike was intended to be a Metro rail corridor. When this didn’t happen, development along the Pike stagnated and the corridor languished for 40 years. Growth occurred along the Pike, but it was of a singular variety, says Timothy Lynch, executive director of the M SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 15
Slide 15: Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, whose office is located on the Pike. “We saw bank branches with drive-through lanes, fast food franchises with drive-through lanes—and that’s been about it. We also saw long-time businesses either close or move to other parts of the county. There are pizza stores, check-cashing stores, laundromats, dry cleaners, dollar stores—these are all services people use, but you can’t buy a men’s suit, women’s clothing, a pair of shoes, or even a book on Columbia Pike.” In January 1998, Arlington County Board chair Chris Zimmerman recognized the Pike’s need for revitalization. A challenge came from the longtime property owners on Columbia Pike, however. Many of the existing buildings were owned outright by second- and third-generation owners who were making money and weren’t interested in inviting hard-hitting capital gains taxes if they sold their buildings. Others, anticipating a boom from the arrival of the Metro line, had developed buildings that ended up being “ white elephants” after Metro declined to advance along the Columbia Pike corridor. Columbia Pike citizens wanted to preserve and enhance the richness of their community, while ensuring none of the long-time local businesses would be replaced. To tap the potential of this diamond in the rough, the Columbia Pike community developed a comprehensive Columbia Pike Revitalization Plan, which included adoption of a form-based (as opposed to a conventional use-based) zoning code. The code is a legal document that regulates land development by setting careful and clear controls on building form to create good streets, neighborhoods, and parks, with a healthy mix of uses. Components of the code include clear definitions of terms, a regulating plan, building envelope standards to determine each building’s form, standards for siting and streetscapes and for architecture, and administrative guidelines for expediting the approvals process. By most accounts, the Columbia Pike venture is an ongoing success. Since implementation of the form-based codes in 2002, more than $30 million in development has been approved along the corridor. Within the corridor itself, more than $300 million in development projects are in various stages of negotiation and planning. Everybody hates sprawl, but the builders aren’t violating rules; they’re building exactly what the codes call for. The present Safeway grocery store in the Columbia Pike corridor, Arlington, Virginia. A computer-generated model of Columbia Pike’s Safeway grocery store could be redeveloped under the new form-based codes. 16 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 16: BEFORE CODES AFTER The Emmaus Farmers Market before the city implemented codes that focused on preserving and creating a small town American charm. Lynch sees good things ahead for Columbia Pike. “The first development—a $90 million project—broke ground this past March. We’re already seeing tremendous community benefits. The developers have started to create the street walls that will define the space, and they ’re doing it through the form-based code.” As for how much the form-based codes have affected the property values on Columbia Pike, it’s still a bit early to tell, says Dan Lockard, a REALTOR® with Fraser Forbes Company in McLean, Virginia. “I think it’s going to have a positive impact on the county, however. The first property is just entering the development process now. Everyone is watching closely to see what happens. “The form-based code takes a lot of the guesswork out of what you’re doing,” he adds. “The regulations lay everything out for you. It makes your job easy.” Emmaus, Pennsylvania Faced with encroaching conventional suburban development at either end of their seven-block downtown main street, the citizens of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, wanted a solution that would preserve the pedestrian-friendly layout of the downtown and retain the identity of the 250-year-old community. The borough (population 12,000) had revised its comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance in 1992, but at that time there was no TND ordinance conceived of, let alone implemented. “We knew the character we wanted, but we didn’t know how to get there,” says Joyce Marin, a resident, council member, and one of 150 business owners in the downtown district. In 2000 came the scare that became the catalyst for change. A downtown landowner planned to build a conventional strip mall in the midst of Emmaus’ traditional collection of mixed-use, mostly two-story buildings. Since the zoning codes in place permitted infill development of a conventional suburban nature, the Emmaus Borough Council appointed Marin to chair a newly created entity, the Community Relations Planning and Development Committee, and the first order of business was to examine a sample zoning ordinance intended to protect the main street. After 18 months of discussion and analysis, the committee decided to amend portions of the zoning code for the central business district, rather than create an “overlay” of traditional codes that would be no stronger or weaker than the existing conventional codes. Emmaus attorney Craig Neely, now the Emmaus Borough Council president, insisted on this approach, stating it would make the code changes defensible. With the exception of one court battle, Neely’s position has proven correct. The code changes followed a practical logic rather than an aesthetic one. Every amendment was made for practical reasons—usually to protect the pedestrians’ safety and enhance their experience. Drive-throughs were prohibited. Minimum setback distances were changed to “build-to” lines, which meant that new buildings needed to align with existing buildings along the sidewalks, creating a street wall. Fencing requirements were added. New construction had to be at least two stories, and parking had to be behind the buildings. Vehicular entrances to properties may only SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 17
Slide 17: be that—entrances; the exits have to be behind the properties. Interestingly, even though the codes don’t mandate aesthetics, that’s exactly what the citizens are getting more of, says Marin. “Emmaus is a much more desirable place to live today than it was even three years ago.” Neely agrees. “Once spring arrives and the flowers start blooming, and the trees leaf out, I get comments from visitors—they think they’re coming into Mayberry.” Emmaus’ ordinances ensure that future development will conform to the existing pattern, says Neely. “The provisions are designed to preserve what’s already here, since 85 percent of what’s here conforms to the ordinance already. The ordinance has never really become an issue for people. … You don’t hear about it because it’s doing its job, quietly.” David Fretz knows what a good job it’s doing. The Emmaus-based REALTOR® with Prudential Fretz Realty sees the results every day. “The Emmaus real estate market is very strong because of low interest rates, but people also love Emmaus because they are tired of the fast-food, strip-mall look in every American town. When towns preserve a traditional look through traditional codes, when they restore themselves and their character, that creates value. Not every community is sensitive to that, but Emmaus is one that is.” “We’re on the cusp of being the hottest, hippest lit- tle place on earth,” says Marin. “We are becoming.” Petaluma, California A 24-member citizens advisory committee spent an amazing seven years coming up with a vision for a 400-acre piece of land adjacent to the old downtown of Petaluma (the first town in America to adopt a limited-growth plan, in 1972). Passionate about the property, the citizens knew they had a jewel of an opportunity, and they wanted to make the most of it. They wanted the Petaluma River—which runs through the city—to become the centerpiece. They wanted the new development to blend and connect with the historic downtown, but with an edgier look. After several fits and starts, an aggressive City Council pushed the committee to act, and invited Fisher & Hall Urban Design of Santa Rosa, California, to assist the committee in its decision making. When principals Lois Fisher and Laura Hall assembled a team, presented the SmartCode© option, and framed the discussion as an effort to create “smart zoning,” the committee decided to move ahead with the new approach. Nine months later, the Petaluma SmartCode was adopted to a standing ovation from political adversaries and citizens, alike. The Petaluma SmartCode differed from its preceding conventional code in its simplicity. The “hybrid” SmartCode used ordinary language and simple graphics, coding precisely the aspects of The North River area of the Petaluma River before its potential development under the SmartCode. 18 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 18: The [Emmaus] code changes followed a practical logic rather than an aesthetic one … usually to protect the pedestrians’ safety and enhance their experience. the built environment that the community cared about most: the building heights, the building fronts, and the civic spaces. The code showed new streets, new green spaces, roads, and buildings facing the river. Different areas were coded for different densities, minimum and maximum building heights, finished heights, parking areas, and percentages of frontage types. After the codes went into effect in June 2003, “it was like a dam breaking,” says Hall. “A foursquare-block theater district has been approved. A 10-acre condo project has been approved. In the pipeline is another 10 acres of mixed-use buildings: shops or workplaces on the main floor, condos on top. Six downtown blocks of redevelopment are scheduled—in an area that had had very little development in the last 20 years!” Fisher points to the roadblocks the Petaluma SmartCode has removed. “Two-thirds of the approval process is gone, now,” she says. With the SmartCode—which has been approved by the Planning Commission and City Council—there’s only the design review step to take if the developer follows the SmartCode. “The SmartCode also eliminated mandatory on-site parking. From a real estate perspective, a building can now move from use to use more quickly, and can change hands more quickly because there isn’t the constraint of how much parking must be included with each use.” Mike Moore, community development director for the City of Petaluma, admits it’s a little early to determine exactly how SmartCode is faring, but likes what he sees thus far. “We had a large project in the initial stages, and in terms of the SmartCode’s application, I think it has worked for that project, which is several blocks in the downtown area and includes the renovation of an existing historic building and the construction of a movie theater, a parking garage, some apartment buildings, a mixed-use building, and a small office building.” Skip Sommer, a commercial REALTOR® with Petaluma-based Creative Property Services/ An artist’s rendering of the North River area of the Petaluma River after potential development under the Petaluma SmartCode. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 19
Slide 19: Golden Land Realty, represents some of the developers who are transforming downtown Petaluma under the new SmartCode. “My clientele loves the new code because it minimizes the planning process,” he says. “And the city loves it because it streamlines their ability to respond to developers.” Huntersville, North Carolina A bedroom community, Huntersville lies immediately north of Charlotte, North Carolina. In the ’80s and early ’90s, Huntersville and the neighboring towns of Cornelius and Davidson began to grow—fast. The rate of change Huntersville experienced was disconcerting for residents who had lived there for some time. Even newcomers were uncomfortable with the unchecked growth, since they had wanted the small-town quality of life and character. Waves of suburbanization were moving out from Charlotte, threatening to diminish the town’s character in such a way that it would not be recognizable as the place that people had chosen or had grown accustomed to over the years. The movement to look at change in the regulations was spurred by a typical urge to maintain the community’s identity and not be “absorbed” into Charlotte. Ann Hammond, then the planning director for the Town of Huntersville, began to expose the town’s officials to the new urbanist principles that were showing up in the planning and popular press. “They reacted as I had,” she says. “They said, ‘This makes sense, and it makes sense for us.’” Hammond and the town’s officials gathered community representatives and began the visioning process with comparative surveys of different neighborhood images. “Virtually 99.8 percent of the people said they preferred the traditional development form,” says Hammond. On the strength of that visioning process, Hammond and her team developed a strategic plan with input from a Citizens Advisory Committee and the Huntersville Public Works Department. With help from consultants from the College of Architecture at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and input from the Real Estate Building Industry Coalition, they totally rewrote the zoning ordinance, and made significant changes to the subdivision ordinance. The result? A draft ordinance that mandated traditional development form in terms of building placement. Build-to lines replaced minimum setback requirements. Frontage requirements were included, as well as parking requirements. Front doors had to be on the side of the building fronting the street. These and other changes encouraged a pedestrian-friendly orientation of all buildings to the street. With the help (“and open-mindedness,” says Hammond) of the Mecklenberg County Engineering Department, they added a section on narrower, more pedestrian-oriented streets. The code required connectivity, narrow lots with alley access, and some vertical mixing of uses based on locational standards—meaning that some mixed- The Basin Street Landing in Petaluma before adoption of the SmartCode, but within the SmartCode’s area of implementation. The Basin Street Landing in Petaluma presently under construction due to the adoption of the SmartCode process. 20 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 20: “The code requires more traditional forms of town and city development. It does not require TNDs; it permits TNDs.” Ann Hammond, former planning director, Town of Huntersville use buildings were allowed closer in to town and at certain key intersections. The planners’ goals were simple: • Allow neighborhoods in the more urban sections of town to fill out properly over time. • Allow for more TND greenfield developments. Hammond never misses the chance to correct a misperception of the Huntersville code: “The code requires more traditional forms of town and city development. It does not require TNDs; it permits TNDs.” The ordinance continues to allow single-family, single-use subdivisions, but they must adhere to the new code: • Narrow lots must have alley access. • Homes on wider lots may include a frontloaded garage, but the garage must be recessed from the front plane of the house. • Every building must be on a public street. The public street stipulation proved to be an interesting aspect, because conventional suburban shopping centers were effectively outlawed by this point; they needed to be configured as pedestrian-oriented shopping streets. But these and other constraints proved successful in creating better places within Huntersville, says Craig Lewis, managing principal and director of town planning with The Lawrence Group in neighboring Davidson, North Carolina. As a consultant for Huntersville, Lewis has seen the outcomes of the ordinances—both good and not so good. Political maneuverings blunted the edge of some of the ordinance’s requirements, says Lewis. “The result was a proliferation of hybrid traditional neighborhoods. There were a lot of small lots in seemingly discontinuous areas over a 50-squaremile area within the Huntersville, Cornelius, and Davidson municipalities. Spots of sprawl were all over the place. The production builders are all there, all building semblances of traditional neighborhoods, but many are hybrids.” Fortunately, the Huntersville success stories outnumber the hybrids. “Vermillion is a pure traditional neighborhood that’s doing it right,” says Lewis, “and they still have another 200 to 300 acres that they can develop.” Jason Miller is a freelance writer, editor, photographer, and publishing consultant based in St. Paul, Minnesota. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 21
Slide 21: T amien Place, a proposed mixeduse development in San Jose, California, was opposed by nearby residents who felt that constructing twin 11-story condominiums on the site of an old bowling alley would destroy their neighborhoods. Most of the opponents lived in one- or two-story homes. But the project was compact, was applauded by some advocates for its density, included affordable housing units, and was located near a freeway and a CalTrain commuter rail station. It seemed, in other words, to embody Smart Growth criteria. Because of the controversy, approval of the project by the San Jose City Council was far from certain. The council member from the district where the project was to be built supported it, but the member from the adjacent district, where many of the opponents lived, opposed it. That’s where the local Housing Action Coalition (HAC) came in. Composed of diverse groups with an interest in supporting Smart Growth, the HAC, based in San Jose and covering all of Santa Clara County, urged local officials to support the Tamien Place project. “We all got together, spoke to various members of the City Council and wrote letters, and the project got approved,” said Paul Stewart, executive director of the Santa Clara County Association of REALTORS®. The Santa Clara HAC is one of a growing number of local and state port developments endorsed by the representatives of groups with divergent views on growth. The Santa Clara HAC includes members of the Home Builder’s Association, Sierra Club, Building and Construction Trades Council, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, and the Santa Clara County Association of REALTORS®, among others. In the case of Tamien Place, Shiloh Ballard, who supervises the HAC as director of housing and community development for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, put out the call for volunteers to talk the project through the political process. Local REALTORS® played a key role on the team that persuaded local officials to approve Tamien Place, she said. ”They always send a representative to all of our meetings and have been incredibly active in helping to support our activities,” Ballard said. Stewart works closely with Ballard to ensure that local REALTORS® are actively involved in supporting projects that passed muster with the HAC’s review committee. “Some time ago we, along with other groups in the county—including some groups that were never able to talk to each other, I might add—realized that we needed to advocate for housing production, especially affordable housing,” Stewart said. He said the process works because the participating groups have agreed to leave “We don’t say ‘no’ to sprawl; we say ‘ yes‘ to good, compact, infill development.” Janet Stone, Greenbelt Alliance alliances that review proposed developments, usually at the request of the developers, to determine if they meet Smart Growth criteria. If so, the alliance certifies or endorses the proposal and urges local government authorities to approve it. Particularly in California, where the certification movement originated in the early 1990s, REALTORS® have become players in urging local officials to suptheir differences at the door when they get together to advocate projects that are certified by the HAC review committee. The Santa Clara HAC is a member of the San Francisco–based Greenbelt Alliance, an extensive coalition of local groups in nine Northern California counties with a population of more than 7 million. A pioneer in the certification movement, the Greenbelt Alliance has been 22 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 22: HELPING TO DETERMINE SMART GROWTH CRITERIA By John Van Gieson ALLIANCES LOCAL SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 23
Slide 23: Greenbelt Alliance Endorsements Are Based On Seven Criteria: 2 3 4 5 6 7 24 1 Is it located in an urban area within a half-mile of mass transit? Will it reduce dependency on automobiles? Does it have a minimum density of 20 units per acre? Does it have at least 20 units? Is it based on good design features? Is it being developed with community input? Does it include affordable housing units? reviewing and certifying development projects since 1990, before the term Smart Growth gained the currency it has today. In 14 years, the Alliance has put its stamp of approval on 105 proposed developments. (The Santa Clara HAC says projects it certified added more than 33,000 housing units, nearly half of which were affordable to low and moderate income residents.) Janet Stone, director of the Livable Communities Program at the Greenbelt Alliance, said the review committees typically meet once a month to determine whether projects submitted by developers meet the organization’s criteria for certification. The alliances that endorse developments generally have similar criteria, but there are regional differences based on local concerns. In California, which Stewart said contains 6 of the 10 highest-priced housing markets in the country, there is an emphasis on affordable housing. On the other hand, the Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative’s criteria emphasize preserving the quaint villages and that give the state its picture postcard charm. Discouraging sprawl and promoting infill development are common goals of the certification programs. “We don’t say ‘no’ to sprawl; we say ‘yes’ to good, compact, infill development,” Stone said. She said developers in the San Francisco Bay area covet the endorsement of the Greenbelt Alliance, which provides letters of endorsement and speakers to urge project approval at Planning Commission and City Council meetings. “We’ve even had developers who were turned down come back and try to argue that actually their project does meet Smart Growth criteria,” Stone said. “We’ve had lots of feedback from developers saying, ‘Your support made the difference and pushed this project over the line.’” The Bay East Association of REAL- TORS® is actively involved in the Housing Action Coalition in the Alameda and Contra Costa counties’ suburbs east of Oakland. Nancy Rogers, public affairs director of the Bay East Association of REALTORS®, said REALTORS®, environmentalists, members of faith-based organizations, government officials, developers, business leaders, and others sit on the committees that review projects proposed for certification. Local REALTORS® played a key role on the team that persuaded local officials to approve Tamien Place. “There are a lot of growing pains going on right now, and you have REALTORS® involved with a lot of coalitions and being at the table with groups we normally wouldn’t be involved with,” Rogers said. “We have to be more flexible.” “It’s taken awhile for the developers to catch on and come to us,” she said. “I would say two to three years for the developers to begin to understand what we’re doing and to use us.” The certification movement has spread east, but the high level of involvement by REALTORS® in California has yet to materialize in other locations. Leaders of Smart Growth alliances in the states of Vermont and Pennsylvania and the Washington, D.C. area say REAL- ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 24: TORS® are not actively involved in their efforts. One of the most promising new certification programs is the Washington Smart Growth Alliance based in Washington, D.C., which covers the city and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs. Formed by the Urban Land Institute and four partner organizations, the Washington program is a prototype for programs being considered by other regional affiliates of the Urban Land Institute. The partners in the Smart Growth Alliance (SGA) are the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Greater Washington Board of Trade, Coalition for Smarter Growth, and the Metropolitan Washington Builders’ Council. The review committees, which meet quarterly, have endorsed 15 projects in the SGA’s three-year history. John Bailey, director of the Smart Growth Alliance, said the organization believes in working with developers to correct problems that may prevent them from being recognized for meeting Smart Growth criteria. “We’re sort of like the teacher who says, ‘Hey, I don’t want to fail you. I want to pass you,’” he said. In Vermont, REALTORS® helped to develop the Smart Growth criteria used by the Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative, but they have not been active in the review process. Development in Vermont typically occurs on a far smaller scale than condominium towers like Tamien Place in San Jose, or the massive mixeduse projects springing up in the Washington suburbs. Beth Humstone, director of the Vermont collaborative, said one of the projects approved by her organization contained only four affordable single-family homes. Those homes were proposed, however, in the center of the Village of Hancock, population 382. Hancock residents were fiercely insistent on protecting their 216-year-old village, Humstone said, and it took a great deal of negotiating to reach agreement with them. Resistance by neighbors is a constant problem that must be overcome by Smart Growth developers and their advocates in the certification movement. Stewart said opponents of growth twist the meaning of Smart Growth to use it as a no-growth club to beat up on projects they don’t like. “Often the neighbors will call us up and say, ‘Could you help me fight this project?’ when it is a Smart Growth project,” Humstone said. She said her group’s endorsement may help to overcome opposition to Smart Growth projects, “but it’s too soon to say since it’s the Nimbys we’re dealing with.” Nimbys—short for Not in My Backyard—are a potentially potent political force. “If you’re a city council member and you’re facing a crowd of 50 people who are opposing a vote you’re going to take, why would you vote that way?” Ballard said. “You can’t go out on a limb.” What the endorsements do is give local officials cover in supporting controversial developments. And they’ve been known to strengthen a backbone or two. John Van Gieson is a freelance writer based in Tallahassee, Florida. He owns and runs Van Gieson Media Relations. WASHINGTON SMART GROWTH ALLIANCE RECOGNITION PROGRAM CRITERIA For a project proposal to be recognized, it must satisfy five criteria: 1. Location. The project must be located in an area designated and appropriate for growth or revitalization, most particularly infill or sites adjacent to developed residential or commercial areas. It should take advantage of existing or short-term planned public water and sewer service, and it should be accessible to public transportation. 2. Density, Design, and Diversity of Uses. The “three Ds” of smart growth development must be present, either within the proposed project or within its vicinity. There should be sufficient density and scale to support a mix of uses, walkability, and public transit. The project should be designed so that it is integrated effectively into the existing community fabric. 3. Transportation, Mobility, and Accessibility. The project should be designed, located, and programmed to offer alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle trips, by enabling safe and effective pedestrian and bicycle access to multiple uses and activities and/or by being accessible to public transportation. 4. Environment. The project should protect, conserve, and/or mitigate damage to open space, water and air quality, and important ecosystem components. 5. Community Assets. The project should generate benefits for its surrounding area and/or the host community. These may include positive economic impacts, affordable housing, support for the school system, historic preservation, public access to parks or open spaces, support for local efforts to encourage alternative transportation, adaptive use of obsolete buildings, and other improvements to quality of life. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 25
Slide 25: SMART GROWTH? HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT’S By David Goldberg 26 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 26: magine yourself in Pam Sessions’ shoes. You’re a profit-oriented developer with a social conscience. Through market and demographic research, you’ve detected an unmet demand in metro Atlanta for well-designed, urban scale neighborhoods, with a mix of housing types and prices, in a village-like setting. You’ve absorbed the literature on green design and Smart Growth. The principles make sense and you’re determined to put them into practice. You’ve hired a design firm credited with landmark projects from Seaside, Florida to Maryland’s Kentlands. You’re confident you’ve got a to-die-for winner, but when you present it to the local government the reception is a tad chilly—something akin to being doused with ice water, then clonked on the head with the bucket. “It’s always a challenge to do something new,” Sessions says in her characteristically understated manner. The truth is, almost every aspect of her “smart,” “green” project was either illegal or otherwise unacceptable at the time. Narrow, tree-lined, pedestrian-oriented streets? Sorry, code violation. Mix townhomes, big and little houses and apartments at different price points? It’s just not done. Eventually, though, Sessions did get her Vickery project approved—once the rental apartments were jettisoned. The whole process might have been a bit easier, she says, if there had been some respected third party to evaluate her plans and certify them as “smart” and “green,” or to tell her how to make them more so. Such a certification also could have helped the local community understand how certain changes to plans might be counterproductive to goals such as reducing traffic or water runoff or encouraging people to walk. Sessions might be getting her wish. Concerns like hers, along with several other considerations, are behind a growing effort to create tools, through research and standard-setting, to help answer the question, “How do you know if it’s Smart Growth?” The question applies not only to individual projects, but also to the broader policies being put into place to preserve rural land, revitalize already-developed areas, and accommodate future growth in high-quality urban settings. Over the next few pages we’ll take a look at three promising efforts to measure Smart Growth in order to certify that it is, in fact, happening. One is an expansion of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for green buildings to neighborhood developments; another is an effort in Atlanta to create a market-ready, branded certification of smartgrowth communities; and the third is an attempt to create a scorecard for Maryland’s statewide Smart Growth program. I Taking the LEED in greening the neighborhood Since its introduction a few years ago, the LEED rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has gained wide acceptance as a way both to teach best practices in resource-efficient building design, and to recognize the builders and buildings that use them. Under LEED, projects can earn Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum status by meeting rigorous criteria in several categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, indoor environmental quality, materials and resources, and innovation in design. Its shortcoming, according to some advocates of Smart Growth, is that it gives too little weight to the building’s context. For example, a brand-new office build- SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 27
Slide 27: ing in a cornfield reachable only by car could rate higher for energy savings than a renovated intown building accessible by subway, foot, bike, and car. At the same time, acknowledges urban designer Doug Farr, the USGBC could criticize new urbanist and smart growth advocates for neighborhood designs that fall short on minimizing storm-water runoff, night-sky lighting, or the heat-island effect. “We wanted to see if we could work together to come up with a rating system for green, smartgrowth neighborhoods,” said Farr, a Chicago new urbanist and green architect responsible for several LEED-rated buildings himself. Farr has been representing the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in a three-way planning effort among CNU, the USGBC, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has expertise in both smart growth and environmental design. The collaboration has produced a 15-member panel of experts that will establish rating criteria for what is being called LEED-ND, for neighborhood development. “One reason to do this is to foster a positive side of environmentalism and reward good actors— business people, architects, designers, REALTORS® who are pursuing a path with good environmental values,” said Kaid Benfield, NRDC’s smart-growth guru and representative on LEEDND. Another is the hope that projects able to meet the high standards will face less opposition from neighborhood groups, or at a minimum, prevent opponents from making false claims of environmental harm. As it has with individual buildings, a LEED standard might also convince more developers to try a greener approach. “Developers like predictability,” Farr said. “If you’re telling me to do Smart Growth, give me a clear idea what’s expected.” Farr sees the ND designation as adding at least two new rating categories: location and linkage. “For location you would ask: Is it leapfrog development or in a preferred growth area? Is there a plan for transit or other infrastructure? The other [linkage] addresses neighborhood patterns— pedestrian linkages, having something to walk to.” Less clear is how, or whether, to incorporate social goals associated with Smart Growth, such as the provision of affordable and mixed-income housing. Those goals have an environmental component, in that housing close to jobs and public transportation can reduce the air and energy impacts of long car commutes. But the context—Is there too much or too little low-income housing nearby? What are local needs?—is likely to vary so widely that standard-setting could be very difficult, Benfield said. Another challenge will be to set clear standards but avoid being overly rigid. “Whatever system we come up with will have to be flexible enough to recognize regional variations,” Benfield said. “I personally think creativity is really important in the smart growth world. It’s an incredibly creative field, one in which new answers are being found almost on a daily basis. I think we need to encourage that and whatever we do shouldn’t standardize too much.” Marketing Smart Growth in Metro Atlanta As the LEED-ND panel begins to craft the new program, members will no doubt want to watch developments in metro Atlanta where Sessions and three other developers are guinea pigs in a LEED-like effort, with some twists. There, a collaboration between the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association (HBA) and the Southface Energy Institute, a nonprofit 28 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 28: EarthCraft homes – Clark’s Grove, Georgia In the last couple of years the (EarthCraft House) concept has caught on, with more than 1,000 eco-friendly houses built or under construction. devoted to energy efficiency, produced a LEEDlike marketing brand for residential construction, dubbed EarthCraft House. In the last couple of years the concept has caught on, with more than 1,000 eco-friendly houses built or under construction. More importantly, a growing number of developers, Sessions among them, have vowed to build only EarthCraft Houses. With the brand gaining cachet, Southface and the HBA began working with the Urban Land Institute and local planners and designers to create standards for an EarthCraft House Community. While many of the goals are similar to LEED-ND, EarthCraft is taking a conscious consumer orientation that requires a somewhat different approach to setting the standards. “There is a real market for green communities,” said Jeff Rader, the home builders’ project leader. “We see it as a product type that will be profitable. Conservation subdivisions generate a lot-price premium. We want to strengthen that value enhancement by working on a whole range of green elements. We also believe they should be easier to permit since they do carry with them public benefits if they are done in truly green way—reduced impact on the natural environment, reduced traffic and infrastructure demand.” Initially the EarthCraft group planned a program like LEED, which awards ratings based on a numerical scoring system, but ultimately decided that only a jury could achieve the necessary flexibility. “We found we couldn’t standardize it for all contexts,” Rader said. “In urban infill, for example, you might not be able to score high on green SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 29
Slide 29: “Any effort to measure Smart Growth should somehow capture the most important goal of all, a population that is living happily and has hopes for an equally bright future.” Harriet Tregoning, former secretary for Smart Growth, State of Maryland 30 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 30: oast to coast REALTORS Take an Active Role ® 32 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 31: to coast to co in Shaping Sustainable, Smart Growth Communities By Steve Wright & Heidi Johnson-Wright hen Linda GoodwinNichols set up shop as in a REALTOR® Florida’s Osceola County three decades ago, Smart Growth wasn’t an issue. In fact, growth of any kind wasn’t an issue. Back then, the quaint but sleepy Central Florida county didn’t even have 50,000 residents. On a holiday weekend, a population greater than that visited nearby Disney World. Today Goodwin-Nichols, who acts as vice mayor of the fast-growing city of Kissimmee, cannot think of fully serving a client without keeping abreast of issues such as higher density, smaller lots, better roads, improved infrastructure, conserved land, and— most important of all—school capacity. “Trying to balance extreme growth while protecting private property rights has always been a major challenge,” said Goodwin-Nichols, president of Goodwin Realty & Associates. “Now it’s extremely crucial that we, as REALTORS®, get involved with planning organizations, the Chamber of Commerce, the school board, and our government to be proactive in looking at what our community will look like in 20 years.” Whether REALTORS® are trying to preserve rural character in the East, small town charm in the Midwest, affordable housing in California, economic vitality in the Pacific Northwest, or good public education in Florida, they are finding that Smart Growth is key to the future. Goodwin-Nichols lives in Osceola County, which has more than tripled its population in less than two decades. She identified educational funding as the crucial issue in an area that is popular with young and growing families. W SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 33
Slide 32: “We’re building so fast that we’re adding nearly a classroom’s worth of children per day,” she said. “But we’re one of the worst-funded school districts in the state. So we have to look at taxes, impact fees, and other ways of making sure our children get a good education.” Goodwin-Nichols said that, years ago, she could not have pictured herself becoming politically active, but now she has served eight years on a city commission. In addition, three agents in her medium-sized office serve on either a planning or code enforcement board. The Osceola County Association of REALTORS® has become so concerned about development eating up land for parks, recreation, and open space that it committed preliminary support to the idea of raising taxes to buy undeveloped land in the Central Florida county. A group called Save Osceola has been working to place a sales tax issue on the county ballot to raise funds for buying undeveloped land and permanently setting it aside for parks, recreation, and open space. Board members from the Osceola REALTORS® association committed their support for the effort. Save Osceola is a grassroots organization dedicated to land preservation and management for the purposes of water resources, wildlife areas, and for nature-based recreational opportunities. However, the movement for a sales tax may be on hold. A separate referendum for a sales tax that would have helped pay for education in the county failed at the ballot during the March 2004 primary. After seeing that voters would not support a sales tax hike to pay for education, Save Osceola hasn’t taken steps to raise funds to back an open space ballot issue. “If you as a REALTOR® are going to represent your clients and customers, you need to know what’s going on in your community,” GoodwinNichols said. “If we as REALTORS® can’t get involved in solving the problems in our communities, then nobody can. We have the manpower to make a huge influence in our community.” In Ventura County, California, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, the challenges are different. The lack of developable land and affordable housing are what motivate REALTORS® to get involved in Smart Growth matters. “With a housing crisis in California, we need to retain rural land while supporting jobs and housing needs,” said Kay Wilson-Bolton, past president of the Ventura County Coastal Association of REALTORS® and broker/owner of Century 21 Buena Vista. The Ventura Coastal County Association has responded by joining a coalition called Housing Opportunities Made Easier, or HOME. The HOME coalition advocates for such things as affordable housing and higher-density development in Ventura County, where voters have placed growth restrictions on much of the county land. Consequently, less land is available for development, so it must be used more wisely. “We have to take a hard look at single family housing. Is it a 6,000-square-foot lot with a picket fence or a 1,200-square-foot, third-story condo The American dream has to be redefined as we go into the next decade. Let’s see if we can plan our cities so we can walk to get a quart of milk. It’s going to take awhile, but we can get there. 34 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 33: space, but very high on transportation access and walking destinations, etc.” A jury can also better evaluate the place-making details that will make plans worthy of brand distinction. To calibrate their standards, the initial jury will evaluate four local projects that have been praised as smart growth developments and that incorporate EarthCraft houses. One of those is Sessions’ Vickery, a suburban greenfield project in proximity to already-developed areas; another is Clark’s Grove, a new district in the exurban city of Covington. The third is Glenwood Park, a brownfield redevelopment in Atlanta, and the fourth is Serenbe (see map on page 28), a new village within a huge swath of undeveloped Fulton County that is being master-planned for sustainability by a collaborative of land owners. “We want to test our program against those very high-performance projects to make sure we don’t miss innovation, or that we don’t have a flaw in methodology that would prevent them from qualifying,” Rader said. “Toward the end of summer, after we’ve made the evaluations, we’ll open it up for business.” Rating Maryland’s Smart Growth Program Programs such as LEED and EarthCraft should make it possible to evaluate individual projects for their contribution to a metro area’s long-term quality of life, and that in turn will make it easier to build neighborhoods that mix uses and housing types. Meanwhile, however, single-use sprawl development continues to be the dominant practice. An increasing number of states and localities are adopting policies to change that. One of the best-known states is Maryland, whose adoption of a Smart Growth program under Governor Parris Glendening in the mid-1990s helped popularize the term. The Maryland program requires local governments to designate “priority funding areas” where most development should occur, and then limits state funds for infrastructure and services to those areas. Maryland encourages redevelopment of existing places through policies including tax credits and a shift of school funds toward rehabbing old schools and away from new construction. The state also took aggressive steps to set aside open space and preserve agricultural land. “In retrospect,” said John Frece, who was Glendening’s special aide for Smart Growth, “one of the things we didn’t do, but should have, was to set specific targets for what we wanted to achieve. We say we want more walkable, livable communities, but we don’t say how we’ll know we’re making progress.” The state did measure the proportion of development occurring within priority funding areas, said Harriet Tregoning, who was secretary for Smart Growth under Glendening. “About 75 percent was within PFAs [Priority Funding Areas]. But that’s not to say that everything inside was Smart Growth. However, on average, development outside used 10 times more land.” And State figures show that the rate of growth in miles-drivenper-person each day is slowing, she said. While some evidence is visible in the form of revitalized town centers and renovated neighborhood schools—and it’s clear that the land consumption rate is slowing compared with the trend of the 1990s—better measures of progress are needed, said Frece, who left his state government job to become communications director for the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland. Through a grant from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, the center is working with the Maryland Department of Planning to set and measure a number of critical benchmarks. While the scorecard is still being formulated, several measures have suggested themselves, such as: open space preserved; trends in farm acreage; pollution in Chesapeake Bay; transit ridership; rates of biking and walking; land zoned for mixed use; and housing supply and affordability. “Unfortunately, we’re limited by what is measurable based on what statistics are kept,” Frece said. Tregoning said she hopes any effort to measure Smart Growth would somehow capture the most important goal of all, a population that is living happily and has hopes for an equally bright future. “You would want to know: Do people feel their access to jobs and amenities is adequate or getting better? Do they have good choices in housing and neighborhoods at all stages of life? How do they feel about their quality of life?” Conclusion However we measure it, the best way to assess whether neighborhoods and regions we’re building are “smart” may be to look through the eyes of someone living several decades hence. Will the neighborhoods built in the early part of this century be as beloved and functional as those built in the early part of the 20th century are now? Will there be working farms and open vistas? Will older suburbs be vibrant and vital, or will they be slums? Perhaps when we can answer those and similar questions positively we’ll at last know we’re practicing Smart Growth. David A. Goldberg is the communications director for Smart Growth America, a nationwide coalition based in Washington D.C. that advocates for land-use policy reform. In 2002 Goldberg was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University where he studied urban policy. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 31
Slide 34: Mithun Design photo: Michael Seidl with a balcony? The answer is: It’s both,” said Wilson-Bolton. “The American dream has to be redefined as we go into the next decade. We have to have a real good dialogue on this. If we believe in that dream, we have to see if people are willing to take less to get more. Let’s see if we can plan our cities so we can walk to get a quart of milk. It’s going to take awhile, but we can get there,” Wilson-Bolton said. In the rolling hills of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, REALTORS® have joined forces with politicians, preservationists, regulators, and developers to define Smart Growth and use it to preserve the county’s resources. “In 2002, the Lancaster County Association of REALTORS® met with more than two dozen groups, including local builders, the Chamber of Commerce, economic development groups, and historic preservationists to come up with recommendations for zoning at the municipal level,” said Frank Christoffel IV, director of governmental affairs for the Building Industry Association of Lancaster County, which also provides governmental affairs services to the Lancaster County Association of REALTORS®. The Lancaster County Board of Commissioners endorsed the plan’s recommendations and appropriated $60,000 for outreach and education, plus $30,000 per year line item funding, with the goal of defining Smart Growth. “It means one thing to one person, another thing to another person. We wanted to find some common ground,” explained Christoffel. “We’re working with municipal supervisors to build on smaller lot sizes and to consolidate the growth where sewer, water, and public infrastructure already exist,” he said. “The county has a population of 480,000, and is adding about 5,000 per year. We have to build on smaller lots. The real estate market shows these smaller lots do very well, they don’t hurt REALTORS®. It’s easier for municipalities to provide services,” said Christoffel. “It’s a great challenge with 60 separate municipalities. Zoning is the real devil in the details. If you’re a developer and you want to build a Smart SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 35
Slide 35: Growth community, you have to get a variance or a conditional exception, as opposed to current zoning that encourages sprawl. It’s easy to build sprawl. It’s harder to build Smart Growth.” “It’s very difficult to sit on land for three years to go through a lengthy local permitting process. We focused on smaller lot size, expediting the permitting process within growth areas in the county,” said Christoffel. “[The Smart Growth coalition] is the first of its kind in the state,” he said. “We won the 2003 State and Local Government Affairs Award for the Best Smart Growth Program in the U.S. from the National Association of Home Builders. “We support Lancaster County’s agricultural history. We have permanently preserved over 50,000 acres of farmland out of about 600,000 total acres,” said Christoffel. Tom Larson, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Wisconsin REALTORS® Association, said their member REALTORS® got very proactive in Smart Growth because “planning is critical to protection of the quality of life and housing market in Wisconsin. “We saw plans only for agricultural preservation, only for preserving natural resources—they were planning for areas where they didn’t want development to occur, but they didn’t plan for areas where they did want development to occur. They didn’t look at what the strengths and weaknesses were,” Larson said of area planners. “They didn’t plan proactively for growth and development.” Larson said the Wisconsin REALTORS® Association tells municipalities not to hire big, expensive planners from far away. “Planning is about getting the people to buy into the plan. If you have a plan that nobody is going to follow, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “Planning has to respond to local political realities and it has to be a living, breathing document that’s flexible. Things change. You have to allow for change and have updates on a regular basis. “Some people over-think these plans,” Larson continued. “But they should be plans that every- one can read and understand—you shouldn’t have to be a Ph.D. to understand them.” Larson said the Wisconsin REALTORS® Association has launched a Quality of Life program featuring statewide real estate and living conditions surveys that will help the organization with its comprehensive planning efforts “by getting into the psyche of buyers. “Rather than representing 15,000 REALTORS®, we want to become the voice for over 3 million homeowners in the state,” he said. In the Pacific Northwest, the Washington Association of REALTORS® has also created a Quality of Life program focused on protecting property rights, ensuring economic vitality, providing housing opportunities, preserving the environment, and building better communities. “We’ve become some of the lead players on the state and local level,” said Bryan Wahl, director of government affairs for the Washington Association of REALTORS®. “We have really been ramping up It’s easy to build sprawl. It’s harder to build Smart Growth. our efforts to influence local planning efforts. Our concern is our ability to accommodate growth, especially in Washington where we have urban growth area restrictions.” Wahl said the Washington Association of REALTORS® has scored several key victories in the state legislature, which has supported several measures that encourage economic vitality, improve trans- 36 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 36: portation and infrastructure financing, and provide housing opportunities. Wahl said Washington REALTORS® and developers face a number of problems with permitting processes that are difficult and time-consuming, development regulations that often are conflicting, and overly restrictive limits on use of a property. “When you draw lines in the sand, you have to find ways to provide for the land capacity to accommodate that growth,” he said. “We’ve been able to reach out and work with organizations that typically we weren’t on the same page with, such as environmental [groups]. They’ve come to see the only way we can manage land is to provide housing of different types: mixed use, cottage housing, planned unit developments.” Wright and Johnson-Wright are award-winning journalists who frequently write about Smart Growth and sustainable communities. They live in a restored historic home in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana. Contact them at stevewright64 @yahoo.com. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 37
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Slide 38: A Solid Option in the Transportation Debate By Chris Swope t was a smart growth triumph in the unlikeliest of places: Houston, the traffic-choked city of freeways, finally has its own light-rail system. Sleek, new railcars began carrying passengers in January, rolling in and out of the downtown on 7.5 miles of track laid into the city streets. City officials called it the dawn of a new era. But there has been one nagging problem: automobile drivers keep crashing into the new railcars, at the alarming rate of five times a month. Some people joke that awe-struck Houston drivers are distracted because they have never seen public transit before. Actually, there’s a bit of truth to that theory: it turns out the car drivers were at fault in nearly every crash. Houston transit officials are working out a few safety kinks on their end. In the meantime, the auto-rail crashes have become something of a metaphor for transportation policy in an era of sustainable growth: cars and public transit have to learn to get along, even in car-crazy places like Houston. Crash problem aside, Houston’s light rail demonstrates a remarkable turn in thinking that’s occurring all across the country. Cities and states are coming to realize that they cannot solve their traffic congestion problems simply by building more highways further into the countryside. So ambitious efforts to build up public transit are I SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 39
Slide 39: underway even in places where it once seemed impossible to persuade people to leave their cars at home. Houston, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Diego—all cities that grew up around the automobile—are building extensive light-rail systems. Meanwhile, on the highway side, many states are shifting investments away from building sprawl-spawning roads in favor of fixing up the infrastructure they already have. The nationwide boom in public transit is taking millions of cars off the roads, easing the congestion in U.S. cities somewhat. Trains, buses, and other forms of public transit carried riders on 9.5 billion trips in 2001, the highest number in 40 years. In the past 5 years, according to the Washington, D.C.–based Surface Transportation Policy Project, transit ridership has grown by 21 percent. In the same time the number of miles Americans drove grew by only 12 percent. As communities increase investments in transit, the biggest payoff is not in removing cars from the roads. It’s in transit’s ability, particularly with rail, to shape compact, pedestrian-friendly development patterns—the opposite of suburban sprawl. Already a Houston developer is planning a 30story condominium tower adjacent to the new light-rail system. Units are expected to sell at prices up to $1 million, in part because buyers see rail access as an important amenity. Houston’s light-rail line is expected to stimulate as much as $1 billion worth of housing, offices, and retail space along its route. Critics argue that light-rail systems like Houston’s are an expensive boondoggle, carrying too few passengers to justify the $43-million-permile price tag. However, not even the staunchest rail advocates expect Houstonians to abandon driving altogether. As they see it, what light rail is doing in Houston and other sprawling cities is giving people an alternative transportation choice—if they want it—as well as an alternative to rambling subdivisions, parking lots, and strip malls. “We always want to see people get out of their cars whenever it’s possible,” says Ken Connaughton, spokesperson for Houston’s transit system. “But the goal here is to give people transportation options. People will always need to drive. But we need a combination of choices—buses, rail, and the roadway—and unless we have all three in a viable combination we’ll be in gridlock forever.” Traffic congestion is costly One thing about the nation’s transportation system is painfully clear to nearly anyone who lives in a metropolitan area: traffic congestion has never been worse. According to a report by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), the average American wasted 26 hours stuck in traffic in 2001, up from just 7 hours in 1982. All the bumper-tobumper delays weren’t just aggravating for drivers, they were also expensive to the U.S. economy. TTI puts the cost of congestion at $70 billion, including lost time and fuel. The country’s traditional response to traffic congestion has been to build more roads. That wasn’t so hard to do back in the 1950s when the The biggest payoff is not in removing cars from the roads, it’s in transit’s ability, to shape compact, pedestrianfriendly development patterns. 40 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 40: nation built its cherished interstate highway system. But road building these days is politically dicier and more expensive, especially in built-up areas where residents resist it. There is also a growing recognition among government officials, if not among highway engineers, that new roads have a way of leading to more traffic. Developers build more houses, offices, and shopping centers near the new highways, which then fill up with cars and create a need for more new roads. It’s a costly cycle, and exactly the recipe for suburban sprawl that the United States has been using for half a century. A gradual shift in this thinking began in the early 1990s. Congress gave state and local governments more freedom to spend federal money on mass transit and other solutions, in addition to highways, to solve their traffic problems. Roads and highways still get 80 percent of the dollars. But highway alternatives get 20 percent, and that amounts to a significant investment. From 1990 to 1999, federal spending on transit doubled from $3 billion a year to $6 billion, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project. Over the same period, federal spending on bicycle and pedestrian projects grew from $7 mil- SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 41
Slide 41: lion to $222 million. The new funds and flexibility sparked a flurry of transit experimentation at the local level. Hundreds of miles of light-rail track were laid in cities around the country. Commuter rail is enjoying a renaissance, with new systems planned in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon, as well as a unique rail line planned for the Chicago suburbs that will make it possible to travel from one suburb to another without riding downtown first. And numerous cities, including Boston, Charlotte, and Miami, are using a cheaper alternative to rail known as “bus rapid transit.” That strategy speeds up pokey city buses by giving them a dedicated lane on the roadway. As local transit undertakings increase, highway funding is shifting away from building highways in favor of fixing and expanding the existing network. Several governors, including Democrats Jim McGreevey of New Jersey and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, as well as Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney, are among those advocating a “fix it first” strategy with highways. It’s a smart growth philosophy that reflects how constrained many state budgets are. For example, in March Pennsylvania erased 26 road and bridge projects worth $5 billion from its 12-year plan. State transportation secretary Allen Biehler said the move reflected “a tightening financial picture and ongoing concerns about the impact transportation decisions have on Pennsylvania’s landscape.” In the new environment, several high-profile highway projects in other states have become political footballs. An 18-mile highway project in Maryland, known as the Intercounty Connector, killed five years ago by then-Governor Parris Glendening, has been revived by the new Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich (plans call for limiting the number of interchanges on the road to limit the amount of sprawl it creates). In Tennessee, Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen put a hold on the northern half of a beltway proposed around Nashville (the southern half is nearly complete). And last year in Georgia, Republican Governor Sonny Perdue killed a controversial 59mile highway, known as the Northern Arc, that was proposed to run through Atlanta’s northern suburbs. Residents who live in the Northern Arc’s path called Perdue’s move a victory for Smart Growth. But Susan Laccetti Meyers, vice president of a pro-highway group called Georgians for Better Transportation, says Perdue made a huge mistake. “The Atlanta lifestyle is conducive to the automobile,” Meyers says. “And only in very limited instances will you see that change. Projections are that in 2025, 97 percent of people here will still use automobiles as their primary means of getting around.” The voters speak At the local level, mass transit is enjoying a surge of political support. Much of that backing comes “We need a combination of choices—buses, rail, and the roadway— and unless we have all three in a viable combination we’ll be in gridlock forever.” Ken Connaughton, Houston’s transit system spokesperson 42 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 42: straight from the voters, who are passing growing numbers of transit ballot initiatives. Three-quarters of local transit initiatives won last year, and more are on the ballot this November. Last year’s wins included Kansas City, where voters raised taxes in order to expand bus service; San Francisco, where voters kept a tax to fund bus, subway, and some roadway projects; and Lone Tree, Colorado, a Denver suburb that agreed to tax itself to join the regional transit district. The biggest ballot victory for transit came in Houston. By last November, Houston had already spent $324 million of its own money to build the first 7.5 miles of light rail, with no federal matching funds. (Several members of Congress from the Houston area, including the powerful Republican Tom DeLay, think light rail is too expensive.) This past November voters were asked to approve an additional $640 million in bonds to begin work on a 64-mile light-rail expansion. It was a tough sell, given the timing; no one had yet taken a spin on the new system to see how it worked. In the end, 52 percent of Houston voters approved the light-rail bonding. They’d already seen the kind of traffic that 50 years of road building had brought about. Why not try something new? Now that the light rail is running—the railcars carried more than 550,000 passengers in the first month alone—most Houstonians seem satisfied that their city is on the right track. (Except, of course, for those few drivers who crash into the trains.) “Ridership has exceeded what we expected,” says Ken Connaughton, the transit spokesperson. “It’s very popular. You can go out on the line nearly any time of day and see full trains going by.” Chris Swope is a staff writer for Governing Magazine. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 43
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Slide 44: mericans spend more from their annual household budgets coming and going than they do on practically anything else—and that often includes buying the house of their dreams in the suburbs. Surprised? You’re not alone. Look in the lane next to you. “I’m sure a lot of people who move into a sprawling suburb don’t realize they are inflicting more transportation costs upon themselves,” says researcher David Goldstein of the California-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). After studying car ownership and driving patterns in three metropolitan areas, Goldstein concluded travel-related expenses often displaced the savings consumers envisioned by closing on bigger, less expensive suburban homes. “You’ll spend more driving to and from, than paying for the home.” Goldstein says the NRDC study draws a direct link between the amount people drive and whether their neighborhood design includes features such as den- A TRANSPORTATION two sides of the affordability coin By Joanne M. Haas HOUSING V E R S U S Researchers have found that suburban sprawl means consumers are spending more on travel than their homes … and Smart Growth is the real thing. sity, transit access, and pedestrian and bicycle paths. “This study shows people who live in more convenient communities are less dependent on cars.” Similar findings surfaced in another recent survey where transportation costs also registered a close second in annual household expenditures, behind housing. “It’s all about location, location, and location,” says researcher Robert Dunphy, senior resident fellow of Transportation and Infrastructure with the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. This is why Dunphy’s study, just like Goldstein’s, stresses transportation as one factor never to ignore when contemplating a move, no matter if it is within a single metropolitan area or from one part of the country to another. Goldstein agrees, adding REALTORS® and consumers alike can tap a limited but growing pool of resources dedicated to helping consumers weigh transportation and housing factors before signing on the dotted line. People gotta move Dunphy approached his study confident of one factor. “There is an extraordinary amount [of money] people spend on housing. We already knew that.” Using consumer expenditure data released last year by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dunphy’s research shows SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 45
Slide 45: “You’ll spend more driving to and from, than paying for the home.” David Goldstein, Natural Resources Defense Council housing costs swallowed about a third of a single household’s total budget in 2001. That includes paying the mortgage or rent, upkeep, and utilities—all told, that’s about double what folks spent nearly 30 years earlier. According to Dunphy’s calculations, which included National Association of REALTORS® data, transportation consumed 19 percent of a household’s budget in 2001. People spent more on moving around than they did eating, seeing doctors, or even getting new clothes. “Clearly, mobility is worth a lot to people, and they do spend a lot on it,” Dunphy says. The combination of housing and transportation expenses demanded more than 50 percent of all consumer spending that year, and things aren’t much different in 2004. In another Dunphy discovery, lower-income people spent nearly identical percentages of their budgets for housing and transportation as their wealthy counterparts. The differences surfaced when considering regions, whether Smart Growth features were available, and if homeowners were willing to endure long commutes to own larger, less expensive suburban homes. Dunphy says that to reduce housing expenses a person must locate where housing is less expensive—and that often means smaller markets. But, he stresses, it’s imperative the housing cost calculations also include transportation expenditures to get “the full burden of a location cost.” Some of the bigger markets have high housing costs but offer lower transport burdens. That combination doesn’t necessarily make the living easy, but it does make it more affordable. “New York and Boston both have lower transportation costs so that helps you deal with the cost of apartments,” he says of two cities known as expensive places to get a home zip code. San Francisco resembles that trend. But, Dunphy adds, weighing high housing costs with lower transportation costs makes the city by the Bay “not as extremely expensive.” The 2001 data in Dunphy’s study shows the average household spent $7,600 annually on transportation, with most of that going for costs related to private vehicles and a fraction for public transport, including air travel. That average was lower in cities like New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., which are big, densely developed, and operate well-used mass transit systems, making private vehicle use unnecessary and almost unattractive. Of the 28 metropolitan areas included in his study, housing costs were the lowest in the Midwest and near the Great Lakes in places such as St. Louis, the Twin Cities, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and the off-shore cities of Anchorage and Honolulu. However, some savings were lost on above-average transportation costs. Dunphy noted the biggest surprise is Honolulu, known as a high-priced market for home purchases. Perhaps, he said, it’s an example of households, possibly renters, just getting by in a tough market. Cities like Baltimore and Cleveland, where populations have dropped, are experiencing a return to inner neighborhoods where the best transit options abound. “That’s one of the favorable trends for transit—the resurgence in city living,” Dunphy says. Based in Washington, D.C., Dunphy hopes his research is noticed by tax-averse lawmakers looking for insight as to what consumers are willing to spend and for what purposes. The Congressional debate regarding the federal transportation budget, he notes, pitted anti-tax legislators against advocates for investment. It wouldn’t take much of a user fee increase, he says, to fund transit and road improvements that would translate into lower car repair bills and less car use. “The data show Smart Growth has a financial payoff,” he says of why he likes toll roads, especially in tight fiscal times. “There really is no other way to get the money. The consequences of a pretty good life are starting to creep in.” 46 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 46: Another idea Dunphy likes is the pay-at-thepump insurance proposal, which would allow motorists to pay for the insurance they need for the miles they drive. Sprawl ife at a price Goldstein says NRDC research shows clearly “the amount you need to spend on driving depends upon how smart the growth is in the neighborhood you’re living.” The NRDC study—completed by Goldstein, the council’s energy program director, and a few others—involves the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with some data from Seattle. “We have empirical evidence that Smart Growth works,” Goldstein says. “This study shows people who live in more convenient communities are less dependent on cars. … The communities are also more livable because they tend to have cleaner air and water and more protected open space.” Goldstein says the study should show naysayers that Smart Growth is effective when it comes to crafting urban designs that offer people efficient and convenient places to live while simultaneously reducing traffic congestion and significantly slashing the pollution problems that accompany high auto use. Smart Growth is a neighborhood planning style devoted to preventing urban sprawl by considering several key land-use issues. Those issues often include housing, transportation, and utilities as well as agricultural, natural, and cultural resources. The four variables the Goldstein team used while studying the transportation costs and habits of those in sprawl areas were income, household size, compactness of the neighborhood, and availability of transit services. “These four explain 90 percent of the difference between zip codes,” Goldstein says, referring to the driving data collected per zip code in the metropolitan areas. “It can be the difference between spending $9,000 a year on driving or only $3,000.” A homebuyer or renter can determine how much he or she will spend on transportation upon moving to an area and weighing those four factors. Goldstein notes there is an online service available to assist consumers in making that precise calculation for four metropolitan areas. It’s available at www.locationefficiency.com, which also has information about Fannie Mae’s Location Efficient Mortgage®. Goldstein says the program, while currently limited, may be expanded, and remains a valuable tool in showing consumers the sometimes-hidden travel costs of living in the sprawling suburbs. The combination of housing and transportation expenses demanded more than 50 percent of all consumer spending. Impacts of Density and Transit on Auto Costs San Francisco Bay Area 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 Annual Auto Costs ($/Household) 2 150 300 0 600 Zonal Transit Density 300 900 450 Hh/Res Acre This figure displays how the cost of driving is affected by neighborhood characteristics. The height of the surface represents annual driving costs: a family in the small, light violet region at the top of the graph— a family living in urban sprawl—would spend about $8,000/year to own and operate their cars. Moving to the left from this area, as the compactness of the neighborhood increases, driving cost decreases rapidly. Moving from the violet triangle to the right along the edge of the graph shows the effect of increasing transit service levels; from no transit service in the violet area to high levels of service (such as living within walking distance of a metro station) in the purple area where costs drop to $6,000/year. This graph applies to a family with a typical level of income. “It’s not immediately apparent,” Goldstein says. “Almost every family owns a car—maybe you have one or two cars and you moved out to the suburban sprawl. And now you have two or three cars. That’s hard to notice but it is a real cost over the years and it has contributed to feeling less economically secure.” For example, he says, if you are a suburban resident and you lose your job, you’ll still need the cars to search for new employment. An urban resident in a Smart Growth community can job hunt by using public transit, cabs, or walking. “You could sell your car and keep your house,” Goldstein says. “You could do that until you get back on your feet. You have more flexibility as well as lower costs in the more efficient neighborhoods.” It’s all about options aimed at helping consumers and the environment alike, and the researchers are hoping the nation’s policy makers and planners are listening. Joanne M. Haas is a freelance reporter covering government, politics, business, agriculture, and education. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 47
Slide 47: Smart Growth Fuels Vibrant Urban Villages By Brad Broberg 48 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 48: nspired by a variety of forces—notably the dwindling supply of undeveloped land—successful Smart Growth undertakings continue to mount. New projects are springing up from coast to coast as government, developers, and consumers are finding that Smart Growth is more than a buzzword. In the right time, place, and form, it can be the most effective and marketable approach to development. REALTORS® in Pasadena, California, and Arlington County, Virginia have found this to be especially true. Fueled by strong support from local government, development in those two communities reflects numerous Smart Growth principles. And buyers are eating it up. “There’s a tremendous market for it,” said Dominic DeFazio, a REALTOR® with Coldwell Banker in Pasadena. REALTOR® Tom Meyer, president of Condo 1 Inc. in Arlington, said, “There’s been a little overbuilding with apartments in the last couple of years, but the condo market is extremely hot. In 15 years here, I’ve never seen it this crazy.” As attractive places to live within large metropolitan areas, Pasadena and Arlington shared pressure to grow. Yet as established communities, any vacant land had long since disappeared. The answer was redevelopment using Smart Growth principles as the building blocks. Arlington, one of the first communities to embrace Smart Growth, and Pasadena, one of the latest, both adopted infill strategies that increased density at key locations, encouraged a mixture of uses and, most importantly, took advantage of the arrival of rail lines. The result? A series of vibrant urban villages where people can live, work, and play—all without having to battle growing congestion in their cars. “There is a nice mix of retail, offices, and multifamily residential at each Metro stop,” said Meyer. “You can walk up out of a Metro station and find anything you want.” Metro is the transit network that serves the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Its extension of rail service west into Arlington County 25 years ago gave county planners the perfect tool to prepare for the growth they knew was coming. “At a certain point, several decades ago, the people in power said, ‘We know growth is coming to our area. We know we’re going to get a Metro line here. How can we [plan] to make sure the county doesn’t get all clogged up with cars,’ ” explained Meyer. I SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 49
Slide 49: Arlington is proof that you can have quality of life and growth if it’s planned right. A compact and highly urbanized county, Arlington had gotten a taste of what might be in store if it didn’t act aggressively when Rosslyn, a gritty neighborhood just across the Potomac River from D.C., began to redevelop in the 1960s as an office center. “It was occupied during the day and dead at night,” said Tom Miller, planning commission coordinator for Arlington County. “There was very little housing and not much retail. People viewed Rosslyn as something they didn’t want to see duplicated.” Thanks to farsighted planning, that style of development did not continue. As plans were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s to extend MetroRail into Arlington, the county fought to build the Orange Line underground along the aging Rosslyn-Ballston commercial corridor rather than along a new freeway. And instead of relegating transit stations to roles as glorified parking lots, it targeted areas surrounding the stations for high-density, mixed-use growth with plenty of public amenities, offering incentives to entice developers to participate. “A lot of thought went into where the rail stops went,” said Meyer. “There’s a small community around each stop. Arlington is very vibrant now. The night life is exciting in these places” (see photo at right). By focusing growth within a quarter-mile radius of the transit stations, Arlington not only preserved the surrounding single-family neighborhoods, it enhanced their value. “As you get a few blocks away from the Metro stop, you see density go down from high-rise to mid-rise to single-family homes, which are now extremely valuable because they’re near the Metro line,” said Meyer. “The prices have gone out of sight a few blocks from Metro stops.” Kristin and Wayne Westbrook, both profession- 50 ON COMMON GROUND SPRING 2004
Slide 50: Arlington, VA als in their mid-50s, live in The Atrium, a 13-story condo in Rosslyn. “I like the energy of the neighborhood,” said Kristin. Not only is their condo two blocks from a Metro rail station, but restaurants, shops, and theaters are all within walking distance. “It’s a wonderful way of getting the body moving,” said Kristin. “When I relied more on a car, I walked a lot less. This is a healthy alternative.” Arlington is proof that “you can have quality of life and growth if it’s planned right,” said Miller. Arlington’s success has not gone unnoticed. Miller said other communities are constantly asking the county how to make Smart Growth work for them. “It doesn’t happen overnight,” said Miller. “It’s difficult to create a strong sense of place and a place that people want to be. You can start on it and build the foundation ... but you can’t make development go where it doesn’t want to go.” In Pasadena, a community known for its graceful architecture, creating a sense of place was not a problem for the city as it wrestled with a need to accommodate growth. The problem was how to preserve the existing sense of place while opening the door to redevelopment. Mission accomplished, said Hans Hagenmayer, a REALTOR® with Team Provident Realty in Pasadena. “Pasadena has done a good job of seeing that these projects keep in character with the city,” he said. “The new projects don’t stand out because they look like they’ve always been there.” For many years, Pasadena was a sleepy city where change occurred slowly—if at all. “When I started, Pasadena was still ‘The little old lady from ... ’” said DeFazio, who has been selling real estate in that community since 1981. By the 1990s, however, Southern California’s growing population, squeezed by a chronic housing shortage, caught on to the charm of Pasadena’s leafy neighborhoods and elegant architecture—especially after the heart of the city, Old Pasadena, was revitalized and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans to build a new rail line linking Pasadena to Los Angeles. The little old lady has been kicking up her heels ever since. “We had almost zero development for so many years and now there’s a development on every corner,” said Maggie Navarro, a REALTOR® with Coldwell Banker in Pasadena. Well, maybe not every corner. Following Arlington’s example, Pasadena chose to channel growth, which had been leaking into singlefamily neighborhoods in the form of small apartment complexes, to the areas surrounding the rail SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 51
Slide 51: within walking distance of Mission Meridian.” Sean’s mother, Janine, thinks the family is making a wise investment. “People in California are getting tired of [driving],” she said. “I think this type of development will be the rule for the next 10 years at least.” Given the community’s deep desire to preserve its heritage, some Pasadena residents now wonder whether the city’s Smart Growth approach is working too well. “It’s raising people’s eyebrows,” said League. “They’re asking when is enough enough.” Developments in Arlington and Pasadena are vivid examples of the market’s appetite for Smart Growth, but they are not the only “We had almost zero development for so many years and now there’s a development on every corner.” Maggie Navarro, REALTOR with Coldwell Banker, in Pasadena ® stations for the Gold Line, which opened last year. The city created incentives to attract highdensity, mixed-use developments to transit station sites that add urban spice to Pasadena’s predominantly suburban flavor. “They’re creating transit villages ... where people can live, work, and go to a cool restaurant without leaving their neighborhood,” said Navarro. The strategy has been wildly successful. “Every developer in Southern California is trying to build here,” said Brian League, senior project manager with the city of Pasadena. Pasadena developers find their projects in high demand. “People want to be able to live close to shopping, close to theaters, and keep their cars at home,” said DeFazio. “People are flocking here.” With help from his parents, recent college graduate Sean Saraf is buying a unit in Mission Meridian Village, a mixed-use development near a rail station in the adjacent city of South Pasadena. “I’m looking forward to being able to walk out of my loft and take the train to Los Angeles ... without having to get in my car,” said the 23-year-old. “Plus there are a lot of things to do ones. Post Properties can point to several Smart Growth apartment communities it has built around the country—including Pasadena and Arlington but also Denver, Dallas, and Atlanta— that have received similar responses. “Without question, the reception has been very positive,” said John Mears, executive vice president of the Atlanta-based development company. “People want to be closer to where they’re working and closer to the cultural amenities of the metropolitan area and not spend inordinate time in their vehicles,” said Mears. Post Properties had specialized in building garden-style apartment homes outside the urban core. “They were gated communities, strictly residential,” he said. That changed about six years ago. “It was a financial strategy as opposed to something that had a greater social conscience,” said Mears. “We thought if we could find well-located properties within the city, it would be hard for our competition to find properties that would provide immediate competition to what we were building.” The role and scale of retail in Post Property 52 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 52: developments varies from location to location. In some, it is ancillary to the residential component. In others, it is an attraction in its own right. “The destination retail, as an amenity, has been tremendous,” said Mears. “Where we have done that, the retail is in fact a huge selling point and clearly distinguishes us from our competitors and enables us to achieve premium [rents] for that convenience.” While Smart Growth advocates have plenty to cheer about, Smart Growth remains a “woefully small” percentage of overall development, said Todd Zimmerman, co-managing director of Zimmerman/Volk Associates, a development analysis firm specializing in New Urbanism. “It’s growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s growing off such a small base,” he said. Despite its many advantages, New Urbanism, one element of Smart Growth, comes with no guarantee of success, said Zimmerman. “Like any other real estate development, it depends on how well it’s executed and positioned,” he said. “There are several failures out there, but they’re not fail- ures because there’s a lack of a market. They’re failures because they were very poorly executed.” Perhaps the biggest mistake is trying to duplicate a successful development at a different location without taking into account the unique needs of that location. “The principles of New Urbanism apply everywhere, but it takes its physical form from the characteristics of the location,” said Zimmerman. “It’s not a style. It’s a complete system.” Looking ahead, Zimmerman says the New Urbanism expression of Smart Growth is the perfect response to a looming “demographic imperative” in which both aging Baby Boomers and Millennials—the generation that is currently between the ages of 7 and 27—simultaneously seek alternatives to traditional suburban living. “It is clearly the future,” said Zimmerman. Brad Broberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer specializing in business and development issues. His work appears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journal and the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. T he combination of New Urbanism and mass transit is a match made in Smart Growth heaven and the knot Mission Meridian Village features 53 courtyard condominiums and 14 lofts combined with 4,000-square feet of neighborhood retail and a 324-stall parking garage—all within a short stroll of the South Pasadena Gold Line Station. Developer Michael Dieden founded CHA in 1997 with the express purpose of pursuing TOD. “Our mission is to build places where people can live near transit and use transit and leave their cars in the garage,” said Dieden, who began planning Mission Meridian Village before it was even certain the Gold Line was coming. Dieden’s faith did not go unrewarded. “Every unit has been pre-sold,” he said. “It just shows how much of a demand there is for this type of living.” The key to successful TOD, said Dieden, is cooperation between cities, transit agencies, and developers. That’s what happened with Mission Meridian Village. “South Pasadena is very progressive in terms of transit-oriented development,” he said. On the other hand, Dieden backed away from two potential TOD projects in the Bay Area after he and the cities failed to agree on development strategies. “Transit development is difficult because you’re dealing with multiple public agencies, and they often have different objectives that can conflict with the objectives a private developer is going to have,” said Dieden. “It’s not foolproof, as I have learned the hard way.” is being tied more and more often, said Andy Kunz. “Transit-oriented development (TOD) is happening in a lot of places to varying degrees,” said Kunz, director of NewUrbanism.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes urban living and mass transit—twin hallmarks of Smart Growth. TOD uses rail and bus stations as magnets to attract high-density, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly development, which in turn stimulates mass-transit ridership. Atlanta, Portland, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. are among the metropolitan areas experiencing significant transit-oriented development, said Kunz. “It’s just about exploding around D.C.,” said Kunz. “New housing in D.C. is selling faster than they can build it and most of it is within walking distance of rail stations.” What’s exciting to see, said Kunz, is that transit agencies are taking the lead in soliciting TOD proposals from developers—not just for new stations but for existing ones as well. “They are looking at their parking lots and seeing potential [commercial] gold mines as well as a way to increase ridership,” he said. In the Los Angeles area, TOD is underway up and down the rail lines of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In South Pasadena, Creative Housing Associates (CHA) is putting the finishing touches on a showcase example. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 53
Slide 53: Five Communities Receive National Award for Smart Growth Achievement And theWinner Is ... MART G S T he votes have been tallied and the winners announced for EPA’s 2003 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. In this second year of the national award program, entries were up more than 10 percent, with 112 entries from 31 states and the District of Columbia.The Award recognizes outstanding achievement in Smart Growth by state, local, or regional governments in five categories: Built Projects, Policies and Regulation, Community Outreach and Education, Public Schools, and Overall Excellence in Smart Growth. The program was expanded from four to five categories in 2003.The newest category highlights Smart Growth innovations in a specific area that will change annually.This year’s chosen area was Public Schools, which demonstrates how K–12 schools can adopt smart growth approaches and meet the educational needs of students. Each award recipient has incorporated the principles of Smart Growth to create places that respect community culture and the environment, foster economic development, and enhance quality of life.The award is made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, with advice provided by a range of constituencies with interest and expertise in the built environment and Smart Growth. WTH RO W INN 54 Read more about Smart Growth at EPA’s website: www.epa.gov/smartgrowth. ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 54: SM T GROW AR LIVABLE COMMUNITIES PROGRAM OVERALL EXCELLENCE TH AFTER BEFORE 1 NE WIN R Metropolitan Council Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota onsistently ranked among the top locations in the country to raise a family or establish a business, the Minneapolis-St. Paul region is experiencing rapid population growth … and with that growth comes stress: increasing traffic congestion, rising housing prices, dwindling open space. But instead of limiting growth, the Minnesota State Legislature tried something different. It provided the Metropolitan Council—the regional planning organization for the seven-county Twin Cities area—with a voluntary, incentive-based approach to help communities grow smarter. The Legislature passed the Livable Communities Act (LCA) in 1995 to get innovative projects off the ground. The LCA underwrites three grant programs: Tax Base Revitalization (brownfield cleanup), Local Housing Initiatives (lifecycle and affordable housing), and the Livable Communities Demonstration Account (mixed-use projects). From 1996 to May of 2003 the council awarded 292 LCA grants totaling nearly $100 million. Metropolitan Council chair Peter Bell says Smart Growth principles are widely supported and effect real change. “They embrace efficient use of existing resources, economic vibrancy, preservation of open space, choices in housing and transportation, and consensus building. They are principles that promote community, livability, and quality of life.” C SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 55
Slide 55: BUILT PROJECTS THE VILLAGE AT NAVAL TRAINING CENTER SM T GROW AR TH 2 NE WIN R Department of the Navy Southwest Division Naval Facilities Engineering Command, San Diego, California T he honor of the Built Projects Award was given to the Department of the Navy for creating a traditional neighborhood of military housing. The Village at the Naval Training Center adjacent to Point Loma, California (near San Diego) is the location of this award-winning community. According to Tony Megliola, public/private venture team leader, success of the undertaking can be measured in the fact that The Village enjoys 100 percent occupancy and has a waiting list. “It’s the best military housing in the U.S.,” he said. “It’s a huge increase in the quality of life for military families that enables the sailors to better focus on their jobs knowing that their families live in a good neighborhood and are well cared for.” The Village offers 500 affordable housing units, based on the principles of New Urbanism, and features well-designed public spaces, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, and regional architectural styles. It integrates smoothly with the existing residential and commercial surroundings of historic Point Loma. The traditional neighborhood design creates a place where families can live and play, and have easy access to employment and shopping. 56 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 56: HOUSING ENHANCEMENT LOAN PROGRAM POLICIES & REGULATIONS SM T GROW AR TH 3 NE WIN R Cuyahoga County Treasurer’s Office Cuyahoga County, Ohio orking with private banks and local municipalities, the Cuyahoga County Treasurer’s Office has helped finance more than 4,700 home improvement loans worth in excess of $57 million. The program has been successful in stemming out-migration, helping residents stay in their homes, and strengthening compact, diverse, and livable neighborhoods—for less than $1 million a year. The program, named HELP—Housing Enhancement Loan Program—has improved residents’ quality of life and encouraged thousands of families to remain in older Cleveland neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs. Under HELP participating banks make home improvement , loans at 3 percent below market rate. The County Treasurer’s Office then purchases CDs at these banks, accepting 3 percent less return than market rate. Homes valued up to $250,000 and multi-family homes of three units or more are eligible in the 33 targeted cities. The cities have noticed a “halo effect”; that is, improved homes encourage other homeowners to make improvements, even without HELP loans. Treasurer Jim Rokakis says that even with current low interest rates, the program appeals to many—they make about 100 loans a month. The success of this program has convinced two other Ohio counties to enact similar programs. And Rokakis says the success of the program has spurred the County Treasurer’s office to create a program designed especially for “heritage,” or old housing, working with the Cleveland Restoration Society. W SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 57
Slide 57: COMMUNITY OUTREACH GEORGIA QUALITY GROWTH PROGRAM & EDUCATION AWARD SM T GROW AR TH 4 NE WIN R Georgia Department of Community Affairs Office of Quality Growth, State of Georgia G eorgia communities looking for better ways to plan for Smart Growth can turn to the Georgia Office of Quality Growth (OQG) for advice and planning services. Communities can request the assistance of OQG resource teams or consultants who will evaluate local ordinances, offer direct technical assistance, share success stories, and more. An OQG website lists and illustrates many ways in which Smart Growth ideas can be implemented. The OQG program, active since 2000, has two goals: (1) direct assistance efforts to those communities that are ready to implement Smart Growth and (2) educate communities about Smart Growth success stories in Georgia. The program has provided $350,000 in grants to 27 communities. With those funds, communities have, for example, created neighborhood master plans, written infill design guidelines and development regulations, conducted corridor studies, and written new ordinances. Program director Jim Frederick says OQG has a field staff of four who “keep their hand on the pulse of local government so we know which [communities] are ready to go with a Smart Growth operation.” While OQG has a marketing program but limited resources, Frederick says, “We focus on the best prospects, and we rely heavily on peer-to-peer interaction to publicize the benefits of the program.” 58 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 58: MOORE SQUARE MUSEUMS MAGNET MIDDLE SCHOOL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AWARD SM T GROW AR TH 5 NE WIN R Wake County Public School System City of Raleigh, North Carolina I n the heart of the Raleigh, North Carolina, cultural and arts district is a new magnet school. This school—Moore Square Museums Magnet Middle School—occupies a mere four acres near downtown Raleigh, rather than going along with the prevailing trend of big schools on big sites. The school’s building site was assembled from disused and blighted buildings, and has been transformed into a fully equipped school with two playing fields. George Chapman, city of Raleigh planning director, revels in the project’s glow. “The school has been well received in the neighborhood: it has reached out to the community, and the community has responded in kind.” Nearly 500 students attend the magnet school in grades 6 through 8, many who applied specifically to attend this school. The revitalized area is attracting new residents, new businesses, and other redevelopment, all of which has helped to stabilize the community. The school is within walking distance of a bus center and close to cultural attractions and several neighborhoods; it is a source of pride for students and residents. It has also set a standard for building smaller schools that students want to attend and re-invigorating neighborhoods. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 59
Slide 59: smartGrowth in the states CALIFORNIA DELAWARE FLORIDA Voters in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed the construction of a new Wal-Mart store. The measure would have allowed the construction of a new Wal-Mart SuperCenter without the normal zoning, traffic, and environmental reviews. Opponents of the measure, who won with 61 percent of the vote, claimed the SuperCenter would hurt the community by driving out small business and encouraging urban sprawl. The state of Delaware joined The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund to announce two land purchases that will lead to preservation of more than 1,150 acres of forest in Sussex County. The land, made up of two tracts, was purchased from a Pennsylvania lumber company for almost $14 million dollars. Plans for the land include reforesting with a mix of hardwood and evergreen trees and, eventually, limited public access and recreational use. Governor Ruth Ann Minner praised the purchase as an example of her proposed “Green Infrastructure” program, which seeks opportunities for state government to work with environmental groups to preserve some of the state’s most important natural habitats. The city of Dania Beach and Broward County are expected to enter into an agreement to fund redevelopment of the Dania Beach downtown. This agreement represents a change from how other Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) plans in the county have been handled. For other CRAs, Broward County returns the increase in the Community Redevelopment area’s growing tax base to the district for improvements. The new agreement would allow Dania Beach to apply for up-front funding for individual redevelopment projects in that zone. Broward County has set up a pool of $10 million for several cities in need of rejuvenation, including Dania Beach. Improvements being considered by city officials include adding cafés and other retail establishments, better lighting, and reducing Dania Beach Boulevard by two lanes to create a more intimate atmosphere. 60 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 60: IDAHO LOUISIANA MARYLAND The Boise City Council voted unanimously to approve a transit plan designed to prevent traffic jams on State Street, one of Boise’s main traffic corridors. The plan requires the Ada County Highway Commission to spend upward of $57 million over the next 20 years, and includes a widened State Street of seven lanes, expanded bike lanes, landscaped medians and detached sidewalks and pathways to make the street more pedestrianfriendly. The plan calls for the affected cities—Boise, Garden City, and Eagle—to make sure their comprehensive plans allow for development of mixed-use “nodes” that would permit more people and better transit use. Three bills approved by the Louisiana legislature relating to coastal restoration and protection were signed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. House Bill 531 authorizes use of police power to protect the Louisiana coastline and specifies that compensation must be paid “for property taken for public purposes related to coastal conservation, management, preservation, enhancement, creation, or restoration.” House Bill 766 provides that state and political subdivisions shall be held harmless from any claims relating to coastal restoration. Finally, Senate Bill 504 establishes a fund for coastal restoration projects. The bills are viewed as tools to proactively manage the coast and to take steps to repair the coast once it is harmed. The Maryland General Assembly gave final approval to Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s brownfields redevelopment reform bill. The program, developed in 1997 and praised by the environmental community, has lagged in recent years. Only 90 polluted properties, averaging about 30 each year, have been redeveloped to date. Changes to the brownfields program include streamlining the application process, increasing the types of eligible properties to include sites with oil contamination, shortening waits for cleanup plan review from 120 days to 75 days, and shortening application processing from 60 days to 45 days. New public participation requirements will make it easier for residents to comment on redevelopment proposals. SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 61
Slide 61: smartGrowth in the states(continued) MASSACHUSETTS MONTANA NEW JERSEY A $200 million redevelopment project was recently announced on the site of a failed mall in the city of Worcester. The plan for the site, formally known as the Worcester Common Outlets, will include razing the mall and building 900 housing units, 300,000 square feet of retail space, a medical office building, and a connection to the city’s commuter rail stop. The site was developed as a mall in 1971, but fell on hard times in recent years due to the influx of other shopping centers in the area. Mall demolition is expected to begin in early next year, with occupancy projected for 2007. Bozeman has embraced Smart Growth principles and will reject “cookie-cutter” housing and housing without parks and businesses, according to its planning director. Major development projects will be required to have a central area, defined as some kind of commercial core or a park. City planners are calling for a return to “neighborhood development,” consisting of sidewalks, trees, and safe routes to school, all of which are found in Bozeman’s oldest neighborhoods. Meadowlands planners are rolling out a blueprint for a mixed-use “transit village” that officials say will transform 145 acres of warehouses, trucking companies, and old dumps into a “classy” destination for residents willing to embrace a mass transit–friendly lifestyle. The Secaucus Transit Village Redevelopment Plan calls for 1,850 residential units; a 500room hotel and conference center; and up to 750,000 square feet of restaurants, boutiques, coffee shops, professional offices, and other commercial uses within a short walk of the recently opened Secaucus Junction railroad station. 62 ON COMMON GROUND SUMMER 2004
Slide 62: NORTH DAKOTA TEXAS UTAH Bismarck began implementation of a “Renaissance Zone” in late 2003. The purpose of the Renaissance Zone, enacted by the State Legislature in 1999, is to revitalize the business community, building structures, or both in a defined area of a municipality limited in size, in accordance with state law. The goals for the Bismarck Renaissance Zone include establishing the Zone as a center of business life, government, and cultural opportunity, promoting the Zone as the preferred location for commercial uses, maximizing the accessibility of the Zone, and upholding Bismarck’s heritage. Those who develop projects in the Zone may be eligible for exemptions from property and sales taxes. By a slim majority, Houston residents approved a $7.5 billion regional transit plan that will result in regionwide rail expansion. Texas legislators are now seeking federal matching funds, without which the project cannot proceed. Voters approved a $640 million bond issuance that will pay for 22 of the projected 73 miles of new light rail. The plan also includes 44 new bus routes, a doubling of HOV lanes, and extension of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s participation in local road projects for another five years. Work has started on the largest development project in Utah’s history. The Daybreak project, a 4,126-acre community to be built on land once contaminated by waste from an open-pit mining operation on the east slope of the Oquirrhs Mountains, will include a town center, a school, 1,200 acres of parks, a lake, commercial space, and 13,000 homes to be built over 15 years. The project comes after years of discussion by groups like Envision Utah about the concept of “walkable communities,” where residents can work, shop, live, and play within a reasonably close area. Eventually, the community will link to a number of transportation options, including a proposed Light Rail Spur, the Mountain View Corridor, and walking and biking trails. Compiled by Gerald L. Allen, NAR Government Affairs SUMMER 2004 ON COMMON GROUND 63