Salon Newsreal | The war against sprawl I

A L S O+T O D A Y
The war against sprawl, II
By Susan Zakin
It's owls against developers in Arizona's Oro Valley

Reactions to the president's speech
Experts discuss Clinton's performance and what effects his proposals would have on the actual problems he identified as priorities

[ WANDERLUST ]
Can this planet be saved?
By Don George
Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation
[ WANDERLUST ]
Earth odyssey
By Mark Hertsgaard
A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age

T A B L E+T A L K
Ignore the talking heads! Discuss your thoughts on Clinton's State of the Union address in the Politics area of Table Talk
___________________
Visit barnesandnoble.com for politics books on both sides of the aisle
___________________

R E C E N T L Y
We interrupt this impeachment ...
By Joshua Micah Marshall
Two years in a row, Clinton's State of the Union address proves he won't follow the Presidential Tragedy script
(01/20/99)
Dear Henry
By Sean Wilentz, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and C. Vann Woodward
Historians talk back to House impeachment managers
(01/20/99)
What might have been
By Joan Walsh
It's hard to watch this president perform so well, knowing that he has already undermined his -- and our -- hopes for any real legislative success
(01/20/99)
Diamond in the Ruff
By Harry Jaffe
The president's lawyer, a lone figure in his wheelchair in the well of the Senate, could not have been a more effective defender
(01/20/99)
The State of the Union
Prepared text of President Clinton's State of the Union address
(01/20/99)
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THE WAR AGAINST SPRAWL I | PAGE 1, 2
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Gore did something else that no one at his level has done before: He made it clear that transportation and smart land use go hand in hand. It's astounding how many public officials, from Washington on down to your county supervisors, have spent money on preserving open space with one hand, doled out billions for new highways and highway interchanges that speed the development of open space with the other and still managed to keep a straight face. True, the specifics of the administration's initiative don't go very far -- as John Norquist, the mayor of Milwaukee, puts it, "There is a lot more to be gained by cutting back on federal spending that causes sprawl, like the big highway pork bill that went through last year, than by just announcing new programs" -- but it's a start.
Gore is clearly trying to turn the federal government into an ally for the sprawl-fighting efforts that have sprung up around the country like so many, well, strip malls. These come from a variety of directions. Inner-city churches have begun to argue in the last few years that there is a direct relationship between policies affecting development on the urban fringe -- from subsidies for roads and schools to zoning that keeps the poor out -- and the flight of resources from their neighborhoods. Officials in older suburbs have begun to recognize that they are bound to lose their never-ending battle to stave off decline unless they can find a way of changing state and county policies that prefer growth on cheap, undeveloped land.
Politicians in some -- though hardly all -- newer suburbs are building careers on slow-growth sentiment. Environmentalists have realized that, as Brookings' Katz puts it, "in theory we won the air war and the water war, but we lost the land war, and the land war was the most important one to win." Farmers and, in a handful of cases, their farm bureaus and Republican state legislators are coming to the conclusion that one of the best ways to preserve their land may be to make the urban core attractive again for working families.
What these various efforts have lacked is any high-profile support. There are only 11 states with growth management acts on the books, and of those, only Oregon's, Washington's and Vermont's are really meaningful. The past couple of years have seen a few other attempts to get at the issue: Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening of Maryland is trying to steer state resources only to already-developed communities; Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman got voters to agree to buy up half of New Jersey's remaining open space; the Tennessee Legislature last year decided to require the state's counties to plan their growth.
But that is hardly a national ground swell. What Gore appears to be trying to do is to use federal largesse to tilt states and localities in an anti-sprawl direction: to discourage local jurisdictions from acting like a bunch of scrabbling communities in which the rich will inevitably eat the poor -- or at least steal their tax base -- and instead begin thinking about how to keep the region healthy; to think more creatively about whether highways and clotted arterials are the best way to move people from one place to another; to find resources to make existing cities and suburbs more attractive places to live.
It all sounds good, until you begin to think about who might be arrayed on the other side. There are, for instance, state highway departments, which, except where a handful of states have tried to change them, are unremitting asphalt lovers. There's the construction lobby. There are engineers, financiers, developers and land-use lawyers. There are state legislators who count all those people among their closest friends and contributors. There are skeptical urban politicians, most of them African-American or Hispanic, who fear regionalism is a cover for diluting their power with white suburbs.
Then there are all those Republican members of Congress who will have to enact this set of proposals coming out of an administration they've just spent the last month telling us they don't trust. There's even Wall Street, which as a result of the savings and loan crisis has become a major player in financing development, and which tends to like predictable, cookie-cutter, sprawl-dependent models for housing, shopping centers and office complexes.
And, of course, there's the market, which is sending mixed signals at the moment. On the one hand, developers are actually paying attention these days to the "New Urbanists," the movement of architects and designers who for the last decade have been arguing for compact, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development. "There are significant market segments that are bored, tired and being bankrupted by conventional real estate development," says Chris Leinberger, a national real estate consultant and Albuquerque, N.M., developer. "They're tired of strip retail and having to drive to get everywhere."
On the other hand, somebody is still moving into all those developments out on the urban fringe and shopping at Wal-Mart and bringing their cars into Jiffy Lube and clogging the rush-hour highways. The truth is, many of us act like automotive sheep. Build a road to the middle of nowhere, and we take it. Widen a highway, and the morning it reopens we pack it as full as it was before. Give us a prairie-full of parking surrounding a new mall, and there we are, milling about as we try to find a space.
So what Gore is doing is gambling. He is wagering that he can reshuffle a deck that has been stacked in favor of sprawl, and, by giving aid and comfort to all the local forces that are trying to array themselves against it, begin the hard work of stacking the deck in favor of cities and existing suburbs. As Leinberger puts it, "The market is increasingly saying, 'I want lots of options: Within 1,500 feet of where I live, I want to be able to have a cappuccino, buy a book, buy a gallon of milk, walk to work, have a park, ideally have a connection to nature.' And we in real estate can do that, but it's tough, because the fact is everything works against you. We've made the wrong things easy and the right things hard. What Gore's been talking about is just reversing that; making the right thing easy, and making the wrong thing at least pay its own way."
He may succeed, and he may not. But by elevating the issue to the level of federal policy, he has at least begun a process that will be hard to stop. "This is a fight that is going to go on for some time," says Katz. "We've got decades of embedded rules that have favored a kind of suburbanization that has been harmful not just to central cities but to suburbs themselves. That's why you can't deny the power of this issue. Think of the decentralization of employment, or of the diminished fiscal capacity of cities and inner suburbs. These are crises caused by growth patterns that are having a devastating effect on the ability of cities and inner suburbs to thrive and survive. That's why this issue isn't going away: It has to do with the stark truth of who's winning and who's losing in the new economy."
SALON | Jan. 21, 1999
Rob Gurwitt is a correspondent for Governing magazine and a contributing writer for DoubleTake.

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A L S O+T O D A Y The war against sprawl, II By Susan Zakin It's owls against developers in Arizona's Oro Valley Reactions to the president's speech Experts discuss Clinton's performance and what effects his proposals would have on the actual problems he identified as priorities [ WANDERLUST ] Can this planet be saved? By Don George Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation [ WANDERLUST ] Earth odyssey By Mark Hertsgaard A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age T A B L E+T A L K Ignore the talking heads! Discuss your thoughts on Clinton's State of the Union address in the Politics area of Table Talk ___________________ Visit barnesandnoble.com for politics books on both sides of the aisle ___________________ R E C E N T L Y We interrupt this impeachment ... By Joshua Micah Marshall Two years in a row, Clinton's State of the Union address proves he won't follow the Presidential Tragedy script (01/20/99) Dear Henry By Sean Wilentz, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and C. Vann Woodward Historians talk back to House impeachment managers (01/20/99) What might have been By Joan Walsh It's hard to watch this president perform so well, knowing that he has already undermined his -- and our -- hopes for any real legislative success (01/20/99) Diamond in the Ruff By Harry Jaffe The president's lawyer, a lone figure in his wheelchair in the well of the Senate, could not have been a more effective defender (01/20/99) The State of the Union Prepared text of President Clinton's State of the Union address (01/20/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		THE WAR AGAINST SPRAWL I \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Gore did something else that no one at his level has done before: He made it clear that transportation and smart land use go hand in hand. It's astounding how many public officials, from Washington on down to your county supervisors, have spent money on preserving open space with one hand, doled out billions for new highways and highway interchanges that speed the development of open space with the other and still managed to keep a straight face. True, the specifics of the administration's initiative don't go very far -- as John Norquist, the mayor of Milwaukee, puts it, "There is a lot more to be gained by cutting back on federal spending that causes sprawl, like the big highway pork bill that went through last year, than by just announcing new programs" -- but it's a start. Gore is clearly trying to turn the federal government into an ally for the sprawl-fighting efforts that have sprung up around the country like so many, well, strip malls. These come from a variety of directions. Inner-city churches have begun to argue in the last few years that there is a direct relationship between policies affecting development on the urban fringe -- from subsidies for roads and schools to zoning that keeps the poor out -- and the flight of resources from their neighborhoods. Officials in older suburbs have begun to recognize that they are bound to lose their never-ending battle to stave off decline unless they can find a way of changing state and county policies that prefer growth on cheap, undeveloped land. Politicians in some -- though hardly all -- newer suburbs are building careers on slow-growth sentiment. Environmentalists have realized that, as Brookings' Katz puts it, "in theory we won the air war and the water war, but we lost the land war, and the land war was the most important one to win." Farmers and, in a handful of cases, their farm bureaus and Republican state legislators are coming to the conclusion that one of the best ways to preserve their land may be to make the urban core attractive again for working families. What these various efforts have lacked is any high-profile support. There are only 11 states with growth management acts on the books, and of those, only Oregon's, Washington's and Vermont's are really meaningful. The past couple of years have seen a few other attempts to get at the issue: Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening of Maryland is trying to steer state resources only to already-developed communities; Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman got voters to agree to buy up half of New Jersey's remaining open space; the Tennessee Legislature last year decided to require the state's counties to plan their growth. But that is hardly a national ground swell. What Gore appears to be trying to do is to use federal largesse to tilt states and localities in an anti-sprawl direction: to discourage local jurisdictions from acting like a bunch of scrabbling communities in which the rich will inevitably eat the poor -- or at least steal their tax base -- and instead begin thinking about how to keep the region healthy; to think more creatively about whether highways and clotted arterials are the best way to move people from one place to another; to find resources to make existing cities and suburbs more attractive places to live. It all sounds good, until you begin to think about who might be arrayed on the other side. There are, for instance, state highway departments, which, except where a handful of states have tried to change them, are unremitting asphalt lovers. There's the construction lobby. There are engineers, financiers, developers and land-use lawyers. There are state legislators who count all those people among their closest friends and contributors. There are skeptical urban politicians, most of them African-American or Hispanic, who fear regionalism is a cover for diluting their power with white suburbs. Then there are all those Republican members of Congress who will have to enact this set of proposals coming out of an administration they've just spent the last month telling us they don't trust. There's even Wall Street, which as a result of the savings and loan crisis has become a major player in financing development, and which tends to like predictable, cookie-cutter, sprawl-dependent models for housing, shopping centers and office complexes. And, of course, there's the market, which is sending mixed signals at the moment. On the one hand, developers are actually paying attention these days to the "New Urbanists," the movement of architects and designers who for the last decade have been arguing for compact, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development. "There are significant market segments that are bored, tired and being bankrupted by conventional real estate development," says Chris Leinberger, a national real estate consultant and Albuquerque, N.M., developer. "They're tired of strip retail and having to drive to get everywhere." On the other hand, somebody is still moving into all those developments out on the urban fringe and shopping at Wal-Mart and bringing their cars into Jiffy Lube and clogging the rush-hour highways. The truth is, many of us act like automotive sheep. Build a road to the middle of nowhere, and we take it. Widen a highway, and the morning it reopens we pack it as full as it was before. Give us a prairie-full of parking surrounding a new mall, and there we are, milling about as we try to find a space. So what Gore is doing is gambling. He is wagering that he can reshuffle a deck that has been stacked in favor of sprawl, and, by giving aid and comfort to all the local forces that are trying to array themselves against it, begin the hard work of stacking the deck in favor of cities and existing suburbs. As Leinberger puts it, "The market is increasingly saying, 'I want lots of options: Within 1,500 feet of where I live, I want to be able to have a cappuccino, buy a book, buy a gallon of milk, walk to work, have a park, ideally have a connection to nature.' And we in real estate can do that, but it's tough, because the fact is everything works against you. We've made the wrong things easy and the right things hard. What Gore's been talking about is just reversing that; making the right thing easy, and making the wrong thing at least pay its own way." He may succeed, and he may not. But by elevating the issue to the level of federal policy, he has at least begun a process that will be hard to stop. "This is a fight that is going to go on for some time," says Katz. "We've got decades of embedded rules that have favored a kind of suburbanization that has been harmful not just to central cities but to suburbs themselves. That's why you can't deny the power of this issue. Think of the decentralization of employment, or of the diminished fiscal capacity of cities and inner suburbs. These are crises caused by growth patterns that are having a devastating effect on the ability of cities and inner suburbs to thrive and survive. That's why this issue isn't going away: It has to do with the stark truth of who's winning and who's losing in the new economy." SALON \| Jan. 21, 1999 Rob Gurwitt is a correspondent for Governing magazine and a contributing writer for DoubleTake. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.