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Montana
can't afford to ignore smart growth,
a lesson not lost on other fast-growing states
By
Tim Davis
for Headwaters News
As Gov. Judy Martz and other Montanans struggle with how to develop
our state’s economy, we might do well to learn from another
Republican governor.
On Jan. 24, Christine Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey
and current head of George Bush’s Environmental Protection
Agency, said:
Smart
Growth is so important [because] it is critical to economic growth,
the development of healthy communities, and the protection of
our environment all at the same time. Smart Growth — the
ability to create a sustainable society where we can reach all
of these goals simultaneously — really comes down to one
thing: quality of life.
We can grow our economy without sacrificing quality of life. We
can preserve the environment for future generations without sacrificing
our quality of life. And, we can live and work in healthy and
convenient neighborhoods without sacrificing our quality of life.
...
Unfortunately,
Montana’s recent growth has been anything but smart, and that’s
bad news for our economy. A report from the Bank of America explains
the economic threat to states such as Montana that are still growing
carelessly:
"New housing tracts have moved even deeper into agricultural
and environmentally sensitive areas. Private auto use continues
to rise. This acceleration of sprawl has surfaced enormous social,
environmental and economic costs, which until now have been hidden,
ignored, or quietly borne by society. The burden of these costs
is becoming very clear. Businesses suffer from higher costs, a loss
in worker productivity, and underutilized investments in older communities."
The Bank of America and Christine Whitman are not exactly tree-hugging
environmentalists. To understand why they and other conservatives
are joining forces with environmentalists to fight sprawl and support
smart growth, consider these facts:
1. Sprawl raises taxes. The Urban Land Institute, which represents
the real estate industry, studied the cost to taxpayers to service
homes with streets, utilities, and schools. The result: The average
home 10 miles from downtown on a 1/3-acre lot costs taxpayers $69,000.
A home near downtown on a modest lot costs taxpayers half that:
$34,500.
In Jefferson County, Mont., a 2001 cost of community services study,
conducted for the county planning board, found that farm and ranchland
typically demands only 29 cents in services for every dollar of
taxes landowners paid. However, when that same farmland is developed
into homes, those homes demand $2.16 in services for every dollar
in taxes they pay.
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Region's
growth planning ranges
from exemplary to contentious
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
May 15, 2002
Unparalleled growth has stressed community services
and residents' patience throughout the West for the past decade,
snarling traffic and creating nightmarish commutes in the region's
cities and filling farmland and open space with subdivisions in
more rural settings.
Smart growth, or new urbanism, has caught on in some areas, Denver
in particular, while other communities haven't begun to agree on
planning in general.
Denver's former
Stapleton Airport is the nation's poster child for smart growth:
4,700 acres of prime metropolitan land that will become lots for
12,000 homes, all within one-quarter mile of shopping and work.
Residential streets will be lined with boutiques and
coffee shops and about 30 percent of the acreage will be open space.
The area, the size of Manhattan, will be developed in zones over
the next 25 years, with the first homes ready for occupancy later
this year.
The smart growth plan was a key part of the redevelopment
of the airport site, pushed by Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and
embraced by eager developers.
By comparison, factions in Los Angeles have been trying to promote
downtown redevelopment and cooperation between businesses and local
government for years, but with limited success only recently.
According to the Associated
Press, Carol Schatz, president of LA's Central City Association,
which represents about 300 downtown property owners, said, "We
finally have a very supportive council member, but it's not like
you have Wellington Webb who made it a cornerstone of his administration."
A developer in St. George, Utah, hired Prince
Charles' consultant architect who designed Poundbury —
a "new urbanism" village in southwest England.
The consultant will apply the same principles to a 700-acre development
in Ivins, Utah.
Colorado has led the way in another aspect of growth management,
impact
fees cities charge developers to cover the cost of supplying
roads and other services.
Community leaders have long recognized that new subdivisions don't
pay their way. But the past decade's rapid growth drove up municipal
costs, and cities have recently and dramatically raised their impact
fees, doubling the amounts in some cases.
One Denver-area community charged $30,500 per $100,000 in construction
value in 2000, 51 percent more than it charged in 1998, according
to a recent survey by the Colorado Municipal League.
While advocates say the fees offset the costs of growth, critics
say they drive the cost of housing well beyond affordable. In 2001,
Colorado home prices jumped 10.9 percent, compared with a 6.1 percent
increase nationwide.
Some cities are farther back on the planning curve. Nampa
and Caldwell, near Boise, exemplify the planning struggles of
fast-growing rural areas.
Residents and planners have been meeting for a year to revise that
county's growth plan. About 84 percent of land in the county is
farmland, and 48 percent of the population lives on rural property.
The other 52 percent of the population lives on 2.9 percent of the
land in or near city limits. The rest of the land, 12.2 percent,
is range, forest or water.
Among the most contentious topics is where to allow new homes and
how to avoid conflicts between suburban tracts and working farms.
Some of the more cynical -- or perhaps, realistic -- planning participants
contend growth won't be determined by any written plan but by whether
farmers can get more for their land by growing crops or raising
livestock, or by selling to developers.
In Arizona, leaders have been trying
to direct growth for six years, with little more than frustration
to show for their efforts. Both lawmakers and voters rejected strict
growth controls, and after three statewide elections and five legislative
sessions, the state has a much-compromised plan that preserves a
relatively small portion of Arizona's state lands and calls for
long-term community planning.
While communities gained the legal ability to slow leapfrog development
and to impose impact fees, there's no master plan and no provisions
for enforcement.
The state provides little assistance for communities to develop
a plan, which can easily cost more than $100,000, and so far only
13 of 85 cities and towns have written one.
In Rathdrum, the fastest-growing city in north Idaho, residents
made it plain they
want to limit, not manage, growth. At a series of meetings,
they made it clear their first priority is the community's small-town
feel, and they want a maximum of 2 percent to 4 percent growth per
year.
They want the town's comprehensive plan, required by the state,
to impose limits on the amount of land that's annexed and allow
development only on property already within the city limits.
Rathdrum's population has more than doubled during the past decade,
totaling 4,816 in the 2000 U.S. Census.
In some areas, smart growth options are failing for the simplest
of reasons:Local residents don't like them. In
Reno, a draft growth-management plan calls for concentrating
multiple unit housing on major corridors and near the two downtowns
of Sparks and Reno.
But in a January survey of residents, only 28 percent to 43 percent
of said they’d prefer to live in high-density areas.
Whether smart growth catches on, the pressure for growth management
only will increase with the ongoing influx of newcomers.
Arizona gained 189,263 residents between the 2000 Census and
last July 1, pushing the total past 5.3 million. Maricopa County,
second only to Clark County, Nev., in growth during the 1990s, is
now home to 3.2 million people, its population increasing in the
past two years by nearly 8,000 a month.
The greater
Boise area's demand for water is expected to double by 2035
and nearly triple by 2050.
Albuquerque's
growth strategy plan said the city is already $2 billion behind
in infrastructure improvements necessary to keep pace with growth,
and that a successful strategy would save the city, county and private
developers about $355 million in infrastructure costs and $1.4 billion
in private transportation costs over 25 years.
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