I've just spent a couple
years pondering and diagnosing land-use trends in the
West, and yes — I am writing a book.
Here’s my diagnosis: From office parks perched
on the edges of cities to expanding ski resorts pressed
against the wilderness, land development is threatening
the West's ecological integrity and social well-being.
The region is far from "build out."
It remains rich in open spaces and natural areas, but
we're the fastest-growing region in the nation and development
is also more pervasive than it may at first appear.
The effects of growth reach out to transform the natural
landscapes and the processes that shape them, like wildfires
and forest succession.
Even western communities literally surrounded by public
lands, like Jackson, Wyo., or Bend, Ore., grapple with
the problems of rapid growth.
Subdivided ranches reduce the openness that attracts
people in the first place, and high-end developments
past the edge of town reduce community cohesion.
Traditional land-use planning has done little to mitigate
the negative effects of rapid Western growth. Indeed, planning in the West is mostly about encouraging
and enabling land development.
Growth's critics argue, with some justification, that
instead of assuring quality of life, government in the
West often blindly promotes further development, with
pro-growth carrots of all sorts, from tax breaks to
water projects.
Anti-growth, slow-growth, or just “smart growth” forces are weak, their political influence out-spent
and out-maneuvered by local and regional growth machines.
Yet concern over growth is part of daily conversation
among Westerners.
Some Western states have entertained constitutional
amendments to slow growth while others have passed legislation
for “smart growth.” Letters to the editors
of newspapers from San Diego to Helena speak of (and
often grieve over) lost views, crowds where once there
was solitude, skyrocketing house prices, and farms and
ranches subdivided.
The heart and soul of the West is being
whittled away by new suburbs, expanded resorts and new
ranchettes.
Academics such as myself are often better at diagnosing
problems and writing books about them than we are at
prescribing solutions, but sometimes the patient's symptomology
is obvious enough that even we can offer some clear
recommendations.
So, here my prescription: To continue the medical analogy,
let me support what Daniel Kemmis argued in his column inaugurating this series about the Orton Family Foundation's
PLACEMATTERS06, its annual look at best land-use practices
for creating sustainable communities, and invoke a classic
principle: First, do no harm.
That is, we must not further harm the ability of local
government — our local governments, the governments closest
to the citizens — to shape land use in our communities.
The property rights and takings initiatives spreading
out across the West after passage of Measure 37 in Oregon
threaten to disempower all of us, to, in a sense, privatize
the commons.
While property may be private, our communities, and
the landscapes in which we live, are a commons, and we
all have a stake in how they evolve.
Next, we need to close the big gap between the good
ideas written into comprehensive plans for towns and
counties across the West, and the actual development
that shows up on the land.
Planning is a weak force in the universe of factors
that propel and shape land development. Indeed, planning
has, over the decades, developed a split personality:
on the one hand, much of what planners do is to facilitate,
even encourage, land development, by enabling market
forces and the goals of private investors, while promoting
the perceived benefits of growth.
On the other hand, citizens look to planning, especially
land-use planning, as growth management and feel ill-treated
when the system does its daily job of getting land annexed,
areas zoned for development and development permits
approved — on projects that often violate what many
residents think their communities should look like,
and sometimes even violate existing plans.
Yet, comprehensive plans that purportedly guide community
development are full of ideas for better land-use patterns,
expressing the desires of local citizens for preserving
community character, open space, affordability, transit,
wildlife, and safety.
Even in some anti-planning states, like Arizona and
Wyoming, county plans routinely include goals that look
surprisingly like smart growth! Goals that, if reached,
would, I believe, yield a different West than the one
we've seen evolving for the last couple of decades.
Even lacking the power of regulation, master plans
have a latent capacity to change the West. We should
not underestimate the power of hopeful visions based
on citizen input from countless meetings and visioning
sessions. So, back to my prescription: every comprehensive
plan in the West, from small towns to counties to regions,
should have a standing watch-dog group pressing for
and monitoring its implementation.
Land development underlies many other environmental
and social problems in the West, from species loss to
water resources to housing. Better land-use planning
is both a fulcrum and a lever that could change the region.
The fulcrum is the plan, already in place in many communities,
and already rich in ideas for more sustainable development
patterns.
The lever is sustained activism, not the ebb and flow
of “not-in-my-back-yard” battles so common
to land-use debates, but the daily, weekly and monthly
attention to the work of planners, planning commissions,
town councils and county commissions who make the decisions and
issue the permits and variances that shape actual land
development — often neglecting the plan.
Let's say that there are 100 comprehensive plans out
there with the right stuff in them, waiting to be implemented,
but lacking a citizen group pushing for their full,
long-term realization. And let's imagine people and
institutions interested in the evolving West putting
together a fund so that we could support, at say $50,000
a plan per year (yes, this is a $5 million prescription), a standing watch-dog group to go to every planning meeting,
every study session, every land-use hearing, all the
tedious proceedings, and, armed with the plan in their
pocket, and data on local growth and development, could consistently
push local officials to actually make real the good
ideas to which they already agreed.
I think two things would happen: first of course, if
plans actually become more important, then some of them
will inevitably be watered down. But this is better
than the current situation in which citizens pour their
hearts and souls into visions and plans that decision-makers
know they cannot or will not implement.
And, second, over time, many of the sound ideas in those
plans about protecting rural land, open space, trails,
affordable housing, and, yes, even regional cooperation,
will be made real.
I would focus first on a selection of countywide plans,
from Flathead to Sublette to Pinal, which affect the
largest landscapes, where sustained advocacy could make
a big difference, not just to that county, but to the
West.
Of course, I don't have $5 million, but I believe
that such an investment, year after year, would far
exceed its costs in benefits accrued.
Local land use adds up, piece by piece, parcel by parcel,
permit by permit, to broader regional patterns that
define the future look of the West. It is not unusual
for our dreams and aspirations to outshine reality,
but a little activism focused on a neglected component
of western development — the comprehensive plan — could
close that gap.
Bill Travis is Associate
Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado-Boulder,
and a fellow of the Orton Family Foundation.
His teaching and research focus on human behavior in
the environment, including studies of land use and the
interaction of people and ecosystems. He was general
editor (as Bill Riebsame) of the Atlas of the New
West (W.W. Norton).
His new book, New Geographies
of the American West, on land use change and regional
development, is due out in January, 2007, as part of
the Orton Family Foundation’s “Innovation
in Place” series with Island Press.
|
