The Backlash Against "Smart Growth"

Reprinted from Innovation Briefs, Vol. 14, No, 6, Nov/Dec 2003

10/26/03

The debate about "smart growth" shows no sign of subsiding. Increasingly,
however, the Smart Growth forces - long basking in uncritical acclaim - find
themselves on the defensive. In Loudoun County, Virginia - the second fastest
growing county in the nation - opponents have filed more than 200 lawsuits to
overturn tough growth control measures enacted in the late nineties to control
sprawl. In New Jersey, builders and developers are mounting a series of legal
challenges against the policies of Governor James McGreevey to promote "smart
growth." In Colorado, local communities, eager to spur development and increase
local tax base, are turning away from previously adopted growth restrictions.
In California, the state has shelved legislation designed to shape California's
future growth through financial rewards to cities that adopted the "smart
growth" vision.

Elsewhere, advocates for affordable housing and pro-growth forces are
challenging "smart growth" initiatives in South and North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon,
and Utah. These are just some of the overt signs of what many see as a
growing backlash against anti-sprawl measures enacted in the 1990s - measures which
were meant to slow down suburban growth but whose outcome has come to be seen
as exclusionary and elitist.

Increasingly, the "smart growth" movement is defending itself against
accusations that its real motivation in urging denser infill development is
to shelter wealthy suburbanites from further urbanization and shift
the burden of growth to the city; and that its main consequence has
been to raise suburban housing prices, maximize developer profits and
deprive low income households and minorities of an opportunity to pursue the
American dream of home ownership.
****
The strict growth controls enacted by Loudoun County supervisors in January
2003 were meant to curb some of the rampant suburban expansion that took place
throughout the Northern Virginia county during the 1990s, transforming rural
landscapes, necessitating costly school construction and overwhelming the
county's road network. But many critics say the supervisors, elected in 1999 on
promises to stop sprawl, have overreacted. The new zoning limits development to
just one house per 10 acres in most areas and imposes impact fees that make it
economically impractical for builders to construct anything but expensive
tract mansions. "Smart growth" policies Loudoun County style, charge critics, are
nothing more than exclusionary policies masquerading
as "open space conservation." They do not prevent sprawl - they just
spread it over a larger area. Exurban counties surrounding Washington DC,
which a decade ago were primarily dairy farms and agricultural fields, are now
dotted with mini-mansions on 10-acre lots. In the meantime, construction of
affordable housing on the urban periphery has slowed down to a trickle and in many
areas has come to a complete standstill.

Faced with accusations of exclusionary practices and with pressures to
provide affordable housing, many communities are relaxing previously adopted
anti-sprawl policies. But "smart growth" forces are not about to surrender to
populist pressures. Instead, they are going to ridiculous extremes to demonize sprawl
by blaming it for all sorts of contemporary problems such as traffic
congestion, last years's drought and disappearance of neighborliness. Their latest
offensive is to blame suburban sprawl for America's growing obesity epidemic. A
report, Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl, released by Smart Growth
America and the Surface Transportation Policy project, purports to demonstrate that
people living in low density suburbs walk less and therefore tend to be
overweight. "If these results hold up," claimed the report's author, Reid Ewing,
"then building more compact communities will become a public health imperative."
But critics tend to dismiss these claims as laughable. "This is another
attempt by the report's sponsors to spin research showing only trivial weight
differences between city and suburban residents into a national crisis requiring
land use restrictions," said the Heritage Foundation's Ronald D. Utt. "It sets a
new record for political spin [by] manipulating the inconsequential to feign
significance," echoed Wendell Cox, a well-known debunker of "smart growth."
Other critics point out that obesity is associated more with poor diet than with
geography, as witnessed by the fact that the highest incidence of obesity is
found among minority residents of inner cities rather than among
fitness-conscious suburbanites.

"Smart growth" critics are not beyond exploiting popular public concerns. Cox
argues that the recent power blackout in the Eastern United States and Canada
is just one more reason to reject smart growth and its advocacy of rail
transit and high density. He contends that, unlike downtown New York or Toronto
where thousands of commuters were stranded when elevators and rail transit
stopped working, car-reliant residents of suburban communities were only mildly
inconvenienced by the power outages. In a recent commentary, Cox called the smart
growth forces an "anti-opportunity" movement that would "force housing prices
up and deprive millions of households of home ownership." His arguments do not
go unheeded. "If sprawl allows more people to own homes, keeps housing prices
down for middle- and lower-income buyers, and lowers transportation costs and
time spent in traffic, why are we against it?" a Montgomery Journal (MD)
editorial asked recently.

The perception of elitism is another point on which the "smart growth" forces
are vulnerable. "The Smart Growth movement struggles mightily to overcome the
suspicion that it is an effort by urban aesthetes and environmentalists to
impose their lifestyle choices on the majority who generally prefer a suburban
lifestyle," notes Matthew J. Kiefer, a planning critic generally friendly to
growth management, in a recent article in the Harvard Design Magazine ("Suburbia
and Its Discontents: Notes from the Sprawl Debate," Fall 2003/Winter 2004).

Finally, as architect Roger K. Lewis notes in a recent Washington Post
article (October 4, 2003, p. F3), a commonly held view is that "the real motive for
proposing higher density is money." These sentiments, he writes, are voiced
repeatedly by citizens attending public hearings to fight proposals for denser
forms of development. How do you persuade skeptical homeowners, he asks
plaintively, that developers who "cram houses one on top of the other" are not
primarily driven by greed or that local officials who approve these projects are not
mainly motivated by a desire to augment local tax revenue?

In the end, the verbal skirmishes fought over "smart growth" are of little
practical consequence, for the "smart growth" movement has no power to reshape
America's urban landscape in any significant way. The demographic and economic
forces driving metropolitan expansion are too powerful to be reined in or
influenced by a planning ideology. As the noted urban analyst, Anthony Downs,
points out, the biggest factor influencing future land use decisions is the
nation's need to accommodate a 23 percent gain in population by 2020 - a projected
increase of some 64 million people ("What Does "Smart Growth" Really Mean?",
Planning Magazine, March 2003). It is hard to conceive that this population
bulge could be fitted into existing built-up areas where neighborhood opposition
to increasing density through infill development already is fierce. Thus,
absent some cataclysmic energy crisis, continued dispersal of urban population and
economic activity seems inevitable.

The "smart growth" movement is likely to go down in history as yet another
planning ideology that has foundered for lack of a realistic understanding of
demographics, market forces and consumer preferences.

C. Kenneth Orski
korski@erols.com
www.innobriefs.com
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