Smart Growth (Part 1)

The recent adoption of ordinance 1450 in the town of Blacksburg simply requires a special use permit for the construction of new retail operations in the town which would exceed 85,000 square feet of developed area. While the wording of the ordinance is legally quite simple, the impetus behind it reflects a populist ground-swell of discontent with the manner in which Americans have collectively chosen over the past halfcentury to live, to work and to consume.

There is an increasingly palpable realization among urban professionals and citizens alike that the quintessentially American settlement patterns evident since the end of World War Two—marked by extensive suburbanization and "ex-urban" commercial development—are no longer automatically desirable or even sustainable in the long run. In this regard, Blacksburg's ordinance 1450 represents more than an effort to protect or promote downtown retail establishments.

Ordinance 1450 should be seen in the context of a much larger but still very nascent trend in American urban planning—often referred to as the "New Urbanism" or sometimes as "Smart Growth"—which has explicitly tied quality of life issues to questions of urban development, urban metabolism and energy use, in effect calling for fundamental changes to America's traditional land use planning systems. At stake is nothing less than the manner in which American cities plan for and accommodate economic and demographic growth.

Blacksburg is not alone in passing ordinances like 1450. There are many other communities which have successfully done so. Some, like Lake Placid, NY and towns on Massachusett's Cape Cod, have rebuffed such development with stringent sets of land-use regulations and building design guidelines which effectively out-law big box development. These are affluent tourist havens with very wealthy residential land-owners who designed land use regulations to preserve the character of their touristy downtown areas. Other areas without such elite pedigree, such as Bozeman Montana, have also imposed anti-bigbox regulations. The costs of urban sprawl are all too real to residents of many communities who rightfully lament that they may already have no real local character left to protect. Decades of suburban development have produced land use patterns which many communities now find unsustainable.

The "Smart Growth" movement attempts to provide planning alternatives which accommodate a community's demographic and economic growth while reducing sprawl and simultaneously providing greater amenity.

What is Smart Growth?

Smart growth may be defined as a paradigm of urban development planning which attempts to mitigate urban sprawl by redirecting growth toward existing business and residential areas while resisting development on "fringe" or Greenfield areas. There are a myriad of "smart growth" initiatives which are too numerous and technical to explain in limited space—my next article will go into more detail as to the nature of the Smart Growth movement. For those who are interested, The National Association of Realtors has adequately cataloged "Smart Growth" techniques in its Growth Management Fact Book available from their website.

Some cities have implemented what are called Urban Growth Boundaries (UGB's) beyond which development is discouraged if not actively prohibited. Others have experimented with Growth Phasing Strategies, in which ex-urban development is allowed only to the extent to which adequate public services are can be made available. Overall, no less than a dozen or so strategies to contain or mitigate sprawl are readily identifiable in the planning literature and an adequate assessment of each could fill an entire semester's course work in Tech's Urban Affairs and Planning program. The explosion of professional and public interest in growth management or "smart growth" techniques, however, speaks to a growing suspicion among planners and the public at large that our existing geography of living and working is becoming more costly and less manageable as time passes. Urban sprawl containment tops the list of priorities in the smart growth literature. Local governments throughout the United States—many of which have reached the limits of retail saturation in their jurisdictions—have adopted growth management regulations in some form or another. Growth management is a movement which many believe is simply here to stay.

Ordinance 1450 may be seen as an attempt not to contain retail development per-se (unlike other communities in the United States which have used more drastic active retail caps to control all retail development), but to control a certain type of retail development, namely that of the big-box retailer. How should citizens interpret this high-profile campaign targeted on one retailer hoping to develop one plot of land?

A good starting point is to understand the evolution of land use in the United States as a whole. After all, the smart growth movement in general and ordinance 1450 in particular are reactions against "business as usual" development. To understand them, we must first understand the very developments which these initiatives are reactions against.

The big-box retailer should be seen as the zenith of an American urban geography set in motion decades ago. They are a product of suburbanization. The American suburbs are more than an expression of an idealized middle class living standard. From a municipal point of view, the expanding suburbs also made excellent fiscal sense. As suburbs grew, many incorporated themselves, effectively separating their tax bases from central city areas, which had fallen into decline. Most suburban jurisdictions discouraged or actively prohibited residential development over a certain density. Low-density suburban tracts generate significant real estate taxes while housing fewer people who consume tax-funded services.

American urban planning codified these developments though what is called "single-use zoning"—regulations which insured that each plot of land would be given over exclusively to commercial or residential development without any significant mixing of the two. Single-use zoning thus encouraged large suburban tract developments which were in turn served by ever higher capacity commuter road ways. Land along these roadways would inevitably be zoned for commercial uses, giving rise to what planners often referred to as "developer's highways" along which sprouted a medley of mostly corporate retail establishments such as gas stations, chain retail stores and, of course, fast food. Open spaces were consumed at alarming rates, while in many areas traffic densities reached uncomfortable levels. Municipalities readily lobbied for funds to widen thoroughfares and install new roads which often resulted in yet more commercial development along these arteries. Downtown areas fell into decline.

This "sprawl" generated its own momentum and, in many areas, also produced its own casualties. First and foremost were downtown merchants who were unable to compete with chain stores. As development proceeded outward, many "sprawl pioneers" fell victim as newer facilities and newer stores set up shop in their market areas. Many areas saw their earliest strip malls abandoned as growth was deflected to newer retail developments, not the least of which was the big-box super store—a phenomenon called "strip-blight". (West Salem Plaza in Salem, VA is a good example).

Finding adaptive re-uses for an abandoned strip mall in an area already suffering from a retail glut is a problem tantamount to re-floating a sunken dreadnought. One alternative is demolition—itself a very expensive alternative and a gamble that the empty plot will attract some form of appropriate investment. One of the most compelling dilemmas of the sprawl process is that it will continue to develop greenfield sites—never-before developed land parcels—in preference to re-developing already serviced sites with abandoned buildings. Abandoned commercial properties (greyfields) and industrial properties (brownfields) simply do not appeal at all to modern corporate retailers who overwhelmingly prefer to bring their own stamp of "McArchitecture" to the first flat expanse available near a large-enough traffic artery.

Reactions against this type of ex-urban growth—and the creative formulations for alternatives to it—came from a myriad of sources. Suffice it to say that the suburbanization of residence and retail could only go so far and eat up so much geography before the very people who settled the suburbs came to question the consequences of suburbanization itself. Some older suburban communities have simply run out of room along their traditional growth corridors. In northern Virginia, the socalled "boom-burgs" have filled in with a rapidity which their residents neither expected nor wanted.

One of the least popular effects of urban sprawl—aside from traffic and aesthetic issues—is its cost to taxpayers. The development of greenfield sites—for retail use or otherwise—requires taxpayer money for road, water, sewer, and utility connections. As suburban retail markets saturated, sprawl had in the eyes of many residents become a zero-sum game played between corporate retailers who required expensive public subsidies for their real estate. The state of Maryland, beleaguered by municipalities seeking funds to offset these costs, has declared that it will no longer provide subsidies to local governments for road or utility connections for low-density retail developments on the suburban fringe. For its part, Virginia is what is called a "Dillon Rule" state, where local governments have only as much authority as is delegated to them by the state legislature. Land use planning is, however, one of those powers as is discretion over the disposition of public money to subsidize infrastructure necessary for land development.

Virginia's Supreme Court has recognized that growth management initiatives are local prerogatives. Thus, according to Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Foundation—which has been very active in promoting growth management and "smart growth" initiatives in one of the most ecologically fragile and overdeveloped parts of the state—the problems of growth management stem not from a lack of local authority, but from a lack of political will at the local level to exercise existing authority.

Ordinance 1450—and those initiatives like it throughout the United States—represents one of many piecemeal efforts at growth management which are increasingly congealing into more coordinated efforts to balance population growth, economic development, and patterns of land use which are less wasteful of both land and public resources. My next article will examine the ins and outs of the Smart Growth movement and explore their relevance Virginia's communities.

Continued in part 2.