The Small Town Project

Washington state example shows property tax rates correlate strongly with population growth. [1] Image source: San Juan County Futures Information Resource

Previously here I’ve debunked a number of myths concerning growth and so-called “development.” The very first was the myth that residential development brings in needed tax dollars. Despite the information provided here, however, what I hear around Mount Vernon suggests this is the myth in which residents and policymakers remain the most interested. No doubt the local growth machine would love to show that Mount Vernon is an anomaly, a community where residential growth does pay for itself. It is not impossible, after all, for development to pay for itself. Very specific forms of development sometimes do.

However, apart from biased or otherwise flawed studies (in my opinion, a very real risk in the local instance), their chances of showing that development pays for itself here are slight. (more…)

Open space acquisition gets the job done. Image source: City of Boulder

Some weeks ago I promised an article on the “big picture.” I had in mind something highlighting the links between needless sprawl, broader problems such as environmental degradation, and the primary root causes of these problems: population growth and excessive per capita consumption of finite resources.

A trip to Boulder, Colorado last week did much to bring the big picture into perspective. I went there, in part, to observe directly the current results of city’s open space acquisition program. Initiated by local citizens in the early ’70s, and continuing today, it has ringed the city with open land, closed to development. I was curious to see how, some 35 years from its inception, it relates to the town and surrounding communities. Just as importantly, I was eager to meet two residents who have long been involved in addressing not only Boulder’s growth issues, but also all the broader issues discussed here as well.

Doing what it takes
Comparing today’s Boulder and its neighboring communities with the way they were 25 years ago highlights the benefits of a good open space acquisition program while simultaneously demonstrating the insatiable appetite of suburban sprawl. The suburbs and towns north of Denver have sprawled beyond belief in the last few decades. Twenty five years ago the drive from Denver to Boulder meant about 30 minutes through undeveloped, open land. Signs along the highway pointed to Boulder’s small town neighbors such as Broomfield and Louisville, but they were little seen from the road, existing as separate, distinct small towns unto themselves. Today they’ve sprawled to the highway, crossed it, and now appear as one nearly continuous suburban belt from Denver, almost to Boulder. Striking, however, is the expanse of open land you see when you come over the rise outside Boulder. The city’s open space acquisition program has preserved just enough land That Boulder retains an identity separate from the fast growing neighbors now surrounding it.
(more…)

The Zovanyi article I featured in the last post has a brief passage on the language those in “growth management,” and increasingly those in the growth industry itself, use to justify continued needless and harmful growth:

Spokespersons for the growth management movement affix a number of adjectives to growth in order to justify its continuance. They speak of “inevitable, normal, reasonable, proper, realistic, sensible, responsible, and legitimate growth.” They also refer to “balanced growth,” arguing that a balance can be achieved between ongoing growth and environmental protection without compromising either.

Don’t question it; it’s “inevitable.”
These kinds of terms aim to legitimize growth, assuaging our concerns about the harm it does. Most of them are misleading or, when paired with “growth,” become oxymoronic. “Inevitable growth,” for instance, is usually a complete fabrication. It suggests growth simply can’t be stopped. That’s obviously ridiculous. And given the current state of our natural environment, “responsible growth” is an oxymoron.
(more…)

If the richness of life on Earth is to be preserved, the growth imperative driving current human behavior must be replaced with the imperative of ecological sustainability.

So says Gabor Zovanyi in a stellar article titled Growth Management Strategies for Stopping Growth in Local Communities.

Just as the Fodor book is a good one to read if you only read one book on the topics I cover here, Zovanyi’s article is a great place to go if you only read one article. Perhaps I’ll find something even better as I continue my own reading, but on recently uncovering this article I was amazed at how well it brings together in one place most of the key issues concerning the problem of growth.

A few more teasers:
(more…)

Image source: American Museum of Natural History

This brief video shows how the Phoenix area spread from 1912 to 2004. It uses a combination of map and satellite images to show vividly what most of us have trouble picturing from descriptions or even in-person observation.

The accompanying text makes the point that, due to water issues, Phoenix is one area where the population has actually grown faster than the physical spread of the city. Nevertheless, sprawl is sprawl, and Phoenix is a poster child for the term.

As the video starts, note that the pink areas are urban and the green are agricultural. It’s amazing to see how urban development has obliterated so much of the area’s agriculture.

Though it’s less clear on the video, having grown up there and been back for visits, the loss of desert land has been equally dramatic. A couple of years ago, when I took a drive north from Scottsdale, I was shocked that what used to be a huge expanse of desert wilderness for nearly 20 miles between Scottsdale and the village of Carefree, is now almost completely “developed” with Porsche dealerships, restaurants, and subdivisions.

I hope that, after seeing the video, anyone who’s resigned to Mount Vernon and Lisbon eventually being swallowed up by the sprawl of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City will think twice about what we might do to prevent that. Just a thought.

Marion has undergone a transition from a classic small town linked to its larger neighbor of Cedar Rapids by interurban railroad to a major urban center in a growing metropolitan area. — From the Introduction to the Marion Comprehensive Development Plan

Image source: City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks

Can you see it? It’s bearing down on us.
We’re lucky in our little corner of the heartland. Many of our smaller towns and rural areas haven’t yet been overrun by residential development. (Some, such as Marion, are the sad exceptions.) We still have time to stop it before we lose the character of our towns and rural areas and vast tracts of our undeveloped land.

One challenge we face is that of helping citizens appreciate the gravity of the situation at a stage when their lives have not yet been seriously affected by it. A kind of inertia until a problem is truly in our collective face seems to be a basic human tendency. (more…)

I’ve touched on this elsewhere, and a version of the question came up in discussion under the first article on the site. But that’s probably too buried for a lot of people to have seen it. So because I know this will keep coming up, especially if I haven’t thoroughly dispensed with it, I’ll devote this post to it, using a slightly edited version of the same comments I made in discussion:

So you wanna keep people out, eh?
Somehow a “no residential growth” stance is sometimes confused with a “we don’t want anyone moving here” stance. One has little to do with the other.
(more…)

Image source: The New York Times

In Bolinas, California (pop. 1,600) the “urge to remain pristine has led to one of the most extreme anti-growth policies in the nation.” In 1971, Bolinas simply quit issuing new water meters, without which new houses could not be built. Their moratorium on new meters has been in effect ever since, effectively preventing all new development.
(more…)