The Small Town Project

Image source: Fodor & Associates

A post here about Eben Fodor’s book, Better NOT Bigger, is long overdue. If you were to read just one book about the problem of the American growth obsession, and alternatives to it, Better NOT Bigger would be an excellent choice. It’s clear and readable, and provides a nice overview of the issues, including plenty of viable solutions.

Fodor details the problem – the degradation of the natural environment and the the economic woes and loss of quality of life in communities around the country. He examines the way the “growth machine” works and debunks many of its common myths about growth. He looks in some depth at how growth relates to jobs and housing, and at the problems with conventional economic development. He outlines key points about the costs of growth and the often hidden ways by which taxpayers subsidize it. He provides scores of methods for slowing or stopping growth. These range from development impact fees designed to ensure that growth pays for itself, to growth boundaries and greenbelts. Finally, Fodor provides an introduction to ideas which, unlike the usual growth imperative, can promote sustainable communities.

The late Donella Meadows, lead author of the landmark text, Limits to Growth, offers a fuller review. Her last sentence cuts to the chase: “Since we can’t grow forever, where should we stop?”

Our fixation on growth has created problems, the impacts of which are accelerating. I would guess that without major changes soon, growth issues which today occupy a few books and outposts on the Web will, 20 years from now, be major and constant media stories. One easy way anyone can help prevent that is to get informed now, if only by reading Better NOT Bigger.

For ambitious readers I’ll devote a future post to a more complete, though still compact reading list. No need to create a list which “sprawls.”

Below is a recent letter to the editor of the Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News. It’s from Dave Gardner of Save the Springs in Colorado Springs. It’s an excellent response to the typical growth industry rhetoric, this time concerning “listless” population growth. It reminds me of our recent mayor’s comments to the Sun that Mount Vernon had been “stagnant” until he began pushing for residential development, leading to today’s “vibrant housing market” giving us “the kind of growth we need.”

I recommend Save the Springs as a great informational resource for those interested in pursuing further a rational approach to growth.

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DEPENDING ON POPULATION GROWTH FOR PROSPERITY IS A DEAD-END

This is a letter I sent to the Rocky Mountain News in response to a story about Colorado population statistics. The first paragraph was published in the News on January 2. I thought you might like to read it in its entirety. Feel free to pass it on to anyone who could benefit from some critical thought about population growth and economic development.

In his story about population growth (Colorado ranks 11th in growth, 12/22/05), reporter John Aguilar did our citizens a disservice by labeling our state’s most recent 1.4% annual growth rate as “another year of listless population growth.” [EMPHASIS ADDED] Give Mr. Aguilar a calculator, please! If our population growth were to remain at this listless level (its expected to rise), our state’s population would double to over 9 million by 2055, and would hit 18 million around the turn of the century. A more likely scenario? This doubling will happen in just 38 years if we keep up the average growth rate of the past five years. That would mean 37 million people in the state of Colorado by 2119, and 74.5 million just 38 years later. That will require us to do much more than suck Lake Powell dry. We cannot build enough dams or seed enough clouds to supply water to that population. This listless rate of population growth is taking us nowhere we want to go!

An interesting quote in the story came from state demographer Elizabeth Garner: “There just haven’t been the jobs to bring people here. This underscores the simple truth that we cannot create or recruit jobs in a vacuum. If we steal jobs from other states, we are stealing residents from those states, too. People will move to where the jobs are. So job recruiting and creation is actually causing our state’s population to swell. We should be careful what we wish for. If we are to act responsibly toward the future of our children and grandchildren, we should base our prosperity on more innovative means of economic development. Traditional, archaic economic development will ultimately cost our state billions and billions of dollars due to its impact as a population-growth machine on our natural resources, environment and infrastructure.

Dave Gardner
Founder & Chair, SaveTheSprings

A sustainable approach to our environment & quality of life - for current & future generations
Visit us at www.savethesprings.org

It’s time on the Small Town Project to take a step back to look at the “big picture,” at how our local growth issues connect with larger scale issues concerning the environment, population growth, and sustainability. I plan to post something soon which looks at those connections, but as a starter, perhaps it’s worth thinking for a moment about this quote from Albert Bartlett, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Colorado, and recipient of the first George Gamow Memorial Lecture Award for his “most significant contribution to the public’s understanding of science.”:

THE GREAT CHALLENGE

Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?

Some of you who read this site may have wondered if its no-growth message is unique. Are there others calling for an end to or a severe limit on residential growth in their local area? Are they doing it for the same reasons we discuss here? The answer to both questions is “Yes!” Groups and individuals in other areas have come to recognize that growth is unsustainable as a long term goal, that it costs an area its character and quality of life while destroying the environment, and that the solution involves finding and maintaining an appropriate population size and pursuing sustainable forms of development rather than physical expansion.

There are a few who share all of our key positions. Many others are at least sympathetic to our chief concerns, though they have not taken the step of embracing a no-growth stance. Those in the latter group usually promote some form of “smart growth.” We’ll be addressing the differences between the no-growth and smart growth approaches very soon. For now I’ll just mention that while smart growth is a necessary short term tool, there is little question we need to take the next step to “no-growth.” Not only is it the the approach that best addresses environmental and community preservation concerns, but forces are converging to make it a necessity if we are to provide for future generations. No-growth is the future of community growth management.
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