Massachusetts eyes ‘smart’ solution to growing problem

Even as the federal government starts to consider national guidelines and new
programs to control sprawl, there is no ”one size fits all” strategy for states like
Massachusetts that are wrestling with growth issues, according to specialists
gathered in Boston for a major MIT conference on the nascent ”smart growth”
movement.

By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff

Experimentation with smart
growth has been until now a
state-by-state phenomenon,
with Oregon, New Jersey,
and Maryland leading the
way. The goal in those
states generally has been to
steer development into
areas that already have
development and
infrastructure, instead of
subdivisions, shopping
malls and office parks on
virgin land in the
countryside.

Recently, however,
advocates have been
pushing the idea of national guidelines for smart growth, sparking controversy in the
process. The American Planning Association has proposed a national ”guidebook” for
states to reform their planning and zoning laws, which has been criticized as an
incursion on local control. Meanwhile, lawmakers including Senator Lincoln Chafee of
Rhode Island have helped advance the Community Character Act, which would provide
funds for more planning.

Those efforts hardly represent a federalizing of development policy, but states are right
to be wary of prescriptive policies that aren’t flexible enough to conform to local
realities, said Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.
”There are different responses for different metropolitan areas,” he said.

Instead of saying that all consumers ”must live in a townhouse” in a dense urban
setting, ”the most important thing is to preserve choices,” said Sam Staley, director of
the Urban Futures program at the Reason Public Policy Institute.

Lang and Sately spoke at a conference on smart growth at the Seaport Hotel/World
Trade Center in Boston, convened by MIT’s Center for Real Estate. The goal was to
assess the state of smart growth across the country, said the center’s director,
William Wheaton.

Massachusetts has not adopted a broad ”smart growth” program, but a growing
number of advocates and some politicians, including candidates for governor, are
suggesting that the state needs to manage growth differently in the years ahead, or
the region will choke on sprawl.

Smart growth in Massachusetts could be modeled in some ways on national
guidelines, panelists at the conference said, but won’t be successful unless it is
carefully tailored to address the No.1 issue in the state – affordable housing.

”If you lock up land without addressing infill, that’s a big problem,” said Lang. Most
constituents are enthusiastic supporters of preserving open space, he said, but it’s not
smart growth unless there are policies to encourage the revitalization of existing urban
areas, he said – in other words, places for growth to go.

Although the Boston area has an abundance of urban areas into which growth could be
directed, uniformly high home prices may confound policymakers, Lang said. In terms
of housing, ”The Boston area is about the worst case scenario there is outside the
West Coast,” he said.

Smart growth has been heavily criticized for increasing housing prices by limiting the
amount of developable land and thus, in theory, reducing supply. Critics usually point
to the ”urban growth boundary” in Portland, Ore., where developers can build housing
within the boundary but not outside it.

Myron Orfield, a researcher and Minnesota state legislator, agreed that smart growth
is not NIMBYism – the phenomenon where established residents fight any kind of
growth by saying ”not in my backyard.” He said that local communities must
completely change their attitudes toward growth, by coordinating policies on a regional
basis.

In some ways, Massachusetts is one of the most ripe states in the country for new
approaches to managing development, said Stuart Meck, who put together the national
guidebook on smart growth reform. The state’s zoning law is ”the most incoherent” in
the country, Meck said. ”It’s just a dreadful piece of work.”

Most state zoning statutes are based on national guidelines established in the 1920s,
when development was much different than it is today. About 13 states have started to
reform those basic laws regulating development, he said.

In addition to overhauling codes and rules, states can also change the landscape by
requiring that public buildings be in downtowns instead of out on the fringe, said
Maryland’s governor, Parris Glendening, who addressed the conference Thursday
evening.

Glendening, a Democrat, said that the ultimate goal of smart growth in his state is to
improve quality of life, which attracts businesses who want workers to be happy – not
fuming in hourlong traffic jams. The program also saves money by not extending water
and sewer infrastructure into the countryside, he said. ”It’s really a very conservative
idea,” he said.

Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings
Institute, said that Maryland and Oregon are no longer the lone pioneers in the smart
growth movement, but are being joined by less likely states including Utah and
Tennessee. ”I don’t think it’s a fad or a hiccup,” Katz said of the smart growth
movement.

Anthony Flint can be reached at [email protected]

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/131/metro/Massachusetts_eyes_smart_solution_to_growing_problem+.shtml