Counties try to preserve quiet life Developing rural areas are ‘test cases for smart growth’

In the rolling hills of central Tennessee, historical
markers commemorate bloody battles along the Civil War route between
Nashville and Atlanta.

By Haya El Nasser
USA TODAY

Almost a century and a half later, subdivisions, traffic backups and the faces
of newcomers in the town square signal another battle: the fight over sprawl.

Maury County (population 71,600) is a largely rural area that is beginning to
attract the kind of rapid suburban development — tract houses, strip malls and
highways — that transformed nearby Nashville from a modest metropolitan
area to an urban center of more than 1.2 million people.

”This is where Green Acres meets Circuit City,” says William Frey, a
University of Michigan demographer, referring to the 1960s TV sitcom about
city folks who move to the farm.

If the development patterns of the past 50 years continue — people moving
farther from cities in search of cheaper land and less congestion — more
pastoral corners of the country will become bedroom communities for rapidly
expanding metro areas.

But Maury (pronounced Murray) and more than 1,200 other mostly rural
counties on the fringe of metro areas are trying to learn from once sparsely
populated communities that are grappling with gridlock, crowded schools,
poor air quality and a shortage of green space.

Even farther from sprawl, retirees are settling in the mountains of North
Carolina, Missouri’s Ozarks, the hills of West Virginia and ocean-side retreats
in South Carolina and Florida. A sophisticated debate over managing growth
is taking shape in many such areas, something that would have been
unimaginable 10 or 15 years ago.

Missouri cattle ranchers gather to talk about urban sprawl. In the foothills of
the Sierra Nevada, voters near Reno approve a short-lived moratorium on
housing permits. Near Atlanta, in a region noted for an anything-goes
approach to growth, planners encourage builders to cluster development in
certain areas so more open space can be preserved.

”They’re the test cases for smart growth,” Robert Lang, director of the
Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, says of small towns facing the
challenges of rapid development.

Past and future

Maury County has one foot firmly planted in the past. The other is being
dragged reluctantly into the future.

Plantations still line the two-lane highway that runs through the county. But on
nearby pastures, doctors and executives are building expensive homes.
Columbia, the county seat, has celebrated Mule Day every April since 1840.
It has one of the nation’s largest Wal-Marts.

Maury County added fewer than 4,000 people in the 1980s, a gain of 7%.
But growth accelerated in the 1990s, spurred by the opening of a Saturn auto
plant that created 6,600 jobs. The population has increased 31% since 1990.

Subdivisions are sprouting near the plant in Spring Hill, the town closest to
Nashville’s suburbs. Many homebuyers are Nashville-area commuters looking
for affordable homes and a small-town atmosphere.

”There is so much available land, and it’s the nearest spot to downtown
Nashville with beautiful land and open space,” says Alton Kelley, executive
director of the Middle Tennessee Visitors Bureau. ”It’s not if growth will
come, it’s when it will come. . . . All we have to do is look at Atlanta. It gives
us a perfect model.”

A perfect model, that is, for what Maury County doesn’t want to become.
The county looks at Nashville to the north and Atlanta to the southeast and
sees two metro areas that keep spreading. Atlanta and Nashville rank high on
most measures of sprawl. The USA TODAY Sprawl Index, which measured
population density and its changes in the 1990s, ranked Nashville the most
sprawling big metro area. With the imminent completion of a state highway
that will connect the major interstates south of Nashville, Maury is bracing for
more commuters.

As growth picked up speed in the late 1990s, residents of Columbia (pop.
33,000) and Mount Pleasant (pop. 4,500) moved into action. They formed
historic districts to protect old homes and quaint downtowns and set up a land
trust to preserve open space.

Another impetus came in 1998, when the state Legislature passed the Growth
Policy Act, making Tennessee one of at least 30 states that have adopted
growth planning or legislation to buy open space. Tennessee told its counties
to develop 20-year growth plans or risk losing state grants for roads and
other needs.

Maury County officials met with city planners and drew urban growth
boundaries, limiting development around cities and in unincorporated areas.
The goal is to prevent subdivisions from popping up on farmland, far from
existing roads, schools and sewer lines.

Cattle and commuters

Other rural counties are doing something about growth — or talking about it:

* Lawrence County, Mo. — Slow-moving tractors and herds of cattle don’t
mix well with growing commuter traffic in this cattle-ranch and
poultry-processing area between Joplin and Springfield. Young families and
retirees are leaving Springfield in search of better housing prices and less-
crowded schools. Homes on 2- to 6-acre lots are sprouting.

That’s why the No. 1 topic at the recent annual meeting of the Monett Beef
Conference wasn’t beef prices. It was rapid development. ”We’re in a whole
new ball game,” says Eldon Cole, regional livestock specialist at the
University of Missouri extension office. ”What are we going to do about
urban sprawl?”

* Douglas County, Nev. — California retirees and empty-nesters are
flocking to the affluent Carson Valley, south of Reno. The population has
jumped 56% since 1990 to 43,189. A Super Wal-Mart, Home Depot,
Target and a Starbucks manufacturing plant opened. Opponents of the rapid
growth include old-timers and newcomers alike.

In November, voters approved a ballot initiative limiting the number of new
houses to 280 a year, half the current rate. But a county judge overturned it in
February, ruling that it conflicted with the county’s growth plan.

* Troup County, Ga. — Outside the 20-county Atlanta metro area,
population is starting to creep up. Developers are suddenly interested in this
small textile center 75 minutes southwest of downtown Atlanta. County
officials are discussing growth management.

”You can go anywhere in the nation and basically draw a circle within an
hour, hour and a half of a city, and you see growth,” says Rick Morris, Troup
County planner.

Growth pressures in rural counties were inevitable because of the way metro
areas have expanded in the last half-century. First, population moved out of
central cities to the counties adjoining them. Next, growth in the close-in
suburbs spilled into counties on the edge of metro areas — and beyond. More
than 60% of the 100 fastest-growing suburban counties were not part of
metro areas 30 years ago, says Lang of Virginia Tech.

Many of these counties have learned that they cannot support the needs of
residents if they don’t develop a strong job base. Property taxes alone won’t
pay for the roads, schools and social services a growing population demands.

”Rural development is still about building roads and attracting residents and
attracting businesses,” says Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and
Metropolitan Affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

How rural counties react to growth will depend on whether they’re in a state
with a history of planning, zoning, farm preservation and environmental
advocacy, he says. But the most pressure on small counties to grow the right
way may come from people who move there searching for a better quality of
life.

”Watch the frontiers,” Lang says. ”It’s a prediction of what tomorrow will
look like.”

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030422/5090274s.htm