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Guidebook on sprawl fuels debate

WASHINGTON – Supporters say it’s a how-to manual for controlling urban sprawl through
planned or ”smart growth” development.

By Michael Collins, Post Washington Bureau

Critics say it’s a handbook for radically altering land-use plans nationwide, stripping property
owners of their rights and devastating small businesses.

A $2.5 million, government-funded guidebook that tells states how they can manage urban
sprawl and other land-use problems has ignited a debate among business groups,
property-rights advocates, environmentalists and members of Congress.

”Land-use ought to be decisions that are made at the local level, where the officials are
very close to the people,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, a Cincinnati Republican. ”What’s
good for Cincinnati may not be what’s good for San Francisco or what’s good in a very rural
state.”

But Chabot and others fear that the guidebook advocates a ”top-down” approach that would
give too much power to states and remove zoning and other land-use planning matters from
the hands of local authorities.

Cincinnati attorney Robert Manley, who helped draft the manual and testified at a
congressional hearing on the document Thursday, said it merely offers a ”menu” of
planning tools from which states can choose.

”Some critics have erroneously claimed that the guidebook contains prescriptions for radical
change,” Manley said. ”The reality is that the guidebook contains nothing that is not
already on the books, with a (proven) track record.”

The ”Growing Smart Legis lative Guidebook,” a seven-year project sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, was drafted by the American Planning
Association. The document contains recommendations for changing state and local
land-use laws.

Opponents contend that property-rights groups and small business organizations were
deliberately excluded from the 18-member committee that developed the manual. Some
are asking that Congress refuse to give money to states and local communities to carry out
the recommendations.

Chabot, who heads the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution,
presided Thursday over a hearing into the critics’ concerns.

Among them: recommendations that local governments be required to write land-use plans
that follow state goals and regional plans – even if residents in those areas don’t agree with
such plans.

The guidebook also says local governments should be authorized to regulate the location,
size, height and other features of commercial signs, including those found on small
businesses.

Such signs generally are given greater constitutional protections than large commercial
billboards, but business groups fear local communities would be permitted to ban them
outright under the guidebook’s recommendations.

Manley, however, testified that property owners and developers would actually benefit if
states follow the guidebook’s recommendations.

Ohio, for example, has not rethought land-use regulations since the 1920s, when growth
was largely confined to the central cities, he said. Each community has its own zoning
without focusing on the relationship between the community and the region.

”As a result, many zoning decisions are made based upon cronyism prejudice and political
popularity,” Manley said.

The development of rural areas in Ohio and other states means the ”one-size-fits-all”
approach no longer works and that local communities should be allowed to select the
approach that best suits their needs, he said.

http://www.cincypost.com/2002/mar/08/sprawl030802.html

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