Jamie Whitlock

November 12, 2003

Sprawl development is one of the most serious problems facing citizens across the United States.  Unrestrained growth consumes forests, wetlands, farms and other natural resources as well as adversely affecting air and water quality.  Taxpayers are forced to spend billions of dollars to fund the infrastructure new roads, new schools, new water and sewer facilities that result from sprawl.[1]

I. INTRODUCTION

Commentators have suggested that sprawl is like pornography, in that the concept itself is hard to define but one certainly knows it when one sees it.[2]  The Sierra Club defines sprawl as "low-density development beyond the edge of service and employment, which separates where people live from where they shop, work, recreate, and educate thus requiring cars to move between zones."[3]  The Vermont Forum on Sprawl defines sprawl as "low density development outside of compact urban and village centers along highways and in rural countryside."[4]  However one chooses to precisely define sprawl, the element of low-density development remains constant, as do the harmful environmental consequences that flow from sprawl.  Sprawl contributes to air and water pollution, destroys pristine lands and critical wildlife habitat, and disrupts the normal functioning of many ecosystems.

The concept of smart growth has arisen to fight sprawl and its negative environmental consequences.  Smart growth, in sharp contrast to traditional methods of urban design, "refers to policies and forms of urban growth designed to avoid many of the inefficiencies and harms associated with sprawl."[5] Smart growth addresses sprawl's negative environmental consequences by facilitating: (1) choice in modes of transportation, including walking; (2) protection of a state's important environmental, natural and historic features; (3) balancing growth with the availability of economic and efficient public utilities and services.[6]

Despite its environmental and other social advantages, smart growth has not been widely accepted as the solution to sprawl. Instead, smart growth critics have characterized the notion of smart growth as "subverting the American Dream."[7]  These critics reason that "Öësprawl' is a clever and effective euphemism to denigrate a phenomenon in which tens of millions of Americans have affirmatively taken part: suburbanization."[8]  The critics of smart growth believe that smart growth policies will ruin the "American Dream" by telling individuals where they can live, work, and play.  Thus, to them, the core of any smart growth agenda is ultimately coercion.[9] 

As uncontrolled growth continues to run rampant throughout this country, all people concerned with the health of our natural environment immediately need to start asking questions.  Is smart growth an answer to the laudable goal of stopping sprawl and its deleterious environmental effects, or is it simply a catch phrase championed by a minority who want to destroy the notion of the "American Dream?" [1]  In the author's opinion, the time is now for the national and state legislatures to end the patterns of uncontrolled growth and begin the implementation of smart growth policies.  If not, the dream of a healthy and sustainable environment, my American Dream, will really be lost for the future generations of this country.

II. SPRAWL AND ITS NEGATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

The environmental effects of sprawl are easily seen, and moreover are extremely troublesome. Generally, low-density development is land consuming, and hence uses more land per capita than traditional settlement patterns.[10]  It follows that sprawl development is resource intensive in that it depletes the amount of land available for farming and recreation, threatens or destroys wetlands and other habitat, reduces biodiversity, and limits overall future land use options.[11]  Additionally, sprawl development, because it often occurs in previously rural or undeveloped areas, is unlikely to use existing infrastructure.  Therefore, it requires the construction (and financing) of new roads, water and sewer capacity and distribution lines, and other utility lines.[12]  New construction affects wildlife habitat, contributes to erosion, and will take money away from other necessary environmental programs.  Finally, because sprawl promotes scattered, low-density development, it intensifies the nation's auto dependency.  This requires significant auto-related infrastructure, increases the cost of alternative modes of transportation, and of course exacerbates a wide range of environmental impacts, namely air pollution.[13]

Of course, the above only begins to scratch the surface of the deleterious environmental effects that flow from sprawl.  Sprawl also affects water quality, air quality, and maybe most importantly overall ecosystem health.  Fortunately, a successful movement to combat sprawl and its resulting environmental effects is gaining momentum nationwide, thanks in large part to the State of Maryland.

 III. SMART GROWTH AND MARYLAND

Smart growth has gained momentum as an acceptable antidote to the "seven sins" of sprawl, because it "Öseeks an alternative to spread out, segregated, skipped over, shapeless, scattershot, strip commercial, subsidized development."[14]  At their most general level, smart growth policies focus on where growth should occur and in what physical form.[15]  More specifically, smart growth strategies often share four common characteristics: promoting urban planning by creating a vision for the future; balancing form and function in neighborhood and community design; promoting wise infrastructure investments which can shape development; and, facilitating regional governance and oversight of local land use decisions.[16]  Taken together, these aspects have great potential to combat the unwanted effects of sprawl.

The State of Maryland has proven that this potential of smart growth to combat sprawl can become a reality.  The centerpiece of Governor Parris Glendening's 1997 legislative package was the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative.[17]   Maryland's smart growth policies are premised on the notion that government policy can curb sprawl by limiting public investment to projects consistent with sound growth management.[18]  Maryland's Smart Growth Initiative essentially has three main goals:

(1)   Preserve our most valuable remaining natural resources before they are lost forever;

(2)   Support existing communities and neighborhoods by targeting State resources to support development in areas where the infrastructure is already in place; and,

(3)   Save taxpayers millions of dollars in the unnecessary cost of building the infrastructure required to support sprawl.[19]

To meet these goals, Maryland's program uses various tools to encourage growth within existing population centers while simultaneously preserving Maryland's best remaining farmland and natural resources.[20]  In just the past six years, the state has permanently protected or preserved over 214,000 acres across Maryland, earning the state a number one ranking from the Sierra Club in land conservation.[21]

Following Maryland's example, other states are testing the viability of smart growth policies, including Vermont. The Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative (the Collaborative), established in 2001, attempts to fight sprawl and its implications on the environment.  The Collaborative employs three principal strategies to combat sprawl: (1) influencing public policy at the federal, state, regional and local levels; (2) building public awareness of the problems of sprawl and the opportunities for smart growth; and (3) supporting and advancing community-led strategies to promote and demonstrate smart growth.[22]   Vermont hopes that its focus on smart growth policies will eventually lead to the kind of success that Maryland has had in protecting its natural environment.

IV. CONCLUSION

Critics have portrayed smart growth as a device to subvert the "American Dream," because such programs are "Öprofoundly contrary to core American values."[23]  As this argument goes, smart growth is merely government coercion in that the government is limiting essential freedoms of its citizens.

At its center, the ideology of smart growth is profoundly paternalistic.   Its proponents    believe they know better than individuals themselves about the quality of life and where            best to pursue it.  They cannot bring themselves to consider that more than half of all            Americans now live in the suburbs, and they live there because they want to.[24]

 Nevertheless, these views are short-sighted and do not address the prevailing patterns of uncontrolled growth, which continue unabated.[25]  Sprawl continues to directly and indirectly damage our natural resources every day, and people must become educated about this.  There are biological impacts, human health impacts, and of course spiritual impacts such as loss of a unique sense of place or connection to land.[26]  To me, this is the destruction of the American Dream, not the government preventing me from building my house on a ten-acre tract of land in the rural countryside.

[1] Parris N. Glendening, Smart Growth: Maryland's Innovative Answer to Sprawl, 10 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 416 (2001).

[2] See Robert Cervero, Growing Smart By Linking Transportation and Urban Development, 19 Va. Envtl. L.J. 357 (2000).

[3] Clint Bollick, Subverting the American Dream: Government Dictated "Smart Growth" is Unwise and Unconstitutional, 148 U. Pa. L. Rev. 859, 860 (2000).

[4] Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative, State of Vermont Smart Growth Progress Report, at 7 (2003) (hereinafter Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative).

[5] William W. Buzbee, Sprawl's Dynamics: A Comparitive Institutional Analysis Critique, 35 Wake Forest L. Rev. 509, 510 (2000).

[6] Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative, supra note 4.

[7] Bolick, supra note 3 (Generally, the "American Dream" is the American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity.  In this specific context, I am referring to the Bottom of Form

notion that Americans have an inherent right to move to the suburbs, or wherever they choose, and live on ten-acre tracts of land away from the cities where they most often work).

[8] Id.at 859.

[9] Id.at 860.

[10] Sustainability and Growth Center Team of the Champlain Initiative, The Case For a Healthy Community: The History of Sprawl in Chittenden County, at 6 (1999) (hereinafter Champlain Initiative).

[11] See id.

[12] See id.

[13] See id.

[14] Cervero, supra note 2, at 360.

[15] See id.

[16] See id. at 360-361.

[17] See Glendening, supra note 1, at 417.

[18] See id. at 418.

[19] state of maryland, statement 1997 smart growth initiative, available at http://www.dnr.state.md.us/smartgrowth/section2.html (last visited Nov. 20, 2003).

[20] See Glendening, supra note 1, at 425.

[21] See id.

[22] See Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative, supra note 4, at 1.

[23] Bollick, supra note 3, at 860.

[24] Id. at 867.

[25] See Glendening, supra note 1, at 427.

[26] See Champlain Initiative, supra note 8, at 59.