Dumb Growth & Environmentalism

A couple of years ago, at a Smart Growth conference in Atlanta, Ted Turner said that on the whole it all sounded to him like "dumb growth." I objected publicly then, but I may come to agree with his assessment.

Smart Growth is being gradually taken over by a NIMBY ethos. The distortion most important being to keep development from spreading onto open land. This, as the thrust of a long term agenda this is simplistic. Anyone who thinks that development on greenfields can be stopped is dreaming. Even Portland couldn't do it (a fact that should be made clear).

These are the realities:

1) The demographic need cannot be accommodated within infill areas as there will be nearly 50 million more households within 20 years.

2) The small increments of land, the unpredictable public scrutiny and the bureaucratic morass, preclude efficient infill development at the scale required.

3) Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have preferences as well as needs. Many prefer planned communities. This has been the ethos since Jefferson included "the pursuit of happiness" as a natural right.

4) Most of the land proximate to cities, while looking like "greenfield," is already zoned for development. This horse is out of the barn. Legal protection of such development rights is sustained all the way to the Supreme Court.

5) We are not "running out of land." If every American household were to occupy one acre, they would consume only four percent of the land of the continental United States.

6) Environmental laws already safeguard sensitive areas and endangered species. Manipulation of criteria to forge anti-greenfield instruments merely distorts the science and diminishes the credibility of environmentalism. Those who oppose development on land that is not environmentally sensitive are manifesting their aesthetic preference, which is valid, but it is not science and they should not claim it to be so.

7) It is arguable that the best modern metropolitan pattern is not the continuous urban fabric of the city but natural reserves between villages. A respectable literature of urbanism, from Howard to Saarinen and Krier supports this model.

Little distinction is being made between suburban sprawl and new community development. Sprawl is not determined by whether development is on a greenfield or not, but by its pattern. After all, the traditional cities that we hold up as models were built on greenfields. It is their pattern, that of the neighborhood structure which is important. This is the only sustainable pattern. What else is there that is not sprawl, even if within an urban boundary? Why is the pattern not first and foremost in Smart Growth conceptualizations?

About 90 percent of what is currently built in this country is at the greenfield edge. Even if that ratio were to be reduced to half by the NIMBY branch of Smart Growth it would remain the greatest of our social problems. If we withdraw Smart Growth advocacy of the community pattern by pretending that we can stop it, growth at the edge will simply continue unabated but in the worst possible pattern.

Smart Growth which is comprehensively interpreted by the umbrella organizations, National Governor's Association and by Smart Growth America is being high jacked by the individuals who participate in the public process fighting all projects indiscriminately. The ULI, on the other side, instead of seeing that these comprehensive strategies are the salvation of the development industry, persist on taking the other extreme: that suburbia is just fine as it is - that the patter doesn't matter, only the market. Smart Growth, instead of reconciling the natural and the urban, will just become one more banner of the radical environmental groups. This would undermine the promise to build urban models that are both socially and environmentally virtuous, as well as marketable. Smart Growth must emphasize authentic urbanism not compromised hybrids, which is just a more ecological suburbia.

As a social transaction, only authentic urbanism can justify the loss of a greenfield. To lose a greenfield to suburbia is a downward trade. To lose a field but gain a village or a town is an even exchange. It has always been thus. Historically, as long as this country grew as "constellations of neighborhoods" (Jane Jacobs' phrase) we could sustain growth. The political challenge is not to appease environmental groups nor to deflect the developer's lobby, but to show both how to assess and get behind great urbanism.

Political advocacy, design work and the creation of developers rendered meaningless by those who cannot believe that the work of humans at their best has the capacity to be part of nature. If we fail in clarifying this, Smart Growth will become a movement to nowhere. It will be discarded-one more broken spear of the environmental wars.