Sprawl and its many forms

1. There is a great article, "Vancouver engineers its own urban dream," in the Los Angeles Times about Vancouver and Vancouverism. It discusses the nuances of development policies there, which are focused on the construction of high density, tall buildings complemented by high quality amenities.

This type of development pattern was spurred by the development of the concept of the the "ecological footprint," which first considered the impact of Vancouver of the environment, developed by University of British Columbia Professor William Rees. From the article:

He and one of his students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1990s pioneered a way of measuring the connection between human population and its consumption of resources. It's known as the "ecological footprint." Ominously, Rees found that the 2.2 million people who live in the Vancouver region would need an area 57 times larger than their own city to sustain them. Indeed, if everyone on Earth lived as people in Vancouver did, Rees calculated, it would take four planets to keep them alive.

That message resonated, and it changed Rees' adopted city. To a degree probably unmatched anywhere else in North America, the city of Vancouver has tried to impose notions of sustainability in its decisions on what, where and how to build.

The result has come to be known as "Vancouverism," an urban motif of public transit instead of freeways, a low-carbon energy infrastructure and gleaming high-rise condominium towers in sunlit, walkable neighborhoods laced with urban parks. ...

The new downtown is also a victim of its own success: the condos with the good views are so sought-after that they often cost several million dollars. Even the cheaper studios routinely hit $350,000. How can young families afford those kinds of prices?

The city recently suspended new condo conversions in some areas until job centers catch up. The region's top four employers are various agencies of the government -- troubling in a region that long ago shut down most of its resource economy, such as logging.

With downtown housing costs so high, the suburbs have grown relentlessly. For every new downtown resident, four others have moved to the vast, Orange County-like expanse of the Fraser Valley.

Like many major cities, Vancouver's economy was industrially-based, mostly related to extractive industrial sectors. And this industry declined to the point of oblivion in the 1980s--other than various government installations and the requisite employment that is associated with such facilities.

The relative high cost of attractive housing, and the crowding out of office development in favor of condominium development, plus the lack of the imposition of similar planning and development policies throughout the region has meant that certain types of development have leapfrogged Vancouver and spread throughout the Fraser Valley.

Without true regional planning, the intent of one community as expressed by planning can be easily thwarted by developing somewhere else, still nearby, but in a different community not subject to the same level of planning, zoning, and building regulations and requirements.

In the DC region, that means that certain kinds of development that might have located in Montgomery County, Maryland--new subdivisions, light office, and strip shopping centers--are instead located in Frederick County, further north, leapfrogging the 150 square mile Agriculture Reserve in the north of Montgomery County where strict development controls eliminate the opportunity to build in favor of preserving open space and agriculturally oriented property.

2. Just as lack of regional planning with teeth inhibits developing more balanced local economies and limiting sprawl and promoting optimal use of resources in all forms, organizations working at cross purposes make it difficult to contain sprawl as well.

For example, Post Offices moving out of city and neighborhood centers to automobile centric places, or courthouses being located away from transit ("Pondering the End of a Line" from the Post about bus service to the U.S. District Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland) or other government facilities being located outside of already developed places in favor of greenfield locations further contributes to sprawl.

In the State of Oregon, Governor Ted Kulongoski has signed an executive order directing state agencies to locate state offices in historic downtown areas whenever feasible. The order also encourages state agencies to hold meetings, trainings, and conferences in historic downtown buildings.

Executive Order 10-01: Preserving and Enhancing Oregon's Historic Downtowns.

3. Relatedly, there is a nice op-ed, "Don't neglect downtown," in the Baltimore Sun by the director of the Downtown Partnership there, about how policies and the region either supports Downtown or directs resources and development away from it, along the same lines as is discussed in the State of Oregon Executive Order. From the article:

While these successes are heartening, the dawn of the new decade comes at a critical time for Baltimore's downtown. Indeed, its future economic importance to the entire region could be undercut by the creation of competing business districts outside downtown. It may be alluring and exciting to develop new districts from whole cloth, rather than to improve what already exists, but we must avoid development policies that favor the new over the existing - policies akin to those that contributed to downtown's decline generations ago.

If we've learned anything from downtown's ebb and flow over the past several decades, it's that market forces will not be the sole deciding factor. As history shows, markets are heavily influenced by policy decisions and government incentives. ...

We are at the beginning of the strategic planning process, but it is already clear that future government incentives and development policies should not support new business districts at the expense of downtown. At a minimum, the older parts of downtown should receive a comparable level of government investment as major, new office developments in other areas of the city. This is the best way to ensure the future viability of the region's single most important economic engine.

4. In DC, I describe the phenomenon discussed by Kirby Fowler as one of "intra-city" sprawl. It has multiple forms.

The City Government's policy of decentralization of the location of government facilities from Downtown and from locations of high quality transit to places spread out across the city, usually in areas of relatively low quality transit is one such form.

These locations, distant from the city core, in areas with lower quality of "Level of Service" and "Level of Quality" for transit, reduce the agglomeration benefits that would normally exist from proximity to related organizations located nearby.

It's done ostensibly to "build development" in other areas, but it doesn't really do much for the area in which buildings are located (office workers don't do a whole lot to support local retail other than very basic convenience goods and quick service food), and it comes at the cost of time for the people working there or doing business with the organization, and it usually generates far more and more wasteful trips, because the ability to use high quality transit to reach the location is reduced.

Another way the city contributes to sprawl is by not prioritizing where investments should be made. In effect, any city-owned property may be up for grabs, whether or not it's development is the best contribution to and realization of other objectives.

When the State of Maryland created its Smart Growth policies as part of the initiative to bring smart growth principles to land use planning at all levels of government within the state, they added new requirements and focus to how counties are required to handle decennial (every 10 year) planning for comprehensive master planning.

I don't have handy the actual language of the requirements, but this is how Baltimore County describes the mandates:

... with an emphasis on mixed use (commercial and residential), walkable, and transit-oriented sustainable development. This type of development will be able to accommodate our growing population, protect our existing neighborhoods, and preserve and enhance the natural environment.

For example, in Baltimore County, as a result of the state's mandates it means that the various government agencies have refocused their policies in very specific ways towards the revitalization of existing areas like Arbutus or Catonsville or Dundalk (which have decidedly different issues compared to urban neighborhoods in cities like Baltimore or Washington), over greenfield development, with the exception of specified growth areas (Owings Mills, White Marsh), plus the impact of BRAC and the location of new military facilities in the region.

The other way State mandates get translated into policy at the local level is by requiring adequate public facilities ordinances, which tie new development proposals to existing infrastructure and services, specifically water and sewer, transportation (in particular, roads), emergency services (especially fire department coverage), schools, parks, and libraries.

Locally, we see this in coverage of development issues in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in the local media. For example, right now there is a moratorium on development in the Bethesda area because of capacity issues in the local schools ("School board OKs growth policy resolution" from the Gazette). Or in Prince George's County there are constant tensions between development in the urban vs. the rural areas that possess fewer services at present, and the constant desire on the part of developers to foster greenfield development, or at the least development in areas with weak transit service (i.e. National Harbor, Konterra).

When the infrastructure is inadequate, either proffers are made to add the infrastructure, or the development doesn't occur.

This doesn't happen in DC, where the equivalent of adequate public facilities ordinances don't exist, other than certain requirements to accommodate parking (and sometimes other transportation infrastructure) and affordable housing in zoning regulations.