Smart Growth and Suburbia:

What Is It? Whos Behind It?

by James Dellinger and Ryan Balis
Summary: Environmental groups, urban planners and not-in-my-backyard homeowners oppose what they consider uncontrolled land developmentalso known as suburban sprawl. They are devising so-called smart growth initiatives planning future land use. But these proposals limit consumer choices and trample on property rights. Smart-growth legislation also unfairly discriminates against new and less affluent homeowners who are priced out of the housing market when land-use restrictions cause property values to skyrocket. What is smart-growth and who funds this growing movement?
Pro-smart growth former governors Republican Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey (second from left) and Democrat Parris Glendening (center), at the launch last year of the Governors Institute for Community Design. Glendening, the poster child of the smart growth movement, is credited with coining the term smart growth. Whitman was EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003.

mart growth is the buzzword used by those who want to preserve as much empty land as possible. Its proponents support public policies that would give government planners the authority to dictate how private property should be used. Many smart-growth advocates are city planners whose ideas derive from the New Urbanism architectural movement of the 1970s; others are environmental activists. But smart growth advocates have one thing in common: they fear that humanity is running out of open space. Any appeal that smart growth might have is based on the control of language. In a semantic coup, environmentalists have discovered that wetlands are more inviting than swamps and that rainforests are more appealing than jungles. Similarly, smartgrowth planners have discovered that it is advantageous to use environmentallyfriendly euphemisms such as open space and green space to refer to raw land and

empty lots. Smart growth advocates also cultivate nostalgia for the past. Americans are encouraged to imagine an idyllic past when local stores were on every street corner and neighbors met neighbors on daily walks down tree-lined streets. The concept of smart growth is particularly dependent on an abiding hatred for cars and car culture. Environmentalist groups such as the Sierra Club promote bike paths and hiking trails and routinely denounce automobile driving as unhealthy, anti-social and unsustainable. Over 100 local or state governments in the U.S. have adopted smart growth policies, but smart growth advocates have targeted suburbs as the area most in need of limits on growth. They call for restrictive growth boundaries, a land-use policy that mandates where development may and may not

occur, and mixed-use development, a type of planning that favors dense high-rise housing combined with offices, retail shopping, and public infrastructure, often contained within the same structure. Smart growth proponents claim that if suburban development outside city centers is not controlled, suburban sprawl will proliferate. This, in turn, will cause open space to

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CONTENTS
Smart Growth and Suburbia
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Briefly Noted
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disappear and traffic will become more and more congested; air pollution and crime rates will increase; public schools will continue to fail students; and an epidemic of obesity will bloat the chauffeured children of America. And it will all be the fault of disorderly suburban development. In reality, smart growth policies contribute to the conditions those policies are supposed to prevent. By blocking new road construction, motorists face longer and more congested commutes. And by blocking new home construction, residents end up moving to the more affordable suburbs and driving farther to the urban cores. Smart growth supporters argue that new housing exacerbates road congestion and produces crowded classrooms, and daily traffic jams that enrage commuters. Its no wonder that a political movement has capitalized on that anger. Some of the strongest advocates for smart growth have channeled that anger into a movement that has political clout. City mayors and officials at planning agencies have made common cause with downtown business associations, public transportation union officials, and left-wing community activists to put the brakes on private sector suburban development. City officials, in parEditor: Matthew Vadum Publisher: Terrence Scanlon Organization Trends is published by Capital Research Center, a non-partisan education and research organization, classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Address: 1513 16th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036-1480 Phone: (202) 483-6900 Long-Distance: (800) 459-3950 E-mail Address: mvadum@capitalresearch.org Web Site: http://www.capitalresearch.org Organization Trends welcomes letters to the editor. Reprints are available for $2.50 prepaid to Capital Research Center. ticular, argue that suburban sprawl threatens their municipal tax base (i.e. the pot of money that politicians use to fund projects that help get them re-elected). From this perspective, the smart growth campaign is essentially a turf battle: City officials and their supporters want to reverse the flight of residents to lowcrime, lower-taxed suburbs that often provide better government services at a lower per-taxpayer cost. For them, smart growth policies re-direct taxes, fees and consumer spending back into city coffers that support big-spending policies. But many suburban homeowners and wealthy landowners also have an incentive to favor restrictive smart growth policies. Vested propertied interests often want limits on suburban property development to keep their own skylines and vistas uncluttered. A beautiful view enhances their aesthetic appreciation, but it also leads to the appreciation of their property values. Putting restrictions on your neighbors land use can push up your own land values. However, smart growth is not merely a matter of self-interest. Its most dedicated supporters have a mission. Anti-sprawl activists champion increased population density in cities to halt land development in outlying suburbs and exurbs. They want to reverse the trend toward low-density living that most Americans prefer. In A Compact History of Sprawl (published in 2005 by University of Chicago Press), architecture historian Robert Bruegmann argues that the outward expansion of urban areas has real social benefits. It is an inevitable social and economic process that characterizes prosperous civilizations. But thats not the view of the smart growth crowd. Are They Winning? Smart growth supporters have deep pockets and are determined to change public attitudes about putting restrictions on land development. They have already begun to succeed in areas around Portland, Oregon, and in communities just outside Washington, D.C. Oregon is a testament to the power of the smart growth movement. Despite the recent passage of Measure 37 to ease land use regulation, economist Randal OToole of the Thoreau Institute has documented that the state retains some of the most onerous landuse regulations in the nation. For instance, a farmer must receive special approval to build a new home on his own land. A farmer can live on his own farmland only if he owns at least 160 acres and can show that his land generates a minimum of $40,000 in agricultural revenue in two out of three years. Oregon planners have successfully limited the number of new homes built on these farmlands to around 100 per year. In 1991, Portland was the 55th most affordable city in the U.S. By 2002, after the implementation of smart growth policies, Portlands ranking plunged to number 163, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). In a 2004 survey, NAHB found that only 20% of Portland-area police officers and nurses earning the median salary for their profession could afford a median-priced home. Even worse, only 0.7% of retail workers could afford housing there. If Portlands development policies were extended nationwide, they would result in one million fewer homeowners over the period 1991-2001, according to The National Center for Public Policy Researchs 2002 study, Smart Growth and Its Effects on Housing Markets: The New Segregation. Of those who would be priced out of the housing market, 260,000 would be minority Americans. Smart growth also has a firm foothold in the suburbs of Washington D.C., one of Americas fastest growing regions. In 1997, then-Maryland Governor Parris Glendening, who was arguably the most anti-growth governor in the U.S. at that time, initiated a statewide anti-sprawl policy. Indeed, he has been credited with having coined the term smart growth. Today the state of Marylands grants are skewed toward densely populated growth areas, which are designated Priority Funding Areas. In 2005, as part of an effort to halt suburban sprawl, officials in Prince Georges County, Maryland, imposed a one-year ban on new subdivision home projects. In neighboring Charles County, many residents in the states fastest growing region balked at the county commissioners 2005 Community Development Housing Plan. To promote multi-family dwellings and increased

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housing densities, the plan expanded the number of rental units allowed to be built by 7,400 over 15 years and it rezoned land for this purpose. But with over 6,500 residents below the poverty line in 2000, many workers in the county cannot afford the local average of $851 per month (2005) to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Hollywood and other purveyors of pop culture share this elitist disdain for suburban living. In television and movies suburbanites are commonly portrayed as selfish, self-destructive and neurotic. Little Boxes, a popular 1962 song written by Malvina Reynolds, is the theme song of the Showtime television program Weeds, which features a harried SUV-driving single mom who became a marijuana dealer to maintain her lifestyle and pay the mortgage on her large suburban home. The tune makes fun of the faade of suburban home life and criticizes its conformist culture: Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes made of tickytackAnd they all look just the same. The 1999 movie, American Beauty , which won a Best Picture Academy Award, also attacks suburban America, characterizing it as a dumping ground for depraved and deviant behavior hidden behind manicured lawns part of Abacoa, a model smart growth project in Jupiter, FL. But and high fences. in 2005, an increase of 6.2% from 2004. Homeless shelters often operate at maximum capacity and are forced to turn away families. Catholic Charities Angels Watch Regional Shelter in Marylands tri-county area of Charles, St. Marys and Calvert Counties, refused close to 1,200 people in 2005, according to Jacqui Hamilton, the charitys program manager. In Virginia, the Washington Post reported that two homeless Fairfax County men huddled behind a local gas station and died in the frigid temperatures two days

Across the Potomac River in the booming suburbs of Virginia, smart growth planning in Arlington County, Virginia, which borders Washington, D.C., has created a housing affordability crisis. According to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, which tracks housing trends, the average cost of a condominium there increased from $151,857 in 2000 to $382,172 in 2006. Similarly, single-family home prices more than doubled over this same period to an average of over $746,000. Despite smart growths inflationary effect on housing prices, the Environmental Protection Agency presented Arlington with its 2002 This nature trail is photographs cant depict the jump in real estate prices that inevitably accompanies the national award for imposition of smart growth policies. Overall Excellence in Smart Growth, an annual competition before Christmas in 2004. At least one of the Even among conservatives there are those among local and state governments. deceased men held a regular job but simply who are sympathetic to the aims of smart could not afford to live in one of the nations growth. For instance, National Review writer Board supervisors in nearby Loudoun most expensive housing markets. Rod Dreher chronicles the lives of conservaCounty recently voted to limit new housing tives like himself in his book, Crunchy Cons. growth and to preserve as open space a Hollywood Activists and Conservatives He describes social and cultural conservaspecific section of land featuring a backdrop Anti-sprawl activists, academics and jour- tives who do not embrace change-driven vista of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The nalists often make wild claims. Author Dou- market economics, but live according to a Washington Post reported September 7 that glas Morris, in his book Its a Sprawl World small is beautiful smart growth-friendly the county plan will require that new homes After All (published in 2005 by New Society), ideal. Even Sen. George Allen (R-VA), who be built on large five- to 10-acre lots. That will goes so far as to claim that sprawl and claims to be a staunch supporter of property mean only about half of a prospective 37,000 suburbanization are responsible for spawn- rights, has embraced the Journey Through new homes can be constructed. ing sociopaths such as rapists and serial Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area killers. The environmentalist cult documen- Act, which would make large swaths of In the Washington region, it is common- tary The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and property subject to a federally mandated place to read news stories of displaced per- the Collapse of the American Dream (2004) smart growth management plan. The law may sons who cannot find affordable housing. warns that continued suburbanization may have unintended consequences: if it is enThe Metropolitan Washington Council of cause an energy crisis far worse than the oil acted, it would not be hard to imagine a Governments Homeless Enumeration Re- shock of the 1970s. federally backed smart growth activist fightport showed 15,439 people were homeless ing against proposals to create new commu-

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nities or road improvements in the name of heritage preservation. Funders Network for Smart Growth Anti-growth and anti-market movements used to be funded mainly by individual donors sympathetic to leftist causes. But as foundation philanthropy has increasingly focused on promoting movements for social change, smart growth advocates, not surprisingly, have looked to the foundation world for financial and moral support. The Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities is an umbrella affinity group for foundations with a smart growth agenda. Incorporated as a separate 501(c)(3) charity in 2003, it helps identify issues, locates sympathetic donors and builds political coalitions. Through its work the Network helps funders to advance policy reforms; share knowledge of effective strategies and tools; build the capacity of key constituencies; raise awareness about the interdisciplinary nature of these issues; and encourage sustained engagement with these issues by a diverse coalition of funders. The network includes some 60 organizations, including major philanthropies (e.g., the Ford, Packard, Mott, Joyce, and Robert Wood Johnson foundations), corporate foundations (Home Depot, Bank of America, and Fannie Mae), community foundations (California, Cleveland, Greater Atlanta) and coalition groups (Bikes Belong Coalition, Local Initiatives Support Corporation). According to its website, they are currently focusing on communications, community foundations leadership, regional and neighborhood equity, transportation, green buildings, and healthy communities. The network includes the elite of the foundation world, institutions with enormous assets and the capacity to make substantial grants for advocacy on behalf of smart growth. Who Gets Funded? Environmentalist groups are among the groups most financially prepared to fight for smart growth. * The Sierra Club, a vociferous opponent of suburban growth and development, claims that sprawl-like development can use many more resources five times more pipe and wire, five times as much heating and cooling energy than urban living. Claiming some 750,000 members in hundreds of local chapters, the San Francisco-headquartered group is promoting a new report that calls suburbanization The Dark Side of the American Dream. Its guide, Building Better: A Guide to Americas Best New Development Projects, supports bringing local land use issues under state and federal control. In the Washington, D.C. area the Club fought unsuccessfully against the Intercounty Connector, a planned 6-lane, 18-mile tolled highway linking Washingtons suburbs in Maryland that was proposed more than a half century ago. In Atlanta, Georgia, the Club works tirelessly for public rail transit and against most new highway construction. * The Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) is less well-known, but is one of the best-funded and most vocal advocates of subsidies for mass transit, which has become the politically-correct panacea for issues of growth management. It has received grants from the Heinz, Robert Wood Johnson, James Irvine, Kirsch, MacArthur, McKenna, and Pittsburgh foundations as well as from the Prince Charitable Trusts, Rausch, Rockefeller and Surdna foundations. In 2004, STPP had revenues close to $1.5 million and expenses of $2.2 million according to its IRS Form 990. * The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) litigates vigorously, filing multiple environment and land-use cases simultaneously. Based in New York City, it attacks auto use, charging that in the last three decades, vehicle use per capita in our largest metro areas has doubled....Energy use rises directly with increased driving, exacerbating fossil fuel dependence and global warming. * The Trust for Public Lands (TPL) has lately focused on finding ways to stop development projects. According to its own website because TPL does not own or manage land over the long term there must be a government agency or organization willing and able to assume ownership of the land. TPL has helped states and local governments draft and pass over 300 ballot measures that have generated over $19 billion in new land acquisition funding. * The National Trust for Historic Preservation often acts like an environmental group. The trust has become an anti-growth advocate that values preservation over property rights, wrote Peyton Knight, author of a November 2005 Foundation Watch article on the Trust. Knight continued: If historic preservation is non-ideological, why are all of [Trust president Richard] Moes allies on the Leftand many on the fringe? If preservation is about creating and sustaining livable communities, why block traffic improvements, evict property owners in existing communities, and refuse to allow new owners to build new communities? If preservation is about empowering communities, why use the federal government to decide whats best for them? How can future generations preserve the legacy that helps to define us as Americans, by disdaining our rights to own our land? Foundation grants against sprawl go to umbrella coalition groups as well. Probably the most important is the Smart Growth Network (SGN) and Smart Growth America (SGA). SGN opposes low-density living. It is an information clearinghouse for 30 environmental and urban interest groups as well as for the state of Maryland and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Member groups sign agreements with the EPA in order to coordinate their anti-growth activities. Although SGN receives foundation grants from the Funders Network, it also receives grants from the Nathan Cummings, Energy, George Gund, and Rockefeller Brothers foundations. On its website, SGN says it uses smart growth approaches to create a

For frequent updates on environmental groups, nonprofits, foundations, and labor unions, check out the CRC-Greenwatch Blog at

www.capitalresearch.org/blog
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wider range of housing choices and to improve the quality of life in communities by promoting new transportation choices and transit-oriented development. The irony is that in the kind of densely populated communities SGN seeks to create, a house with a large yard would not be a realistic housing choice, nor would a private car be a transportation choice. According to its 2004 tax return, Smart Growth America had $2,389,126 in revenue and $1,253,422 in expenses. In 2005 former governors Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Parris N. Glendening of Maryland decided to spearhead the new Governors Institute on Community Design, creating a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the EPA. The Governors Institute plans to hold annual workshops linking governors and their cabinet secretaries to top planning experts. Former Maine governor Angus King has agreed to help assist future workshops. The Governors Institute builds on the success of the National Endowment for the Arts Mayors Institute on City Design, which since 1986 has promoted ideas to improve city planning. Many local smart growth advocates are also funded by foundations such as the Surdna and Energy foundations. (See David Hogbergs January 2006 Foundation Watch article on the latter group for further details.) They tend to fund groups that fight fossil fuel energy development projects and demand government subsidies for renewable energy. Will Smart Growth Succeed? Many Americans are understandably troubled by the sometimes dizzying speed of growth and development in their communities. Change can be scary. That fear has allowed those who want to curb development to become a formidable political force. They support ballot initiatives and restrictive local zoning ordinances that violate individual property rightsand they are increasingly successful. But smart growth policies confront the inexorable force of population growth, urban expansion and economic development. These are worldwide social processes, and it is foolish to think they will end anytime soon. As long as people are mobile, in search of prosperity and personal advancement, they are going to want more for themselves. In newly-developing countries such as India and Mexico a new middle class is acting like past generations of Americans. It is moving away from crowded urban centers and multigenerational family homes and is demanding more single-family dwellings on private lots. In the U.S., some critics think smart growth policies will have the unintended consequences of creating even more widespread suburban development. They speculate that anti-suburban policies are actually spurring a new round of exurbanization. Exurbs refer to prosperous semi-rural communities that exist beyond well-established suburbs. Highspeed limited-access highways often connect these new bedroom communities to urban-suburban metropolitan centers. Of course, smart growth activists denounce exurbanization too, arguing that such communities, like suburbs, waste resources. And then there are the aging baby-boomers. They will soon be in search of what developers call integrated senior living communities. The builders of these private developments have, in effect, co-opted the New Urbanism school of public planners. They know their customers will want to live nearby the stores where they shop. They will want to link their condos, townhouses, and apartments to retail shopping areas, recreational facilities and medical centers. This infuriates smart growth activists who loudly deride these living centers as fake towns. Suburban tastes are evolving. The mall is no longer convenient for us, architect Terry Shook told the Boston Globe last summer. The trend toward lifestyle centers suggests that suburbia is starting to reinvent itself. Conclusion Despite the creative advertising of the antisprawl crusade, living apart from city life is still attractive and in many cases necessary for many Americans. According to Randall OToole, only 25% of Americans live in the smart growth ideal of high-density developments; the remaining 75% live in either lowdensity suburban neighborhoods or in even less sparsely populated rural areas. Americans have voted with their feet. They like having more space, less pollution, and less crime. Moreover, they have decided that the flight to the suburbs is a way to achieve a cherished American goal of homeownership, often a measure of economic success and what most of us think of as making it. They have little patience for state, federal, or local government planners telling them how to live. But smart growth backers are quite comfortable telling people how to live. The antigrowth turf wars that have been waged over many of Americas metropolitan areas are emblematic of changes in the modern Left. Rather than seeking to influence political decision-making, the Left now aims to implement rigid controls that end up determining the economic decisions that individuals make at home. Suburbia is the battleground, and they are waging war on low-density living. James Dellinger is Executive Director of GreenWatch and EducationWatch at Capital Research Center. Ryan Balis is a policy analyst at The National Center for Public Policy Research. OT

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BrieflyNoted
George Soros told a New America Foundation gathering that the war on terror is a phony war, an empty advertising slogan that President Bush and the Republican Party are using to pull the wool over gullible Americans eyes. In a mid-September speech, he attacked the war as a very false frame. The Open Society Institute , funded by Soros, bankrolls the extremist, anti-American public interest law firm, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which was profiled in last months Organization Trends. New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez is the subject of a criminal investigation of his involvement with a nonprofit group, according to a Star-Ledger report September 8. A subpoena has been issued related to a Menendez rental deal with the Union City-based North Hudson Community Action Corp. The senator reportedly collected more than $300,000 from the group over a nine-year period, and during that time helped it secure millions of dollars in federal grants. Appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Jon Corzine in January, Menendez is currently seeking election to the post. The IRS has revoked the tax-exempt status of the Democratic Leadership Council. The group was formed by Democrats eager to reclaim their party from its ascendant left wing following Ronald Reagans landslide 1984 victory. The IRS determined that DLC activities primarily benefit so-called New Democrats running for political office, instead of the public at large, according to Forbes magazines October 2 edition. The DLC has asked a federal court to review the decision. The outcome could affect the spreading use (abuse?) of tax-exempts by politicians and those seeking to influence them, according to the article. Buying green products might make consumers less likely to donate directly to environmentalist groups, New Scientist reported September 16, citing a study that appeared in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy. An economic model devised by [study author Matthew] Kotchen suggests that, having bought premium green goods, consumers may be less willing to donate directly to environmental causes, possibly lowering the overall contribution they would otherwise have made, according to New Scientist. But will smug environmentalists stop feeling good about themselves as they drive their hybrid SUVs to Ben & Jerrys ice cream shop? The publicity given Bill Clintons philanthropy continues on a scale grossly disproportionate to its actual scope. In a fawning cover story in the September 18 Fortune magazine, reporter Bethany McLean acknowledged that the Clinton Foundation has a 2006 budget of $30 million while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of $30 billion. Yet she wrote that no one motivates people and moves mountains like Bill Clinton. Judicial Watch reported August 21 that a federal judge who found unconstitutional the Bush administrations warrantless domestic surveillance program has close ties to the lead plaintiff in the case, the American Civil Liberties Union. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor is secretary and trustee for Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan (CFSEM) which recently gave $45,000 to the ACLU of Michigan, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. The judge ruled in the ACLUs favor in the case, ACLU v. National Security Agency. Judicial Watch also noted that according to CFSEMs website, the foundations trustees make all funding decisions at meetings held on a quarterly basis. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the potential conflict of interest merits serious investigationif Judge Diggs Taylor failed to disclose this link to a plaintiff in a case before her court, it would certainly call into question her judgment. Liberal activist groups are so reliant on paid canvassers that it is hindering their ability to push for political change, according to Dana R. Fishe r, a sociology professor at Columbia University. The Chronicle of Higher Education quoted Fisher saying many liberal nonprofit groups opt to pay college students and other workers to solicit donations from the public. Conservative groups, on the other hand, rely more on traditional community- and churchbased groups, which are better at making long-term connections, said Fisher, author of a new book called Activism, Inc.

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