Sprawling into the future

On Dec. 10 at the Augusta Civic Center no fewer than three governors will convene a summit conference on smart growth. Sprawl may not head everyone’s list of dangers to society, but it is important enough to bring together Gov. John Baldacci, former Gov. Angus King and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, plus hundreds of Mainers concerned about our joint future.

Why all the fuss? Isn’t economic growth and development fundamental to the American dream?

Growth clearly is vital. The policies and programs of our local, state and federal governments support and promote economic growth, population growth, and job growth. In biology, however, runaway growth is called cancer. Similarly, unbridled economic growth is bad for society, and its excesses have generated support for sensible policies that value our heritage, that respect our landscapes, that nurture our way of life rather than pave it over.

Economic growth without plan or regulation can be terminal for a community or region if it clogs its transportation arteries, distorts its tax structure, gobbles up its open space, and destroys its character. Sensible growth policies that encourage economic and social activities in or near already developed areas add to the vigor of a community, preserve its distinctive qualities, and cost much less than does unplanned development.

But does sensible-growth planning fly in the face of local control? Not necessarily. To the extent that good policy preserves and sustains the characteristics that make a community vital and distinctive, sensible growth fosters home rule. Local control of a town that has lost its character would be a sham.

What causes sprawl? Sometimes we seem to regard it as a force of nature, something we can do little to shape or influence. Sprawl doesn’t just happen, however. It’s the end result of several separate decisions that do not intend to promote ragged growth, but do. Take schools, for example.

During the 1990s, Maine saw a net loss in the school-age population. Yet some $750 million in State money financed new schools during the decade. What accounts for this upside- down situation? At the 2004 annual meeting of the Maine Farmland Trust a farmer was asked how best to slow the pressures on farmers to sell their land and abandon a job and way of life that may have been in the family for generations. “It’s simple,” he said, “just stop building new schools on the other side of productive farmland!”

What can be done? For starters, we can encourage the State Department of Education to make every effort to rehab current school buildings rather than to build new ones in

former cornfields or cow pastures. Neither our finances nor our community lives can afford new schools far from town and village centers.

The lack of affordable housing offers another illustration. By now everyone is familiar with increasing demand that drives up property values (good for some) while simultaneously making housing much more expensive (bad for others) – a phenomenon that lies at the core of the property tax revolt. Often lost sight of, though, is that upward change in property values also leads directly to sprawl as people search for cheaper accommodations away from high-demand areas. Does the state have a role in finding a solution to this problem?

The state does have a critical role to play precisely because the private market does not respond to this sort of problem. The dearth of affordable housing is the result of what economists call market failure. Governmental intervention is required because there is little incentive for private developers to act.

The trick in providing affordable housing is to do so without depressing property values in neighboring areas or locating housing in frankly undesirable locations. While some progress may be made within these constraints in constructing small new homes or apartments in clusters, thus creating more dwellings per acre, a more immediate smart-growth solution would be to take advantage of second – and third-story space in downtowns. At a stroke downtowns would be invigorated, now-abandoned space would be rehabilitated, and individuals and families would be able to afford a decent home. This would require changing or eliminating some ordinances, but this should not be an extraordinarily high barrier.

Sprawl may pale in destructive potential to natural disasters, terrorist attacks or economic depression, but it is no less a threat to our way of life and our sense of place. Indeed, because it tends to be permanent, sprawl may be the most serious foe we face. Unlike other threats, however, sprawl is neither unexpected nor inevitable. We can choose the future we really want.

Kent Price of Orland is vice president of the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust and a board member of the Friends of Midcoast Maine.