Maryland's glendening becomes USA's 'smart growth' champion.

• Author: Peirce, Neal R.
• Position: Commentary - Parris Glendening, governor - Brief Article

Can one governor change an entire nation's direction?

It's tough, but Maryland's Parris Glendening, passionate opponent of helter-skelter development that devours open spaces and farm lands while wasting cities and towns, is giving it a heck of a try.

The "smart growth" label that Glendening placed on his landmark 1997 Maryland statute, which cuts off state subsidies for new sprawl development, has been seized on and is now championed by land and community conservationists in all 50 states.

Glendening is clearly America's leading Johnny Appleseed of smart growth, constantly traveling the country to spread the word to willing audiences.

And in his just-completed year as chairman of the National Governors' Association (NGA), he seriously and repeatedly engaged the country's chief state executives on growth issues.

At the governors' annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, Glendening was able to present each of them with a "tool kit" of smart growth strategies, loaded into a hand-held Palm computer.

The kit, prepared by NGA's Center for Best Practices (and soon available at www.nga.org), is packed with more than 150 examples of how 30 states have addressed smart growth issues ranging from walkable and well-designed communities to brownfields recovery, Main Street revitalizations, and preserving open spaces. Typical success stories include converting dead suburban malls into town centers in New Jersey and Tennessee, or finding ways to link roads, transit, and land use planning in Colorado, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

For some governors, a palm computer was as strange an instrument as smart growth talk before the late 1990s. Glendening offered them instructions using a PowerPoint presentation, starting with an illustration indicating "Turn It On Here" and a suggestion, if perplexed, to summon anyone on your staff under 30."

The essential Glendening message is that better planned, more compact city and town developments can save millions of dollars on public infrastructure. And that by promoting a higher quality of life, smart growth communities sharpen their economic competitiveness.

But pushing the issue with the governors--29 of them Republicans--Democrat Glendening tried to focus the issue in an information-sharing, non-threatening way. No votes or commitments were sought. And no opposition--from property-righters or other critics--surfaced.

Indeed, it turned out that several governors were already espousing growth issues their own way--among...