Maryland's Smart Growth initiative: the next steps.

• Author: Glendening, Parris N.

In 1997, the State of Maryland ignited a national movement to improve land use and development decisions throughout the United States. This modest effort started with the passage of a series of new laws called the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. (1) These laws, which have been subsequently broadened and refined, (2) represent a new approach to managing growth while limiting its environmental, fiscal, and social impacts and channeling it towards improving the state's economy.

In the four years since its enactment, Maryland's Smart Growth initiative has received national (3) and international (4) recognition as the nation's first statewide, incentive-based program to reduce the impact of urban sprawl. In the year 2000, it was named one of the ten most innovative new government programs in the nation in an annual competition sponsored by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Ford Foundation, and the Council for Excellence in Government. (5) Maryland's Smart Growth effort has received numerous awards from various organizations. (6)

The Maryland program has several objectives: support of the state's established communities; protection of the state's best remaining farms and natural areas; and saving taxpayers the high cost of building infrastructure to support increasingly dispersed development. (7)

States as diverse as Maine and Utah are using Maryland's program as a model for their own growth management efforts. (8) Maryland's program has become a model for other states because the approach is incentive-based rather than regulatory. The program uses the state's budget, which in fiscal year 2002 totaled $21 billion, (9) as an incentive for growth within locally designated growth areas. (10) By withholding state funding elsewhere, the Maryland program hopes to discourage growth outside of these designated growth areas. Before the Smart Growth plan was implemented, the state had no geographic restrictions on providing financial support for growth. (11)

Maryland has also rejected the losing proposition that all growth is bad. Maryland's Smart Growth plan' is not a no-growth or even a slow-growth program. Instead, it recognizes the inevitability and value of growth to the Maryland economy. Indeed, the state has numerous programs designed to attract and encourage economic growth. The Smart Growth program, however, attempts to minimize the adverse effects of growth by channeling it to those areas of the state where existing or planned infrastructure and services are in place to support it. (12)

The Maryland initiative rejects the longstanding notion that society must choose between the economy and the environment and that for one to get stronger, the other must get weaker. This is a false dichotomy based on the old premise that society must be prepared to accept some level of environmental destruction in the name of economic growth.

In the long run, economic growth and environmental protection are inextricably intertwined. This fact is illustrated by the exceptionally strong state of Maryland's economy. Maryland has the highest family income (13) and the lowest poverty rate of any state in the nation. (14) Welfare cases are down sixty-eight percent with more than 155,000 people moving from dependency towards self-sufficiency. (15) Maryland can claim all these accomplishments while being recognized as the national leader in environmental protection.

The Maryland effort is more than a fight against the unplanned or poorly planned development that we call sprawl. It is a fight for prosperity and a better quality of life, what we call Smart Growth.

A major part of any state's economic development strategy is to assure a high quality of life for workers. Under the old model of economic development, states attracted businesses by providing them with tax benefits or financial incentives. In a knowledge-based economy, however, the most important factors for a business are a high-quality workforce, the availability of job training, and a commitment to education.

In addition, quality of life has emerged as a major factor in the new economy. In support of this view, a Wall Street Journal article (16) highlighted ten factors that high-tech industry leaders consider when making location decisions. The most important factor cited was access to a skilled and educated workforce. (17) The second most important factor was proximity to world-class research institutions, including colleges and universities. (18) The third factor was access to a good quality of life. (19) In contrast, financial incentives--long the mainstay of state economic development strategies--came in last. (20)

In a quest for a better access to a quality workforce, the high-tech, info-tech and bio-tech firms driving the new economy look to various locations around the world. (21) Firms are no longer limited by the boundaries of the United States; they no longer have to choose between Maryland or Virginia, Annapolis or Arlington. Companies are now looking at the relative merits of Illinois versus Ireland, Seattle versus Singapore, Maryland versus Milan.

Clearly, times are changing. For the past fifty years, in Maryland, as in the rest of America, many people associated moving up with moving out. (22) In the process, we took our natural resources for granted as if they were unlimited. We took our communities for granted, too, wantonly tearing them down or simply abandoning them. (23) Our growth patterns were destroying the beauty of our state, leaving large parts of our cities boarded up and abandoned; worsening congestion; and forcing our citizens to pay higher and higher taxes to cover the infrastructure costs created by sprawl.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, most development in Maryland, as well as in most other states, was in or near major cities such as Baltimore or Washington, D.C. (24) After World War II, this pattern began to change. (25) Prompted in part by public policies, such as G.I. Bill mortgage subsidies and construction of the Interstate Highway System, growth began to sprawl increasingly into suburban and rural areas. (26) This trend has, for the most part, gone unabated for the past fifty years. (27)

Maryland's Department of Planning summed up the effect of this trend with this sobering prediction: If growth patterns do not change, development will consume as much land in central Maryland alone over the next twenty-five years as it has during the entire 368-year history of the State. (28) It is against that backdrop that Maryland felt the urgent need to develop the Smart Growth approach.

1. CHANGING THE "BOTTOM LINE"

   The thrust of Maryland's Smart Growth effort is to change the "bottom line" for development decisions by making it more attractive and less costly to build in designated growth areas. (29) At the same time, the program is attempting to identify the most valuable rural areas in the state and protect them from new development. These twin objectives are accomplished primarily through companion measures enacted in 1997, such as the Priority Funding Areas Act (30) and the Rural Legacy Program. (31)

   The Priority Funding Areas Act targets state funding for growth-related projects to designated growth areas known as Priority Funding Areas. These areas include Baltimore, the state's 156 other municipalities, and the heavily developed areas inside the Baltimore and Washington beltways. (32) Additional areas designated by each county must meet minimum state criteria for the provision of public water and sewer service, minimum residential density (3.5 units per acre), and consistency with each county's twenty-year population growth projections. (33)

   The Rural Legacy Program is designed to protect large, contiguous tracts of rural land that contain valuable farms or forests; cultural areas such as Civil War battlefields; greenways around rural communities; and areas that can provide environmental protection to bays, rivers, drinking water reservoirs, and watersheds. (34) State funds are provided to willing landowners for the purchase of conservation easements or, in some cases, purchase of the property itself. Applications are often sponsored by land trusts, but must be endorsed by local governments.

   To enhance the effectiveness of these two laws, the state provides incentives through dozens of other programs including tax credits, loans and grants, and technical and financial assistance for local governments, non-profit organizations, and private developers or builders. (35) Smart Growth has become the framework for decision-making by State agencies and, to some extent, local governments. Transportation projects, for example, are now jointly reviewed by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Planning for Smart Growth compliance. (36)

   Revitalization efforts that...