Smart growth, New Urbanism and diversity: progressive planning movements in America and their impact on poor and minority ethnic populations.

• Author: Kushner, James A.

ABSTRACT

Smart Growth envisions a reduction in the extension of low-density suburban subdivisions as the predominant pattern of development. New Urbanism reflects a more pedestrian-oriented European style of urban life. Growth policies that target development toward urban infill and revitalization could result in the intensification of ethnic separation. The success of the strategies carries the alternative image of gentrification and displacement of the poor. Were New Urbanism to integrate economic classes through a mixture of housing types and costs (ranging from lofts and live/work units to higher density apartments, townhouses, and even single family detached homes) utilizing adequate subsidies, local governments could provide an optimally designed stock of housing. If designed around transit, it could dramatically improve access-to jobs and other services while offering more diverse neighborhoods. America's major cities include slum housing and a stock of barely habitable shelters which have served as housing for those of very low income, particularly new immigrants. Were these slums and lower-cost shelters replaced by new and revitalized development, cities such as New York or Los Angeles might cease to serve their democratizing and incubation function and the quality of life and opportunity for new immigrants and the poor may diminish.

While many European cities are the archetype of New Urbanism, others have been allowed to become unfriendly to the pedestrian and too-automobile dominated. The affluence of Europe has generated a rising middle-class that enjoys driving modern automobiles and prefers the privacy and bucolic appearance of the American suburb. Increasing development of suburban detached homes and increasing automobile trips and ownership poses a threat to the quality of European urban life. As communities grapple with developers of such housing, a New Urbanist design model may offer huge benefits to mitigate the suburban pressure.

I.

INTRODUCTION

American growth patterns have been driven by natural and unnatural forces. Vast amounts of land tended to foster individualism, privacy, and noncontiguous non-compact land use patterns. The national transportation policy of reliance on personal automobile transport resulted in dispersed housing sites and the decline of central cities. Furthermore, American courts have endorsed the doctrine of "Euclidean" zoning. "Euclidean" zoning calls for the separation of uses: commercial facilities, offices, single-family detached homes and apartments are all physically separate. (1) This pattern results in the devotion of a substantial portion of regional land for automobile use. (2) It generates traffic congestion, (3) dependence on oil, (4) extraordinary transportation costs for families, (5) higher costs to deliver municipal services, (6) and pollution. (7) In addition to the obvious adverse effects of automobile-based planning, community life disappears under this "Dumb Growth." (8) For example, pedestrian life and urban living are exchanged for individuals socializing in private homes or in a few regional destinations that offer entertainment, an ersatz European-type urban walking experience, and a reasonably safe environment--typically the shopping mall.

During the past thirty years, the principal response to the effects of suburban sprawl (9) and urban decline has been the American attempt at growth management. Individual communities might utilize devices such as urban growth boundaries, (10) development moratoria, (11) the establishment of complicated systems of annual permit caps, (12) or growth systems linked to infrastructure capacity--that is, to deny permits absent adequate roads, water, sewers, and schools. (13) America's experience in the 20th century has demonstrated the value of regional and comprehensive planning. Individual local growth management initiatives, haphazardly imposed, have failed to generate rational urban design. (14) In the process, progressive architects and planners have identified development design modifications and have spawned new movements based on principles long-understood in the European planning community.

The Smart Growth movement represents a policy shift toward more compact development as a brake on urban sprawl. Simply stated, Smart Growth calls for public subsidies for growth, such as facilities and infrastructure subsidies, being targeted at areas deemed appropriate for urbanization. Smart Growth, as compared to first generation growth management, enjoys widespread support both by public officials and the public, who are concerned with traffic congestion, as well as the development community. New Urbanism, also a movement designed to generate more compact development, is comparatively more focused on architecture and community design. New Urbanism calls for more human scale, walkable streets, the mixing of shops and residence in the urban center designed to generate city life, and a higher density, less automobile-dominated community. This article will describe these new planning movements, discuss current research that touches on land economics and planning implications, and explore the questions of how central cities, the poor, and minority ethnic populations may be impacted by these movements. Finally, the potential for exporting these planning movements to other lands will be explored.

II.

SMART GROWTH

Smart Growth (15) is a movement that potentially represents the most significant American architectural, social, and political change since the short-lived populist movements of the late 19th century. Smart Growth envisions a reduction in the extension of low-density suburban subdivisions as the predominant pattern of development. Instead, development should be more concentrated around public transit. Smart Growth has been embraced by rich and poor, Republican (16) and Democrat, (17) land developers and the environmental community. It is based on the recognition that sprawl can no longer deliver either affordable or accessible housing without terrible traffic congestion and that cities failing to adopt Smart Growth systems will miss out on economic development and the sought-for opportunities that come with growth. (18) Smart Growth also embraces policies that target infrastructure subsidies to designated growth areas (19) and that direct government investments to advance its goals, such as a preference for infill development and renovation and revitalization of schools and neighborhoods over new development on the suburban periphery. (20) Indeed, one reason for the overwhelming support expressed for Smart Growth is that while some have a vision of hyper-regulated Portland with transit-oriented development, urban revitalization, and urban growth boundaries, (21) most base their support on the image of the more modest Maryland policies, which merely target infrastructure subsidies to areas planned for growth. (22) Maryland's alternative to Portland's urban growth boundaries is the establishment of urban service districts that simply limit public delivery and public subsidy of services rather than impose direct restraint on growth and development. The Maryland Smart Growth program represents a statewide program of urban service boundaries, which may encourage a smarter form of growth, but unlike the Portland model, leaves the landowner free to pursue land development throughout the region where the internalizing of infrastructure costs projects a profit. (23)

Smart Growth has its critics. The libertarian critique argues for the deregulation of land development. (24) Both the libertarian and the social equity critics charge that restrictions on urban sprawl or development will adversely affect housing supply and affordability. (25) The social equity critique also shares a distrust of government, (26) namely that Smart Growth is simply an attractive technique to exclude by the suburban NIMBY ("not in my backyard") crowd. (27) A structural critique charges that the doctrine of Smart Growth, once established, serves as an unfunded mandate, as many communities lack the resources to achieve intelligent growth. (28) The legalistic critique points to rather vague arguments that development regulation violates certain constitutional norms. (29) Nevertheless, a wide array of legal scholars finds the legal jurisprudence to embrace even the most comprehensive form of Smart Growth. (30) The environmental critique argues that the weaker Maryland form of infrastructure targeting and resource protection is insufficient to protect sensitive ecological resources, (31) and that even in the relatively more rigid Portland style of Smart Growth, regulation is still too relaxed to achieve Smart Growth (32) or sustainability. (33) Smart Growth may mask the problem of unsustainable consumption and overpopulation. (34) Advocates both of Portland style regulation and Maryland urban service districts posit that a modest increase in residential density will generate vastly more livable and environmentally protected communities. Further, the environmental critique holds that for urban design to be sustainable, densities must greatly exceed single family homes on quarter-acre lots. Density must allow mass transit alternatives to the automobile and the opportunity for walking and neighborhood destinations. As Timothy Beatley and Richard Collins have stated, albeit in addressing the modest Maryland version of Smart Growth in contrast to current development patterns: "The result will not be terrifically different than the prevailing similar growth patterns. Funneling growth into areas defined as having densities of 3.5 units per acre does not exactly reassure us that we are in a city-building mode." (35) This criticism is well-taken and thus many would resist labeling detached houses on quarter-acre lots (7 or 8 to the hectare) as Smart Growth.

The next section of this article will describe the related progressive planning...