Everybody wants protection from unbridled growth,but so few are willing to adopt the necessary principles

Seeds to grow
Everybody wants protection from unbridled growth,but so few are willing to
adopt the necessary principles
By Tim Davis
for Headwaters News (www.headwaters.org)

I spend a lot of time asking people in Montana – Republicans and Democrats,
businesswomen and builders, waiters and environmentalists – what they want
their slice of the West to look like in 20 years.

They almost always talk about open space and clean water, vibrant towns and
lack of traffic, and the like. People never say they want more strip malls.
They don't say they hope Montana in 2020 will look like California or
Colorado today. They don't ask for subdivisions to carpet our valleys.

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We haven't learned how to mesh the legitimately competing desires (and
fears) of enough Montanans to make smart growth happen.

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And yet that is just what we are getting. Why, if so few of us want this,
are we building it anyway? Why aren't we embracing smart growth?

Partly, this is because smart growth is hard for people to grasp, even if
they know it when they see it: It's those older, walkable, and marketable
neighborhoods with tree-lined streets, front porches, and affordable homes
that are a short hop from thriving downtowns with hardware stores, coffee
shops, offices, and lots of people mingling and interacting.

The other side of smart growth is the open spaces and working farms and
ranches just outside town, and those undisturbed floodplains, ridge lines,
and streamsides. In other words, smart growth is exactly what most people
say they want and come to the West for.

But the wasteful sprawling development that we have seen so much of in the
past 15 years isn't due only to a lack of understanding of smart growth and
the tools necessary to make it a reality. Another problem is that we have
skewed our state and local infrastructure investments and development permit
systems in a way that actively promotes and subsidizes sprawling
development.

One reason is that we haven't learned how to mesh the legitimately competing
desires (and fears) of enough Montanans to make smart growth happen.

To create the future most Montanans and Westerners want, we need to know how
different people in what remains of the undeveloped West see growth. The
following are admittedly gross generalizations, but they're also broadly
true.

The rancher: He's concerned the regulations needed to implement smart growth
will limit his ability to sell his land for development in the future. But
he also resents the encroachment of subdivisions that threaten his operation
and the rural life he loves.

The city dweller: She enjoys being close to her kids' schools, to the store,
and to work, so she doesn't have to spend all her precious free time as a
taxi driver. But she also worries about how the new apartment building
proposed down the street will impact her property values.

The home builder: He works on a thin profit margin from house to house. The
more expensive the house, the higher the profit. So he's glad to build
McMansions outside town. He recognizes sprawl makes the town less
attractive, traffic has gotten worse, and his hunting grounds have been
fragmented by ranchettes. But he figures that is the price of progress.

The new rural resident: She loves the quiet of her few acres. But she
worries about new subdivisions proposed nearby, and about growing traffic,
worsening roads, and the threat of new septic systems to her drinking
water -- as well as the added taxes needed to fix such problems.

The conservationist: He supports smart growth because it will protect
wildlife habitat, river corridors, water quality, and open space. But he
often forgets we need to ensure that all Montanans can find an attractive
and affordable home in town.

The low-income mom: Single mothers or low-income families worry most about
paying the bills. Their need for affordable rent forces them to live in a
poorly built and unattractive home, often on the edge of town, which means
they drive a lot. The cost of maintaining the car isn't cheap, and the
constant driving is a hassle.

The Realtor: He appreciates the open lands and small-town life that make
living and buying a home in Montana so attractive. But he doesn't want to
support the measures that protect those amenities and property values over
the long term because he fears they'll limit his short-term income.
There is some validity in all of these hopes and fears. The trick is how to
address enough of them so that a majority of us see smart growth as in our
best interest. Let me address the concerns of each of these people one at a
time.

The rancher:

Most farmers and ranchers already know that one of the only ways to ensure
an adequate land base of working lands is zoning. But many don't know that
you can zone working lands to protect them and either allow small parts of
those lands to be developed or to sell their development rights.

What if counties helped farmers and ranchers by halting development from
eating up most of the best lands while also helping them develop small
portions of farm and ranch (mostly the less productive lands) to be used for
cluster development?

Put another way, if you've got 200 acres of farmland, you could put 20
houses on 10-acre lots and be forced to quit farming while ensuring that the
land will never be used for farming again, or you could put 20 or more
houses on 10 acres and still farm most of the remaining 190 acres.

When designed correctly, these types of developments will make the farmers
and ranchers more money than simply selling or developing all their land
because people are willing to pay a premium for the open space that is the
remaining farmland. It's win-win.

The city dweller:

For smart growth to work, most people need to live in town. But people in
cities sometimes get nervous when, say, apartments go up down the street.
There are two ways to address such fears.

One is to explain how bringing more people to town protects city dwellers.
This is because when people move out of town, in-town schools shut down,
in-town traffic gets worse, open space is lost, and vibrant downtowns
deteriorate as strip malls rise.

Second, we need to show that new development can protect urbanites' property
values. Cities can do this by working with neighborhoods to pass design
standards that ensure that new development looks like the older parts of
town that people cherish.

The home builder:

Cities can do a hundred things to make building in town attractive but most
cities in Montana haven't done everything they can.

We need to make our zoning and building codes simple and predictable, and we
need to level the playing field by making sure that everyone builds to the
same standards, whether you are inside the city boundary or just outside.

Cities and counties need to work together to help with the cost of providing
city services including streets, sewer and water for affordable homes inside
and immediately adjacent to our cities.

We also need to streamline the permit process for building smart growth so
that it takes less time and costs less to build. And cities must convince
the Legislature to direct funding away from building bigger roads that are a
gigantic subsidy to sprawl and instead address the existing transportation
needs of our towns.

The new rural resident:

Most people in the country want to keep their area lightly developed --
that's why they moved there. Some people call this a "pull up the
drawbridge" or "I've got mine" mentality. Perhaps it is.

But it's also an important source of support for smart growth. We need to
show rural residents how they can protect the lifestyle that they moved
there for, either by working with their county commission to adopt zoning or
by creating their own, citizen-initiated zoning district. Without zoning,
rural residents have no say in how their areas will grow.

The conservationist:

Conservationists need to continue to work with fishermen, hunters and
average Montanans to explain the threat that out-of-control sprawl poses to
fish, wildlife, family farming and ranching, and the quality of our drinking
water, while actively helping cities and counties implement plans to
accommodate growth as efficiently, attractively and affordably as possible
into our existing cities and towns.

The low-income family:

We urgently need to convince cities and counties to identify areas inside
and immediately adjacent to existing cities where small lots will be
encouraged.

Small lots do not mean "low-income ghettos." Rather, mixing small-lot
developments with a variety of housing types creates areas just like the
historic neighborhoods in and around our downtowns.

These neighborhoods have big and small houses, apartments and townhouses,
all mixed together -- and all on modest, town-sized lots. When we build this
way, attractive homes that sell for $70,000 can sit next to attractive homes
that sell for $170,000, and taxes can be less because streets, sewers and
water lines are all shorter.

To achieve this, cities need to give all the incentives and streamlining
that I mentioned for the builders, above.

The Realtor:

The arguments for Realtors are mostly the same as for the builders. We need
to show them smart growth is not no-growth, that there's a lot of money to
be made, and that in the long term, we'll protect the things that make
Montana real estate so desirable (and profitable).

These marketable amenities will become ever more important as more and more
places in the West refuse to make smart growth a reality and we take the
steps necessary to make it a reality here.

Obviously, this will take a lot of education and organizing. A farsighted
governor and Legislature will have to redirect growth subsidies. Wise county
commissioners and city councilors will have to reform local zoning and
building regulations.

It's a tall order, but by not doing it we guarantee the Californication of
our part of the West. Do we have any other choice?

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Tim Davis is the executive director of the Montana Smart Growth Coalition.