Smart Growth redux: State airing new development plan
With study after study showing that Maryland's Smart Growth laws and policies have been ineffective at curbing sprawl, the O'Malley administration has a new-old remedy: a state development plan.
PlanMaryland, it's called. Drafted by the state Department of Planning, the 188-page document is meant to fulfill a 40-year-old law never acted upon that calls for the creation of a state growth plan.
It was released last month, and state planners are holding a series of "open-house" style forums this spring and summer to get public reaction. The next one is Thursday May 19, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Long Reach High School in Columbia, 6101 Old Dobbin Lane.
With upwards of 5.8 million people living on the state's 6.2 million acres, the population is projected to grow nearly 15 percent over the next 20 years, adding another 900,000 residents.
PlanMaryland doesn't propose any radical changes in direction - it calls for concentrating growth in towns, cities and "rural centers," whatever those are, where infrastructure already exists or is planned. It also calls for preserving environmentally sensitive and rural lands. Its third primary goal is more amorphous - "sustainability", defined as ensuring quality of life while preserving those natural and cultural resources that distinguish Maryland as a place.
The plan proposes a collaborative new planning effort for state and local governments to designate the places where they believe growth should occur and where land should be shielded from development. And it proposes tweaking state policies and funding formulas to better focus government spending on highways, schools and other infrastructure on those areas designated for growth.
It's not clear how this new "place designation" process is going to improve on the failure of state and local governments to invest enough in existing communities so they can accommodate new growth through redevelopment.
Much of the sprawl of the recent past, developers say, has been a byproduct of neighborhood opposition to increased density, or even of local government building bans imposed, because of overcrowded schools and inadequate water and sewer systems. Politicians have been unwilling to raise taxes or fees enough to provide and maintain needed infrastructure in existing communities, and have been all too willing to let developers build instead on farmland, where the roads aren't already jammed and the cows don't vote.
A big part of the problem as well is that there is no agreed-upon, uniform definition of what constitutes "smart" growth. The legal and political battle of recent years over Terrapin Run, the large-scale development proposed in mostly rural Allegany County, illustrates that. While urban living has seen some gains lately, many people have still voted with their feet for less crowded surroundings - though not quite as dramatically as the Bay Bridge walk pictured here.
The recession and real estate slump appear to have resolved the Terrapin Run fight, at least for now. But pressure to grow will return as the economy recovers - though where and how it plays out may be different than in the past, as Baby Boomers age, the state overall becomes racially and ethnically more diverse and more foreign-born immigrants settle in the suburbs.
"PlanMaryland will not immediately resolve issues like local adequate public facilities ordinances that discourage growth in suitable areas, public sentiments against more growth, or the limited public funding available to address the problems we face," the document says.
What it will do, planners say, is give state and local officials a chance to work through their differences on where to spend what funding is available, and to use permitting and regulatory authority as well to guide growth where all agree it should occur.
State planners are seeking feedback through Sept. 1 on their growth plan. There've been two forums held already on the Eastern Shore, and there'll be five more after the Columbia meeting - including two more in the Baltimore area. The next is May 25 at Morgan State University, also at 5-8 p.m., in the university student center, 1700 E. Cold Spring Lane.
To see a full listing of forums. or to learn more about the state growth plan - and to comment on it online - go here.
(Baltimore Sun photos: Top, development in western Howard County, 2006, by David Hobby; above, Bay Bridge walk, 2006, by Jerry Jackson.)
