There's a conference going on now looking at Maryland's 10-year-old Smart Growth law and policy and how effective they've been at curtailing suburban sprawl.  (The short answer: Not a lot, but it's hard to tell for sure). You can read here the article I wrote about it in the Sun.

The opening day was devoted to looking back to see how the law turned out as it did.  Former Gov. Parris N. Glendening recounted how legislative leaders held up the Smart Growth bill, at the behest of county officials fearful of losing their control over land use.  Glendening  said he had to threaten to withhold the state supplemental budget - containng funds for projects which many lawmakers desperately wanted - to get them to vote on it.  Glendening explained that he was driven to attack sprawl by his passion for the environment, and for ensuring a healthy Chesapeake Bay.

Former Sun environmental writer Tom Horton also played a role, it seems, in the law's passage.  Dru Schmidt-Perkins, executive director of the anti-sprawl group 1000 Friends of Maryland, recalled that Tom wrote a column urging readers to call the House leadership and tell them to stop sitting on this badly needed legislation.  He included their phone numbers, too, and the telephones in the State House rang off the hook. The legislators were miffed, but they acted. 

I called Tom to tell him how he got credit for helping pass Smart Growth. Too bad it didn't work, he replied.

The track record is mixed.  The conference, organized by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, includes presentations of studies and reports looking at what, if any, impact the policy Glendening launched in 1997 has had on housing availability and affordability, on farmland preservation and on the Chesapeake Bay, among other things. 

One of the papers even keys in on a story I wrote last year pointing out how state efforts to limit nutrient pollution fouling the bay from wastewater treatment plants may actually work against Smart Growth, which favors more compact development connected to public utilities.

For more on the conference, and to read many of the papers, go here to the Resources for the Future Web site. RFF is a cosponsor.