Photo by Beverly Schlotterbeck
Larry Kallenberger, executive director for Colorado's Department of Local
Affairs, shows a publication of opponents to the state's "Smart Growth
and Development Policy Initiative" during his presentation, May 23.
Two veterans of land use planning headlined Friday morning's general session and provided delegates with lively looks at how two Western states have approached the challenges presented by ballooning populations.
Deborah Howe, associate professor, Urban Studies and Planning, at Portland State University, focused her talk on the much-touted "Oregon Plan," and how growth management should be handled in rural areas.
Often cited as a model for containing urban sprawl, the "Oregon Plan," first drawn up in the early '70s, creates urban growth boundaries around cities. Howe explained that inside the boundary, all "urban density" uses are allowed. Outside the boundary, land is only available for "resource uses."
The concept is simple, almost elegant. But it has its flaws.
First off, "the system captured some very unproductive land," Howe said - land not good for agriculture, or much else. Outside the fertile Willamette Valley, this can't- develop-but-good-for-little-else land had residents in a quandary. "People just didn't get it," she said.
And they still don't, Howe said. The debate about what to do with this land continues. One recent solution has land being defined according to minimum income level. If the land can produce $80,000 a year, then you can build a house on it.
This has led to some mighty odd agricultural uses for unproductive land. "To comply with the agricultural use restriction, California immigrants raise llamas or ostriches, so they can build on the land."
This intake of "in-migrants," as Howe calls them, is leading to profound and troublesome changes for rural counties. "In-migrants can and will change community values."
Unlike residents in the "Old West," where people are dependent on personal relationships for doing business, those of the " 'New West' believe in portable technical expertise; are very comfortable with bureaucracy; and they want to regulate."
The New West residents, Howe said, demand more services, more Wal-Marts. They buy up all the affordable housing and impose restrictions on substandard housing that heretofore served the needs of poorer members in the community.
Despite the growth of strip malls and strains on infrastructure, Howe doesn't believe that traditional growth management techniques will help rural communities.
"I don't believe planners have made a good case for zoning in rural areas." She does however believe there is the need for growth management. At its core should be the notion of community development - a notion that should embrace entrepreneurship, new planning models, design standards and incentives for good development.
Likewise, growth managers also need to develop tools to discourage development. Things as simple as not allowing curb cuts can discourage strip mall development, or only allowing lot sizes that current infrastructure and habitat can support also depresses development.
Two states over and one down, Colorado pursues a different vision than Oregon in its land use planning. Like Oregon in the '70s, Colorado also encountered aggravating growth. And it reacted by "closing for business," said the next session's speaker, Larry Kallenberger, executive director, department of local affairs for the state of Colorado.
And so it stayed, until the election of Gov. Roy Romer in 1986. He opened the state for business and now Colorado is one of the top five fastest growing states, with one of the country's top five economies.
The population growth that business expansion brought led the state to begin devising a "Smart Growth Policy." What the Smart Growth Policy is all about, Kallenberger said, is "balance." It also uses a "bottom-up approach" with the state acting as coordinator and facilitator, but not dictator. (This in spite of the fact that a public opinion poll in 1994 showed that two-thirds of Colorado's residents wanted the state to impose a growth management plan, Kallenberger related. "We decided not to pursue that," he added.)
Instead, Romer convened a Leadership Summit on Smart Growth and Development in January 1995. It was sponsored by the state, Colorado Counties, Inc. and the Colorado Municipal League. More than 1,000 persons participated. From the summit grew the principal of local and regional determination of growth policies. Ten regions were identified (an 11th came along later) and each region was charged with developing "regional visions."
Participants in the first round of regional meetings identified six major issue areas: agriculture, economic vitality and growth, affordable housing, land use and governance, sustainable communities, and transportation/air quality. Task forces were formed to address these six issues. True to the initiative's bottom-up approach, task force membership included one representative from each region, one "expert" and one "blocking agent," someone likely to object to plans that were developed unless their views were heard.
Meetings of the regions and the task forces and a second summit continued over the next several months. When the dust settled, 74 recommendations emerged, dealing with subjects as diverse as tax policy and transportation. These recommendations are now working their way through the system, as Colorado's citizens begin to implement the Smart Growth and Development agenda.
What's the driving philosophy behind all the meetings and planning? It's pretty simple, Kallenberger explained. "People shouldn't have to depend on people sitting hundreds of miles away in a capitol to decide on the future of their lives. They should be able to do it at the local community."
The initiative continues today.