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In the News from
the The Columbus Dispatch, OH, 6.17.03 But what makes growth smart depends upon whom you ask. Robert Liberty, who will speak on the topic Wednesday in Columbus, favors development where homes, shops and offices are close together so people can walk to do their shopping and take buses or trains to work. Liberty is a senior adviser with 1,000 Friends of Oregon, which researches growth policy. He thinks communities can grow, developers can make money, homeowners and tenants can have modern housing, local governments can hold down road and sewer costs, and farmers and residents can enjoy plenty of open space. But the reality is not always so idyllic. Just look at the tendril of Columbus between Dublin and Hilliard where developers want to build more than 2,000 homes, creating a closely packed community that reflects many of the ideas Liberty discusses. Where some see smart growth, Hilliard and Dublin officials see a traffic nightmare. To Parris Glendening, "Smart growth is fiscally conservative." Glendening, governor of Maryland from 1995 until January 2003, is credited with minting the term. He backed legislation that denied state funding for highways, schools and sewers in areas that did not fit state and local plans. "We have subsidized sprawl, and then we go back with social services for those we left behind (in the cities)," he said. "We could not devise a worse system if we tried." Growth, he said in Columbus recently, must be coordinated in a way that makes the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars. To David Rusk, smart growth means affordable housing and greater social equity. Rusk, a former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., and an author of books about urban growth, said coordinated planning can spread low-income housing throughout a region, in return for letting developers build more homes per acre. Liberty judges growth patterns by how urban they are and said Columbus is holding its own. With half a million more people expected in the next 20 years, "Columbus as a metro region is in a lot better shape than many places," he said. One sign is that three-fourths of central Ohio growth in the 1990s was urban and suburban, defined in terms of people per square mile. That, he said, compares favorably with Charlotte, N.C., where nearly half the growth was "exurban" -- semi-rural areas that, critics say, extend the sprawl far beyond the suburbs. In contrast, growth in and around Portland, Ore., was 88 percent urban and 9 percent suburban. "But
this is not about Oregon -- this is about Ohio," Liberty said.
"People in central Ohio are going to define it a different
way. People in Columbus need to decide their future." |
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