Growth Management

1
Growth Management

• Social Change
• Cost of Sprawl
• State Federal Funds
• Habitat Restoration

2
Social Change

• 1900s
• Ethnic communities built around work places.
• Implicit standards of moral conduct
• 1950s
• Interstate highways allow access to rural areas
• HUD offers low interest 1st time home loans
• Home building becomes standardized into suburban
  developments
• Infrastructure provided (sewer, water, roads)

3
Social Change

• 1960s Baby boomers want better life
• Bigger house, larger lots
• Demand better schools infrastructure
• Financial Gentrification
• Expendable income centers, DINKS/YUPPIES
• Industry incentives to move
• pollution control costs
• land costs
• tax incentives

4
Changing Landscapes

• Corporate farming reduces competition
• Small farms become unprofitable, FarmAid
• Developers force sell-outs of cheap land
• Exurbia develops (homes on rural fringe)
• Commercial development follows
• Municipality enjoys quick growth
• then increased infrastructure costs
• schools, sewers, water, roads, traffic congestion

5
Urban Vacuum

• Urban areas suffer loss of tax base
• lost industry jobs
• lost residents with expendable income
• lost commercial business, malls in the burbs
• Infrastructure maintenance costs increase from
  aging and environmental clean up
• Declining services schools cause additional
  movement out of urban area
• Poorer people left with fewer opportunities

6
The Cycle of Sprawl

• Exponential growth in Exurbia
• becomes suburbanized
• strip malls mega malls develop
• access is strictly by car
• traffic congestion causes expansion of roads
• more roads allows more access
• more infrastructure costs
• Municipal Costs exceed Benefits
• Residents move further out to Exurbia

7
STOP !!!

• Factors
• cheap land
• motorized access
• users dont pay their fare share of
  infrastructure costs
• Funnel PUBLIC money to where the PUBLIC will
  benefit
• Environmental Cost lost open space

8
State Funds

• Smart Growth
• Protect sensitive areas and open space
• Concentrate development in suitable areas
• Direct growth to existing population centers
• Priority Funding Areas
• efficient effective use of tax money
• avoid higher taxes to fund infrastructure
• reduce sprawl

9
Priority Funding Area Criteria

• Employment is the Principal use
• Existing communities
• Served by water sewer
• Density of 2 lots per acre
• If only water service exists
• cant increase growth capacity
• cant change character of community

10
State Actions

• All State funding for projects will be directed
  to Priority Funding Areas
• County sets PFAs, provides maps to State
• Projects include
• highways, roadways
• sewer water
• economic development assistance
• State offices facilities (new leases)

11
State Programs

• Schools
• Job Creation
• Home owner
• Brownfields
• Rural Legacy

• Refurbish / expand existing facilities before new
  ones are built
• Tax credits to businesses with 25 employees who
  locate in PFAs
• Live near your work program offers up o 4,000
  for morgages
• Reduced clean up standards and 3rd party
  liability
• Conservation easements
• reduce landowner taxes
• preserve open space

12
Federal Funds

• NEPA National Environmental Policy Act
• Must assess (quantify qualify) environmental
  impacts of proposed projects
• Must complete a cost / benefit analysis
• Public hearing process, allows public input
• Must consider multiple alternatives
• Must consider the Null alternative
• do nothing alternative

13
NEPA

• Applies only to projects receiving Federal
• Doesnt require a change in the project
• the preferred alternative
• Ensures Public is aware of how funding is
  directed
• Opens the way for lawsuits by citizens
• Environmental Assessment
• short list of direct indirect impacts
• list of mitigation measures
• cheaper, faster, more efficient, less lawsuits

14
Large Lot, Large Lot

• Nothing wrong with big house yard
• Free to choose lifestyle and castle
• User should pay fair share of capital costs
• From standpoint of sustainability
• too many people, too little land
• Balance needed but not sustainable
• Cistene Chapel, the Louge,
• National Cathedral, Monuments

15
Environmental CostsSprawl is AUTO LAND reliant

• Increases air pollution from cars
• Decreases pollution control for industry
• Increases water runoff water pollution
• Decreases available open space
• Drastically changes habitat
• habitat lost to parking lots and grassy yards
• increased generalist species
• increased edge effects habitat fragmentation

16
Reversing Unsustainable Lifestyles

• NEPA
• Smart Growth
• Local Government

• Environmental impacts and public opinion
  incorporated into Federal decision making
• Tax money directed toward existing communities
  with infrastructure
• Designate Priority Funding Areas for growth
• Offers Citizen Action Influence on the local
  level

17
Urban Restoration

• Stream Restoration
• Riparian Buffer Strips
• Restore meanders and natural vegetated banks in
  streams
• Public education
• fertilizer pesticide use
• storm drain connections with bay
• compost grass clippings

18
Urban Restoration

• Habitat Restoration
• Increase heterogeniety
• Vertical
• various heights of cover, shrubs, trees, canopy
• Horizontal
• clumps of vegetation, patches
• Retain snags, fallen trees, dead standing trees
  limbs, leaf litter, stone piles

19
Urban Wildlife Management

• Increase animal diversity and abundance by
• Cluster active use areas (ball fields, swings)
• Reduce artificial lighting
• Reduce remove exotic species
• Leave meadows instead of mowed fields
• Retain wetlands and stream corridors
• Create Greenways and Wildlife Corridors by
  interconnecting parks and open space
• Reduce edge effects habitat fragmentation

20
Future Growth is up to YOU!

• Expand Rte 301 ???
• Bypass LaPlata ???
• Effects of Wilson Bridge Expansion ???
• New Power Plant Cheap Power
• new commercial or industrial development ???