SOLVING SPRAWL, PART 3

TEN PRINCIPLES FOR SMART GROWTH ON
THE SUBURBAN FRINGE: SOLVING SPRAWL

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) published Ten Principles for Smart Growth on the Suburban Fringe to outline clear, attainable methods for solving the sprawl riddle while building the best urbanism possible.

Robert Lang, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was part of the research team for the Ten Principles publication when he was director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. He said suburbia needs to focus on smart growth principles such as building compact multifamily subdivisions that conserve land.

“When preserving greenspace, it must be integrated into an overall plan. Much of suburbia’s green areas are chopped up in pieces and don’t really add up to a habitat,” he said. “Typical exurbia is comprised of multifamily homes adjacent to retail and separated by a pedestrian-unfriendly fence or large lot single family homes built chock-a-block.”

Lang said a conventional subdivision built without using smart growth principles typically has very limited connectivity that abuts retail and is often separated by a wall.

He noted the irony that a resident in a subdivision house closest to retail actually has the farthest trip because he must wind through the subdivision to reach way out and over to it.

“Without smart growth principles, the cycle is cheap – developers come in and build chock-a-block and conservation principles are not used. It’s not an enduring form,” he said.

Michael Pawlukiewicz, when he was ULI’s Director of Environment & Policy Education, directed the team that compiled the report.

Pawlukiewicz said local land use policy must have a vision for an appropriate and sustainable future and then organize policies, codes and regulations to make it easy and profitable for the private sector to implement that vision.

“Everybody blames developers for sprawl and while they are not without fault, most of what they develop is in keeping with public zoning codes and land use regulations,” Pawlukiewicz said.

“In most suburbs, sprawl is easy and profitable to build. Local governments are mostly responsible for regulating land use. Their policies make it difficult to build mixed use communities or use better urban design practices like putting buildings close to the street or to narrow the streets to make them safer for pedestrians.:

"The codes and regulations must be changed so that it is easy and profitable to do the right thing, the smart thing. The sprawl that we see in the U.S. is, in fact, the implementation of public policy.”