Bigger Isn’t Better, and Enough is Enough: The Case for Smart Development

Sprawl, once a word primarily limited to the lingo of planners and environmentalists, is now a subject found in mainstream newspapers and magazines. And no wonder: people are tired of living with the results of poorly controlled growth.

Sprawl is poorly planned development that clogs traffic, devours open space, saps community resources and threatens the environment and our quality of life.

Having operated for so long under the assumptions that "growth is good" and that, even if it may sometimes be a bad idea, growth is inevitable anyway, many communities have given up control over their own futures.

It doesn’t have to be this way. For many years, planners, economists, environmentalists and ordinary citizens have been promoting an alternative. Called smart, or sustainable, growth, this is a strategy aimed at creating communities that are prosperous and livable.

Smart development strategies include mixing commercial, office and residential uses, making towns pedestrian-friendly, locating development where infrastructure already exists, and increasing transportation choices.

Smart development can also mean conservation. Curbing residential growth can lesson future costs.

One example: If the homeowners of a $200,000 house pay $4,368 in real estate tax and $437 in personal property tax (two cars, each worth $10,000) while costing the town almost $24,000 to educate their three children per year, then the cost of purchasing that land at fair market value ($80,000 for the lot) would pay for itself in just over four years (without any federal or state grants.) After that it would be saving the town almost $20,000 a year.

For more on smart growth strategies, go to our links page. Especially interesting is National Geographic magazine’s "virtual tour" of a sustainable neighborhood, found on the Sierra Club’s web site, as well as the EPA's smart growth fact sheet and the latest CT metro-regional study by Center Edge.