Smart Growth as Foundation of Wealth, Equity and Justice

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” PLUTARCH

There is no better time than the holidays and the cold season to reflect on what counts as smart these days and to search for a merge of cold material economic arguments (Pottersville) and the much fuzzier ethical and moral arguments of social capital, community and equity (Bedford Falls). This article is not going to pursue whatever parallels there may be between these two visions of a city articulated in "Its a Wonderful Life" and current presidential policies, but is taking a look at what smart growth could and should mean in 2018.

Smart growth became a popular term in the 1990's as a desirable way of planned growth versus the implied "dumb growth" that happens from unplanned development. The emphasis then was on the environment and the massive land consumption that unfettered growth had brought to the United States. People would travel to Holland or Germany and marvel about how it was possible to have such densely populated countries and still have so much unspoiled nature. Smart Growth initially aimed to protect farms and forests and operated with rather simple tools such as Oregon's urban growth boundary around Portland which made the city famous as a place of innovative planning. Baltimore County in Maryland implemented a similar urban, rural demarcation line, a policy which has been quite effective in protecting rural lands for 50 years.

Eventually smart growth proponents pivoted the argument from being strictly environmental to being good for established communities which had bled out to such an extent that their survival was in jeopardy. Incentives to develop near transit or on the brownfields left behind by deceased industries  became as popular as tax credits for historic preservation, Main Street programs, and community legacy programs. A somewhat romantic notion of nature had found a match in a nostalgic view of the old town. Both worked well in a time when people rediscovered their interest in healthy local food, farmers markets and the social component of the public realm. The dual focus on communities and on the environment expanded the notion of smart growth under the umbrella of sustainability.

Over the course of the Center’s history, sustainable development or sustainable communities has begun to replace smart growth as the popular term to describe better and more thoughtfully considered approaches to urban and regional development. Part of this change is semantics and part is substantive. (National Center for Smart Growth, University of Maryland)

In spite of this expansion of the definition, many feel that the term "smart growth" is tired and should be replaced. Organizations such as the 1000 Friends of Oregon, Smart Growth America, the 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania and the 1000 Friends of Maryland or the Maryland based National Center for Smart Growth are not really tired of their mission to protect nature and revitalize older communities, but they realize that the narrative needs an update to stay relevant in today's conditions and keep grant givers and donors interested.

Two current narratives regularly make the front page: The crumbling infrastructure and the growing inequity between rich and poor, especially between whites and people of color. It doesn't take much fantasy to see how smart growth is connected to these red hot topics.

The US has been great in building the infrastructure of and for sprawl (which is commonly considered the antipode of smart growth) but much less great in provisions for how to maintain it. Sprawl is like a bonfire with straw as the fuel, it burns fast and bright but it won't last and won't keep you warm. Across the country communities fell for the quick revenue from new subdivisions on former cornfields which brought a bounty of fees and taxes into the cash strapped coffers. But it doesn't take too long until the comptrollers and treasurers realize that maintaining all the shiny new roads, schools, firehouses and police precinct stations along with the pesky hidden stuff such as water and sewer lines, narrow band cable TV and telephone lines unsuitable to carry the growing flow of data is a task that quickly grows larger than the revenue.  More than anything else sprawl has bankrupted many local governments. Unfortunately, in spite of the many counter movements, sprawl continues to inflict its damage. The current infrastructure misery is only the tip of the iceberg.

Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on. Thurgood Marshall

While the connection to infrastructure is quite obvious, it may be less clear what sprawl or smart growth has to do with equity and social justice, even though this connection is also pretty direct: For decades those with education and mobility have been drawn out of older communities into ever more distant suburban rings, thus depleting cities and towns of their tax base and schools of their students. This exodus has led to a steady decline of America's historic towns and legacy cities.

Opportunity to leave the old cities was by no means equal. For decades education and wealth creation was systematically withheld from residents of color through a refined system of segregation in schools and neighborhoods. The most egregious case was "redlining" (not giving credit to certain neighborhoods) and restrictive covenants that were explicitly race based. That meant that African Americans along with other poor segments of the population where stuck, mostly in the inner cities and older communities of towns and villages where slumlords often fueled the exodus through "blockbusting" which allowed them to obtain property for a depressed value and turn former owner-occupied properties into initially lucrative rental units. How much the combination of these techniques deprived people of color from building wealth is one of the more egregious violations of our national notion of equal opportunity.

For those who could do so, spreading out appeared to achieve better opportunities, until the initially attractive countryside got clogged, congested and robbed of its original promise. Eventually, and after decades of prosperity, the suburban life became stale for the younger generation that had grown up there.

As a consequence, the most mobile segment began to return to cities, while those in search of affordable housing had to go further and further out or stay in the previously redlined neighborhoods where home values remained deeply depressed. Cities which had looked for a long time like places whose time had passed and where only the forgotten lived, now became ever more bifurcated: On the one side shiny new enclaves for the "creative class" and on the other the fallen neighborhoods, which  for the most part, couldn't find a way out of the spirals of decline and continued to decay, entirely bypassed by the urban renaissance. Urban unrest began to raise its head again in Ferguson, St Louis, Oakland and Baltimore. The Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown, the home of Freddie Gray, became a notorious example of America's urban failure the world over.

For a brief moment it became clear that it is not only not ethical but also not smart for any community to leave whole segments of its population out, whether the community is a country, a state or a city. For the forgotten won't remain forgotten long, but soon force themselves into the view of those who think all is well, not only through unrest and smashed storefronts, but also on a daily and more silent basis, as homeless, as unemployed youth, as high school drop outs hanging out at corners, as drug dealers and addicts, as criminals, as ailing with asthma, diabetes and obesity, because there is no access, or there are no means for preventive care, healthy housing or a good education.

As countless letters to the editor in local papers prove, many people see these pathologies as a nuisance that can be avoided by not going into certain parts of cities or not visiting cities at all. But no matter how firmly those letter writers close their eyes, or how far they move, the pathologies will follow them, into inner ring suburbs, into small towns and into the valleys of poverty stricken rural areas. The Fentanyl capital of the US isn't Baltimore, Detroit, Oakland or St Louis, but a county in Ohio followed by Charleston, WV.

“It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous, but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people . . . It is the struggling masses who are the foundation [of this country]; and if the foundation be rotten or insecure, the rest of the structure must eventually crumble.”–VICTORIA WOODHULL, FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 1872 (Inequality.org)

There are many holiday stories about the moral obligation to care for the forgotten and the happiness that comes from doing so. Americans have been admonished to care since the nation has been founded. But today we find ourselves in a place that cherishes the deal more than ever, and which turns every activity into a transaction. Inequality is no longer just a moral crisis but has become an economic crisis of epic proportions, no matter how well the engine may be humming at the moment. The economic cost of including fewer and fewer of our fellow citizens into the system manifests itself not only in the much discussed crumbling infrastructure, but in staggering healthcare costs, exploding costs in education without achieving the desired results, and, for the first time in a century or more, a decline in life expectancy.

That is how smart growth and equity go together. A future of technological advancement could be bright if machines replace dehumanizing labor. But beyond relief and a better life lurks the menace that the human will be left jobless, all too easily replaced by machines and computers, unless people have been trained, educated and nourished to levels that exceed what these machines can do. Artificial intelligence and robots are far from replacing the capacity of the human who was allowed and enabled to flourish and develop. But robots and machines can easily have the "upper hand" if they are too complicated for those who never learned to read and write. With or without robots, no society can afford to let so many human lives and their inherent potential languish in a state far below their potential.

With all the talk about the destruction of the environment, the massive investments needed in infrastructure, and how much the US is lagging behind other developed nations, the most alarming aspect is the extent to which America wastes resources by not investing smartly. Thus this country is also failing our young people, the poor and all those not born into privilege. The mounting cost of this neglect combined with the high cost of continued wastefulness, sprawl and environmental destruction is about to come crushing down on all of us.

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In a slow erosion we have transformed from one of the most upward mobile societies to one where we have one of the highest portions of people stuck in one place. Americans go to church in record numbers, yet the ethos and imperatives of religion have failed to motivate enough people to counteract these trends which are clearly in conflict with the values of any of the major religions.

An appeal to being smart, based on sound economic principles, combined with a reminder that sustainable wealth needs a solid foundation of equity and justice, may be able to do what the appeals to protect the environment or historic places have not accomplished. Our environment, our infrastructure, our youth, our people and our future depend on it.

There is no reason for despair if there is sufficient resolve to be smarter and do better. The path is well illuminated by other nations which have already figured out how to do smart growth.

Happy holidays!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

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