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Managing growth
A better, cleaner, healthier, less costly future for Virginia requires fundamental changes in how it grows
Date published: 1/14/2008
WHEN it comes to develop- ment in Virginia, business as usual isn't working. Over the past generation or two, that's given us clogged roads, strip-mall blight, smoggy skies, sprawl, crowded schools, and localities that can't finance the demands of their residents.
We need to do better. For starters, we should promote more compact development. This would halve traffic congestion, cut gasoline consumption by almost 30 percent, trim the cost of transportation improvements, and reduce developed acreage from 45 percent to 35 percent--while allowing the same increase in jobs and population, according to a study of growth scenarios in Louisa, Albemarle, Greene, and Fluvanna counties by the Charlottesville-area planning district.
That idea is just one of many offered in the new report that every state legislator should read: "New Directions: Land Use, Transportation and Climate Change in Virginia," published by the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. (Grab your own copy at SouthernEnvironment.org.)
The 36-page report establishes the links between land development, increases in driving and fuel consumption, and the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions. It also reinforces the case that land-use and transportation issues are inextricably intertwined, and must be treated as such by policymakers. That won't happen unless citizens keep pushing them to do so.
The stakes are huge. Unless policies change, Virginia will develop more land in the next 40 years than it has in the last 400 years, the center calculates. By 2030, the state will add the equivalent of another Northern Virginia--nearly 3 million more people and more than a million homes. But if those homes are provided in the same haphazard way they have been in recent decades, the growth will ruin much of what Virginians hold most dear about their commonwealth.
The SELC's "New Directions" report is full of ideas that would help accomplish those ends. It suggests that the state and its localities:
Promote more compact neighborhoods and mixed-use town centers that provide alternatives to solo driving and include affordable housing.
Revitalize existing communities.
Provide more transportation choices, with funding for transit, rail, walking, and bicycling paths, and improved street networks.
Protect rural and natural areas, and encourage farming and forestry.
Encourage cleaner vehicles and cleaner fuels.
There's a lot to do and the future is racing toward us. For the sake of Virginia, it's time to re-think growth.
Date published: 1/14/2008
Most recent reader comments:
Ironic
(posted by
CraigBuck
, Jan. 14, 2008 9:59 am)
How ironic . For the last forty years we have been trying to "manage growth" and it has led to the present mess. Now, they call for more "management." Tree-huggers, anti-road builders, not-in-my-backyard NIMBYs, and local governments have done everything they can to stifle development, When a good idea, like Tricord's New Post comes along, they have a million reasons to say, "No." "Managed growth" has been an oxymoron. We could not have done worse if government had kept its hands off.
Almost anyone with a home computer
(posted by
Tamerlane
, Jan. 14, 2008 6:10 am)
who works for the Feds should be allowed to work from hom home when applicable. And, that includes cotractors. The Feds are always yelling about air pollution and gas consumption, so WAKE UP! Local govs should lobby the Feds to locate and relocate more activities in the hinterlands and contractors and Feds would have a much more effective work force if satellite activities were decentralized. Everyone can have tele- and video-conference, web connection, etc.
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