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Managing growth

January 14, 2008 12:35 am

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.