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APA Letters Answer Editorial Criticism A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed column took on a number of groups — including APA — for opposition to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Also recently, a columnist in The Detroit News criticized smart growth proponents, using Portland, Oregon, as his example. APA sent letters to the editors of both papers, explaining the organization's position on RLUIPA and laying out some pertinent statistics about Portland. Following are excerpts from the original copyrighted columns and APA's responses. From an op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal: January 22, 2003 By Patrick Korten For decades, a quiet but disturbing trend has been picking up steam in communities throughout America. Churches and other religious institutions, once a welcome part of virtually every neighborhood, have become for many city officials something akin to second-hand smoke. At the urging of groups like the National League of Cities, the American Planning Association, and the International Municipal Lawyers Association, many local zoning ordinances have morphed into instruments for sharply restricting, or even excluding altogether, new churches, synagogues or mosques. ... We've come a long way from the days in early America when communities were designed around the church on the town square. Ensuring that the law survives the court challenges is the first step toward letting religious institutions reclaim their rightful place in American society. APA's Letter to the Editor response from Executive Director Paul Farmer: January 23, 2003 Just what we need: another conspiracy theory! Patrick Korten, spokesman for the D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, imagines a vast conspiracy throughout American communities to exclude churches and religious institutions. And, like many conspiracy theorists, he gets his facts wrong. The American Planning Association's (APA) opposition to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) advances the right of citizens in a democratic society to voice legitimate concerns about the expansion of Wal-Mart–sized megachurches in their neighborhoods. When the 7,000-member Victory Christian Center in Warr Acres, Oklahoma, sought to expand its sanctuary to 102,000 square feet, residents were right to raise questions about adequate parking, increased traffic, and the safety of their children. These residents fill their churches, synagogues, and mosques, and don't see a conflict between the practice of religious freedom and the livability of their communities. Neither does APA. Korten pines for the days of early American communities, forgetting that it was those same colonial communities that established local governments as the principal stewards of land resources through the adoption of land-use codes that benefit the entire community. The challenge for local governments is to balance the competing interests of religious institutions and their neighbors. With small facilities, it's easier and with large facilities, more difficult. As with most aspects of democracy, this balancing act is not easy. Still, it is the government closest to the people affected that is best suited to resolve these conflicts. That is why APA opposed the intrusion of the federal government through RLUIPA. Instead of locally-driven solutions, it creates a federally mandated exemption to local land-use laws for religious institutions. The result is a reluctance to pursue dialogue and a rush to litigation in federal courts. No one wins under RLUIPA but the lawyers (and, not inconsequentially, the Becket Fund). The solution is not expensive lawsuits initiated by special interest groups, but using the local democratic process to foster compromises like those in Warr Acres. Planning commissioners there brought the church and its neighbors together to agree to common-sense solutions such as building a fence around the church parking lot, ensuring that parking entrances and exits were consistent with the local land-use plan, and placing protective shields on light fixtures. In Warr Acres, as in most American communities, they don't need Washington to find their solutions. W. Paul Farmer, AICP
Excerpts from a Detroit News column: January 18, 2003 Sprawl debate focuses on whether to close the frontier By George Cantor When I was in school, we were taught the American frontier was formally declared closed in 1893 when historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered a famous paper on the subject. But I'm starting to think Turner was about 110 years too soon. It is only now that we are really seeing it end. The frontier always existed more as an idea than a reality. It became part of what America meant, the sense that if you didn't like it here, you could always move farther out in whatever conveyance you chose to get there. But now we are being told we can't go there anymore because that is sprawl. We can't drive there in a sport-utility vehicle because that is wasteful and unpatriotic. ... Like the old New England theocracies, the advocates of these campaigns are not shy about using legal coercion to restrict choice in these matters. Underneath the rhetoric, that is really what smart growth is all about. Because the environmental movement has determined that there is now a crisis situation in suburban growth, it is imperative to restrict it by law. They do not like it, however, when it is pointed out that such restrictions, inevitably, will raise the price of housing for everyone and make it impossible for many middle-income families to afford their own homes. ... People choose where they live for good reasons. More house for the price. Bigger lots. Security. Developers did not attach huge magnets to the trees of Livingston County to drag unwilling buyers out there against their wills. But the environmental lobby has decided we can't be trusted to make such decisions on our own. They would rather shut the gates to the frontier for good. APA's Letter to the Editor response from Policy Director Jeff Soule: January 23, 2003 George Cantor's recent editorial ("Sprawl debate …" January 18, 2003) reads like a eulogy for the suburban frontier. Using distorted data and a bewildering nostalgia for Manifest Destiny, he asserts that smart growth is about restricting choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. What smart growth is really about is citizens realizing that they share in the future of their communities, that their economic and social development rests in their cooperation with each other, that no man is an island. Cantor's main argument for his vision of the American Dream — larger houses on bigger lots in gated, suburban developments — is that attempts to limit sprawl increase housing prices. His evidence? Look at Portland, Oregon, where they adopted aggressive anti-sprawl efforts and housing costs have risen dramatically. Cantor doesn't say where he gets his numbers. Nevertheless, they are wrong. Arthur Nelson of the Lincoln Land Institute contrasted the experience of Portland, which has engaged urban sprawl head on, and Atlanta, which ignored the issue. He found that the federal government's own data showed clearly that Atlanta's shift to bigger houses on larger lots was the cause of the area's recent crisis in affordable housing. But there's more. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s when both cities experienced about the same population growth, Portland's income grew by 12 percentage points over Atlanta's. Property taxes dropped 29 percent in Portland and rose 22 percent in Atlanta. Air pollution dropped 86 percent in Portland while climbing 5 percent in Atlanta. Finally, neighborhood quality, measured by an amalgam of indicators, improved by 19 percent in Portland while declining 11 percent in Atlanta. When Livingston County residents choose smart growth over sprawl, maybe their choice isn't so dumb after all. Jeff Soule, FAICP
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