APA Researchers Stuart Meck, FAICP, and Marya Morris, AICP, briefed the 36-member Michigan Land Use Leadership Council on state planning statute reform initiatives at the council's second formal meeting in Lansing, Michigan, April 14, 2003.

Click here for Associated Press coverage in The Detroit Free Press.

Dave Downey, executive director of the Michigan Society of Planning, the APA state chapter, accompanied the pair.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm established the Land Use Leadership Council, which consists of public and private sector representatives as well as state agency heads, in February. She charged the council with addressing the trends, causes, and consequences of unmanaged growth and development in Michigan. The council is to provide recommendations to the governor and the legislature designed to minimize the impact of current land use trends on Michigan's environment and economy. Former Governor William Milliken and former Attorney General Frank Kelley co-chair the group.

Click here for the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council website.

Meck began by reviewing U.S. Census data on housing density trends throughout the U.S. and in Michigan. He noted that over the past several decades, metropolitan and urbanized areas had "flattened out," and that Michigan was part of this trend.

Meck traced the evolution of planning statute reform through four periods:

1. A period from the 1920s to the 1960s when most states used the U.S. Department of Commerce's Standard City Planning and Zoning Enabling Acts to guide growth, largely with a local and an urban emphasis.
2. The "Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control" period beginning in the mid- to late 1960s when several states enacted special-purpose legislation protecting broad state interests involving environmentally sensitive areas and ensuring affordable housing.
3. The growth management movement, which also began in the 1970s, in which local governments and later states addressed not only the location and character of development, but also its timing and servicing by public facilities
4. The "smart growth era" which began in the 1990s, and which is concerned with compact, mixed-use development, farmland preservation to some degree, and state incentives to local governments.

Morris described state programs from Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Tennessee, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Florida. She identified "turnkey" issues — preservation of agriculture, intergovernmental coordination, urban sprawl, traffic congestion — that attracted the attention of the governor or legislature or both in pushing for changes at the state level.

She told the Michigan council members that all of the programs involved the state in setting goals, either in map or in text form, to guide program administration, beef up planning requirements for local governments, and provide state money to assist local governments in carrying out new mandates.

Meck digested the chief elements of APA's Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook, which contains a new generation of model planning and zoning enabling legislation, and explained to council members how to use the checklists and scenarios in the accompanying User Manual to work through issues facing Michigan.

Click here for more on the Legislative Guidebook and User Manual, including free downloads of both documents.

Former Gov. Milliken held up the User Manual, referring to it as "The Bible," and urged council members to become familiar with it.

Council members quizzed the two researchers extensively on issues addressed in the Guidebook, including the impact of urban growth areas in Oregon on housing and land prices, on planning for affordable housing, and on dealing with the costs of new state mandates.

Meck noted that Michigan had established a number of task forces and commissions on land use issues over the past decade. The council needs to evaluate the recommendations contained in those reports of those groups to save time.

He advised the council to "fix what's broken" and "address fundamentals" before moving on to more complex topics. He also stressed the importance of pinpointing specific state interests in land use issues to help in the design of new initiatives.