The Commissioner — Summer 2000

Bringing Smart Growth to Your Community

Smart growth encourages the location of stores, offices, residences, schools, and related public facilities within walking distance of each other in compact neighborhoods.

By Stuart Meck, FAICP

Smart growth-the term is everywhere! Since 1997, when Maryland enacted its "smart growth" law that directs state growth-related expenditures into locally designated compact growth areas, the concept of smart growth has spread like wildfire. No respectable planning conference today would be complete without a few sessions and workshops on the topic.

But what does it mean, and how can local government officials, especially planning commissioners, apply it? At APA, we define smart growth as a collection of planning, regulatory, and development practices that use land resources more efficiently through compact building forms, infill development, and moderation in street and parking standards. One of its purposes is to reduce the outward spread of urbanization, protect sensitive lands, and, in the process, create true neighborhoods with a sense of community.

Smart growth encourages the location of stores, offices, residences, schools, and related public facilities within walking distance of each other in compact neighborhoods. It aims at providing a variety of housing choices so that young and old, single persons and families, and those of varying economic ability may find places to live.

In smart growth communities, there are transportation options-walking, cycling, and transit, as attractive alternatives to driving. Land use and development are integrated with transit. Infrastructure and development decisions are connected to minimize future costs. To encourage developers to apply smart growth techniques, local governments revamp their development review processes to upgrade their efficiency and predictability and to aid, rather than punish, innovative design.

To get on the smart growth path, begin by looking at land-use, public facilities, and transportation patterns and trends in your community, and the implications those changes pose for comprehensive planning. For example, is the community using up more land per household as population grows? Is the amount of publicly owned open space dropping, in terms of acres per capita? Are environmentally sensitive lands being paved over? Are vacant, close-in sites that are served with public facilities being passed over for development in favor of lands on the community's outskirts?

At the same time, does the local government find it difficult to construct public facilities on time and where they are needed? Are employers saying it is difficult for their workers to find affordable housing in the community? Is there a range of transportation options available for residents and employees, or is the only way around, and in and out of the community by automobile? Start to think about strategies that alter those patterns and trends.

First Steps: Revising Zoning and Subdivision Regulations

There are some relatively simple ways you can tinker with your zoning and subdivision regulations to achieve smart growth results.

• Reduce right-of-way requirements for residential streets. Look closely at how much street you really need (and whether your community wants to pay for its eventual resurfacing). Then slim down the right-of-way requirements to provide for "skinny streets," using less land and pavement, so that the area in front of new homes doesn't look like a big parking lot.
• Allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs). ADUs, often known as "granny flats," can provide a supply of additional housing, especially for elderly relatives, in built-up areas.
• Encourage more efficient use of parking areas. Examine how much parking users really need as opposed to what the zoning ordinance says they need. Set parking ratio maximums and allow shared parking.
• Loosen up on home occupation requirements, if you haven't already. As a practical matter, telecommuting and home offices are becoming a way of life and local zoning codes should reflect, rather than deny, that reality.

More Advanced Steps: Changes in Planning Policy

More advanced approaches will involve major changes in planning policy for your community, which, over time, will hopefully change development patterns.

• If it is not already, get your community served with public transit.
• Identify transit stops and make certain people can walk or ride to them from their neighborhoods on connecting sidewalks and bikeways. Nothing is more frustrating than having to climb through drainage swales or soggy front yards to stand and wait for a bus. If neighborhoods don't have sidewalks, or sidewalks are in poor condition, see that your local government embarks on a program of sidewalk construction and repair. Require all new subdivisions to have sidewalks. Don't waive the requirement for the developer, because it's harder and more expensive to install them later.
• Encourage more intensive development along transit corridors and around transit stops to support a built-in market for mass transit. For example, it's great to get off a commuter train and pick up your children at a nearby day care center, or stop by a convenience store to pick up milk and bread.
• Reexamine the mix of housing options available in your community to determine whether there is sufficient housing, both sale and rental, for different family types and persons and families of diverse incomes. This is especially important in communities that have substantial daytime employment where the workers can't access the local housing market. Forcing employees to undergo long commutes when the community has an insufficient mix of housing creates traffic congestion and is just unfair because it forces the problem on other communities.
• Moreover, it's important to provide housing options so existing residents can age in place with dignity, ensuring that, for example, elderly residents don't have to pull up roots when they can no longer manage large single-family homes. Evaluate lot sizes for residential uses. Change lot area requirements or add new types of districts or residences to accommodate the regional need for housing, including employees of local businesses. Make certain there is adequate buildable land that is properly zoned and served with water and sewer.
• Set minimum densities in residential districts to prevent underbuilding and sprawling, large-lot development, ensuring more compact development forms.
• Authorize small lot infill development under specified conditions by revising setback requirements and lot widths. Make certain that the resulting development is compatible with, and does not overwhelm, the affected neighborhood.
• Allow mixed use development so that residents can be closer to the commercial uses they need on a daily basis. Return to the old practice of allowing residences above stores.
• Set up a system in commercial and residential areas that gives intensity and density bonuses for construction of affordable housing, quality architectural design, and provision of dedicated open space, such as parks and plazas.
• Protect environmentally sensitive areas. If you have wetlands or areas that serve as critical habitats, don't allow them to be built upon. They are a resource, not a commodity. Use cluster development concepts and transfer of development rights to shift development to nonsensitive sites, or parts of sites, that can accommodate it.
• Consider adopting traditional neighborhood development (TND) design guidelines for new development, especially for planned unit developments. TND tries to draw on design approaches used in early American towns and villages: a generally rectilinear or grid pattern of interconnecting streets and blocks that encourages multiple routes from origins to destinations; zero or minimal setbacks to orient public and private buildings toward streets; well-configured squares, greens, landscaped streets, and parks woven into the pattern of the neighborhood; an identifiable neighborhood center; and buildings and public spaces that act as landmarks.

Other Steps: Revising Your Development Review Process

The development review process in your community may be sending mixed signals about smart growth. The local comprehensive plan may be full of idealistic statements about the community's vision for itself, but getting a permit may be like running a gauntlet.

• Examine the development review process to streamline permit processing. For example, see how long it really takes to get a permit to build, from start to finish. Make certain information on permit processing to applicants is clear and accurate and staff reviews are consistent and sound.
• Establish time limits for various parts of the review process. Introduce a completeness review step to let applicants know if they've submitted the right information to act on a permit. Eliminate multiple sequential reviews and layered decisions by boards and commissions that telescope the review process.
• Provide for a permit coordinator who handles complex projects so that developers of projects that the local government wants can be helped through fast-tracking rather than hindered.
• Create a hearing examiner position to replace the board of zoning appeals if the board is overwhelmed by applications and decisions take much too long, or if the board just isn't doing a good job.
• Periodically review your zoning and subdivision regulations from top to bottom to ensure that they are consistent with your community's comprehensive plan and state laws and are readable and well-organized.

Stuart Meck is the principal investigator for APA's Growing Smart project, a multiyear effort by APA to draft the next generation of model planning and zoning enabling legislation for the U.S.