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Subject: CURBING SPRAWL: TENNESSEE'S SURPRISE BREAKTHROUGH
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NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, October 11, 1998
Copyright 1998 Washington Post Writers Group
CURBING SPRAWL: TENNESSEE'S SURPRISE BREAKTHROUGH
By Neal R. Peirce
Tennessee, a state few expected would have the moxie, has jumped
into the
forefront of American states requiring strong growth management plans of its
cities and counties.
The law, passed just this May, defies conventional political logic.
Tennessee joins a small group of states willing to consider the idea of
curbing a subdivision-hungry homebuilder, putting forests or meadows off-
bounds, or stopping a big box retailer from occupying the cheapest cornfield
his cash can buy.
Especially through the Midwest, the Mid-South, Texas and the
Mountain States,
the very thought of government control on land use has been anathema. The top
growth management states to date have been Oregon and Washington. More modest
growth restraints are in place in Vermont, Maine, Delaware, Minnesota, New
Jersey, Florida, Rhode Island and Georgia.
Two years ago, at the urging of Gov. Parris Glendening, Maryland
passed a
landmark law telling local governments that the state will withhold, or at
least sharply limit, any subsidies for new roads, sewers or schools for
territory outside state-designated "smart growth" areas.
But now Tennessee's gone Maryland one better, with a law not only
discouraging unwise growth but mandating a sophisticated local planning
process to sidetrack sprawling development before it's even proposed.
By mid-2001, each Tennessee city and county will have to agree on
an urban
growth boundary to guide its development for the next 20 years. It will have
to produce a unified design for how the community will develop. It must show
it's encouraging a path of compact and contiguous high-density development
into its planned growth areas -- while protecting valuable agricultural,
forest, recreation, wildlife management areas.
What's more, cities and counties must get together, figure how to
make their
growth patterns dovetail, and agree on joint plans. Where they hit major
disagreements, the law sets up an arbitration process to resolve differences.
The new Tennessee statute is so tough that local governments that
fail to
agree on an approved growth plan will face sudden termination of all their
state subsidies for highways, community development, even tourism.
It sounds like a planner's dream. And it turns out it was. The
Tennessee
Legislature was obliged to create an ad hoc committee to rewrite the state's
annexation laws after the state's supreme court declared a 1997 annexation
statute unconstitutional. Sam Edwards and Bill Terry, leaders of the
Tennessee chapter of the American Planning Association (APA), saw their
opportunity and presented the ad hoc committee with growth management
provisions that would dovetail with annexation reform.
The principle's simple enough: it will be pretty easy for cities to
annex
land within urban growth boundaries. It will be close to impossible if the
territory they want lies outside.
To move the legislation forward, the planners had to develop close
relations
with the ad hoc committee's co-chair, State Sen. Robert Rochelle, and then
line up support from such diverse groups as the Tennessee Farm Bureau, the
Tennessee Association of Counties, the Sierra Club, and at the last minute,
the Tennessee Municipal League. Collectively, these groups were sufficient to
overcome determined resistance from the Tennessee Home Builders.
Even then, the bill almost died when the Tennessee House passed a bill
deleting all the growth management provisions. But the Senate stuck to its
guns and the final version, signed by Gov. Don Sundquist, contains almost all
the growth management provisions. Many of them incorporate language right out
of the APA's legislative guidebook for its national "Growing Smart" project.
There were compromises in the bill to please the Farm Bureau and
soften Home
Builders opposition. Implementation will depend on quality technical
assistance and encouragement from the state capital. But the planners
believe, justifiably, that they've achieved "a great leap forward."
There's a big imponderable emerging from the Tennessee story: Could
it happen
elsewhere? Is there an incipient coalition of urban and farm, municipal and
county forces, beginning to see the light on growth management? And how about
the planners? For decades, they've not been seen as a significant legislative
force. Many APA members, working for local governments, let bad sprawl
development proceed without a murmur of protest.
But for the last several years, stronger leadership and a sense of
vision
have been emerging in the APA. The "Growing Smart" guidelines call
specifically for compact and contiguous growth, mixes of housing for people of
all income groups, and conserving cultural and historical treasures. Polls,
surveys, community visioning processes increasingly support the same
principles. Revulsion with sprawl, a desire for strengthened neighborhoods
and communities, is mounting across America.
So if the planners want what Americans increasingly want, why shouldn't
progressive reforms like Tennessee's (and Maryland's) make it into legislative
agendas in more and more states?
Just maybe, this is a cause whose time has come.
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