Smart Growth and Regional Carrying Capacity
What follows is a precis of an article called "Smart Growth: The Role of Carrying Capacity in Regional Planning" by Stuart M. Flashman, Ph.D., J.D.
Over the past several years, a new catch phrase has sprung up in the environmental community: “smart growth”. It arose as environmentalists struggled to find an attractive alternative to the low-density auto-oriented development that has become endemic to North American suburban areas. The latter is often popularly referred to as “suburban sprawl”.
What is smart growth? It is an attempt to direct growth into less environmentally damaging avenues. Thus, smart growth favors “infill” development (i.e., development within already urbanized areas) instead of development of previously undeveloped areas (Prairie Valley? - ed). Smart growth tries to minimize the increase in demand for limited resources, such as water, by promoting development that uses less of those resources.
Environmental groups, most notably the Sierra Club, have launched a major campaign in support of smart growth. The basic idea is that North America has been foolishly squandering its environmental resources on an inefficient form of development. The campaign appears to be paying off. Governmental agencies have begun to discuss smart growth as a better way to accommodate expected increases in population.
However, the success of the smart growth movement only serves to highlight what it fails to address – the long-term question of how much growth a region can reasonably accommodate. This issue has often been referred to as regional carrying capacity.
While regional carrying capacity has many components, the single most important is infrastructure – the various components needed to keep a human population supplied and functional. Among the major modern infrastructure components are water supply, treatment and distribution, wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal, solid waste disposal, energy supply and distribution, roadways, and public mass transit. Other components that tend to be less limiting, at least in terms of physical facilities, include education, public safety, and recreational facilities.
Most of the current discussion of smart growth takes the projected amount of future growth as a given. There is little discussion of what can or should be done to limit the amount of future population growth in a region. Yet, the amount of growth that will occur in a region is certainly affected by a variety of factors, including employment growth, the local economy, cost of living, availability of trained workforce, and availability of necessary infrastructure. Sadly, infrastructure limits have often failed to control growth
Part of the reason infrastructure limits have failed to control growth may be that such limits are often hidden. Thus, for example, water agencies are usually required to issue “will serve” letters before a development project is built. These letters are supposed to ensure that the water agency has sufficient supply and facilities to serve the new development. However, water agencies routinely issue will serve letters based on supplies and facilities that are only projected. The same often holds true for wastewater treatment and disposal. Other infrastructure components, such as roads and public transit, do not require any kind of review and approval prior to development approval, other than the general discussion that occurs during the environmental review process. More often than not, this process is seen as just one more hoop to be jumped through to get to development approval. Thus, Environmental Impact Reports all too often contain flawed or cursory analyses of traffic (and other) impacts.
As a result, development often ends up straining the capacity of the agencies responsible for infrastructure. Thus, development in the Santa Rosa area north of San Francisco has repeatedly outstripped sewage treatment capacity, resulting in overflows of raw sewage into the Russian River. Similarly, the inability of water supplies to keep pace with urban and suburban growth has contributed to California’s more and more frequent “water shortage emergencies”.
Recently, and for the first time, the California legislature has acknowledged the folly of cities and counties approving development projects while closing their collective eyes to the inadequacy of infrastructure to support those projects.
It should be obvious from the above discussion that without consideration of carrying capacity, such “smart growth” plans are little more than an exercise in Pollyanna planning, with little connection to what really will happen over the next twenty years. Indeed, if San Fransisco Bay Area planning efforts continue as currently envisaged, the most likely result is that far before their build-out is complete, Bay Area development will grind to a halt, stymied by the inadequacy of available infrastructure. The economic cost of such an unplanned economic “train wreck” will be colossal -- far greater than if carrying capacity had been taken into account and a gradual transition to a steady-state regional population and economy took place
Over the past several years, a new catch phrase has sprung up in the environmental community: “smart growth”. It arose as environmentalists struggled to find an attractive alternative to the low-density auto-oriented development that has become endemic to North American suburban areas. The latter is often popularly referred to as “suburban sprawl”.
What is smart growth? It is an attempt to direct growth into less environmentally damaging avenues. Thus, smart growth favors “infill” development (i.e., development within already urbanized areas) instead of development of previously undeveloped areas (Prairie Valley? - ed). Smart growth tries to minimize the increase in demand for limited resources, such as water, by promoting development that uses less of those resources.
Environmental groups, most notably the Sierra Club, have launched a major campaign in support of smart growth. The basic idea is that North America has been foolishly squandering its environmental resources on an inefficient form of development. The campaign appears to be paying off. Governmental agencies have begun to discuss smart growth as a better way to accommodate expected increases in population.
However, the success of the smart growth movement only serves to highlight what it fails to address – the long-term question of how much growth a region can reasonably accommodate. This issue has often been referred to as regional carrying capacity.
While regional carrying capacity has many components, the single most important is infrastructure – the various components needed to keep a human population supplied and functional. Among the major modern infrastructure components are water supply, treatment and distribution, wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal, solid waste disposal, energy supply and distribution, roadways, and public mass transit. Other components that tend to be less limiting, at least in terms of physical facilities, include education, public safety, and recreational facilities.
Most of the current discussion of smart growth takes the projected amount of future growth as a given. There is little discussion of what can or should be done to limit the amount of future population growth in a region. Yet, the amount of growth that will occur in a region is certainly affected by a variety of factors, including employment growth, the local economy, cost of living, availability of trained workforce, and availability of necessary infrastructure. Sadly, infrastructure limits have often failed to control growth
Part of the reason infrastructure limits have failed to control growth may be that such limits are often hidden. Thus, for example, water agencies are usually required to issue “will serve” letters before a development project is built. These letters are supposed to ensure that the water agency has sufficient supply and facilities to serve the new development. However, water agencies routinely issue will serve letters based on supplies and facilities that are only projected. The same often holds true for wastewater treatment and disposal. Other infrastructure components, such as roads and public transit, do not require any kind of review and approval prior to development approval, other than the general discussion that occurs during the environmental review process. More often than not, this process is seen as just one more hoop to be jumped through to get to development approval. Thus, Environmental Impact Reports all too often contain flawed or cursory analyses of traffic (and other) impacts.
As a result, development often ends up straining the capacity of the agencies responsible for infrastructure. Thus, development in the Santa Rosa area north of San Francisco has repeatedly outstripped sewage treatment capacity, resulting in overflows of raw sewage into the Russian River. Similarly, the inability of water supplies to keep pace with urban and suburban growth has contributed to California’s more and more frequent “water shortage emergencies”.
Recently, and for the first time, the California legislature has acknowledged the folly of cities and counties approving development projects while closing their collective eyes to the inadequacy of infrastructure to support those projects.
It should be obvious from the above discussion that without consideration of carrying capacity, such “smart growth” plans are little more than an exercise in Pollyanna planning, with little connection to what really will happen over the next twenty years. Indeed, if San Fransisco Bay Area planning efforts continue as currently envisaged, the most likely result is that far before their build-out is complete, Bay Area development will grind to a halt, stymied by the inadequacy of available infrastructure. The economic cost of such an unplanned economic “train wreck” will be colossal -- far greater than if carrying capacity had been taken into account and a gradual transition to a steady-state regional population and economy took place
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