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Don’t Confuse ‘Sprawl’ Paranoiacs With Facts September 18, 2008 In 2004, Connecticut municipalities issued 9,263 building permits for single-family homes. Last year, the number was 5,348 -- a 42 percent decline. Can we expect this dramatic drop in “suburban sprawl” to satisfy the Nutmeg State’s “smart growth” crowd? Probably not. The anti-suburb persuasion infects nearly every major institution in Connecticut, from academia to mainstream media, municipal government to Jodi Rell’s office. Elites have invested so much in demonizing what used to be called “The American Dream,” they’ve grown accustomed to staying “on message,” irrespective of glaring intrusions of reality. Even before the current drop in homebuilding, the notion that Connecticut faced a sprawl “crisis” was founded on the flimsiest filigree. Sixty percent of the state is covered in trees. (In 2001, a U.S. Forest Service official observed: “Few places on earth are likely to have as many people living among so much forest.”) Less than 19 percent of Connecticut’s land area is developed -- a remarkably small portion, given the state’s advanced age and tiny size. And population growth has slowed to nearly nothing. What about suburbanization’s contribution to longer travel times? Politicians and transportation lobbyists reflexively pin the state’s economic troubles on lengthy commutes. But the latest U.S. Census Bureau research shows that the length of the average trip to work in Connecticut is shorter than it is in the nation -- 24.1 minutes versus 25.0 minutes. Since many employers have moved out to the suburbs and exurbs, where most of us live, more commutes are highway-free. Telecommuting also plays an increasing role in congestion-fighting. Does “sprawling” Connecticut suffer from declining air quality? Nope. Both road travel and vehicle registrations have grown dramatically in recent decades, but pollution levels have dropped by significant amounts. None of these facts has impeded the state’s anti-sprawl movement, which now includes a taxpayer-subsidized “Office of Responsible Growth.” Housed within the governor’s budget agency, the ORG’s job is to “coordinate state efforts to revitalize cities, preserve the unique charm of our state and build livable, economically strong communities while protecting our natural resources for the enjoyment of future generations.” Vague mission statements are hallmarks of the public-sector entities charged with combating “irresponsible” land use. In a report issued earlier this year, the governor’s “Responsible Growth Task Force” was more specific. The “construction of new infrastructure in undeveloped areas” is to be discouraged. Redevelopment is the goal -- “brownfields” need to be rehabbed, and Connecticut’s “central cities” must “take advantage of existing infrastructure and their locations as centers of economic and cultural importance.” Such government meddling doesn’t square with the traditional American appreciation for private decisionmaking about how and where we work and live. But tell that to the motley collection of opportunists who benefit from suburb-bashing. Mayors and legislators from big cities like the idea of more state “investment” flowing to their political machines. Developers salivate over taxpayer-subsidized perks for their projects. Anti-automobile loons swoon over the prospect of car-crazed commuters being forced to use buses, bicycles, and trains. Land-use planners and transportation bureaucrats know that smart growth means job security for them. And “alternative” energy naïfs thrill to the reduced “carbon footprint” that will surely result from high-density living. It’s fun to ridicule smart-growth activists. But the costs we all bear due to their lobbying power aren’t very amusing. Rigid zoning regulations, excessive environmental laws, government “open space” purchases, doomed-to-fail redevelopment projects, and budget-bursting “mass transit” projects all -- either directly or indirectly -- send the cost of living in Connecticut soaring. And those costs will grow, if the smart-growthers continue to get their way. The states and regions that have most aggressively adopted “progressive” land-use dictums have run afoul of the law of unintended consequences: Higher housing prices, negligible property-tax relief, even worse traffic congestion, and largely empty buses and trains. In the words of Donald J. Poland, a former town planner and executive director of the Connecticut Partnership for Balanced Growth, “We should not be wasteful of natural resources -- we must be responsible custodians. Yet all growth involves altering or making use of natural resources. The real question is how to strike a balance between what we choose to preserve and where and how we grow.” That kind of common sense doesn’t surface very often in discussions of development in Connecticut. But it should. As Poland notes, “the state needs both job and population growth to thrive.” It has neither -- and that won’t change, until Connecticut’s land-use polices are based not on social engineering, but respect for property rights. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # #
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