Saturday, October 22, 2005
Smart growth fails in Maryland
John Frece worked for Maryland's "smart-growth" Governor Parris Glendenning for seven years, spending much of that time helping to lead the state's smart-growth programs. Now he has written a candid article for the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law describing what they did right and what they did wrong with smart growth in Maryland.
One of the most important things they did right, he says, was to brand the program "with a name people would recognize and that would be hard to oppose." I've often agreed that applying the term "smart growth" to some very unpopular policies was a brilliant tactical move. As Frece says, "it became obvious that those who opposed 'Smart Growth' must inevitably favor 'dumb growth.'"
Frece also says that the program was good because it relied on incentives rather than regulation. However, this was only true in the context of the state government's relationship to local governments: the state would withhold funds from local governments that failed to impose the regulations the state wanted. In the context of local government to private property owners, the program was expected to be just as regulatory as anything in Oregon.
Yet Maryland's program failed, Frece says, in that it "made very little headway in changing the paradigm of local land use control." In retrospect, letting local planning officials make the actual decisions allowed them to make decisions that smart-growth advocates would consider bad. But -- fortunately for Marylanders -- Glendenning did not have the power or political support to impose an Oregon-style state planning regime on local governments.
Frece also notes that smart-growth advocates failed to institutionalize the program sufficiently for it to survive the "regime change" that took place when Republican Robert Ehrlich replaced Democrat Parris Glendenning as governnor. Too bad he doesn't learn the real lesson here: unpopular programs, now matter how you dress them up in cute names, will not long survive in a democracy. It is notable that the previous "program" of letting people live where and how they wanted managed to survive decades of "regime changes" in Maryland and other states.
Frece still believes in smart growth, and merely laments the fact that Glendenning couldn't force it through on a permanent basis. A more objective observer might question whether a program that requires enormous government power to overcome the interests and desires of individual families and landowners is really in the best interest of society.
One of the most important things they did right, he says, was to brand the program "with a name people would recognize and that would be hard to oppose." I've often agreed that applying the term "smart growth" to some very unpopular policies was a brilliant tactical move. As Frece says, "it became obvious that those who opposed 'Smart Growth' must inevitably favor 'dumb growth.'"
Frece also says that the program was good because it relied on incentives rather than regulation. However, this was only true in the context of the state government's relationship to local governments: the state would withhold funds from local governments that failed to impose the regulations the state wanted. In the context of local government to private property owners, the program was expected to be just as regulatory as anything in Oregon.
Yet Maryland's program failed, Frece says, in that it "made very little headway in changing the paradigm of local land use control." In retrospect, letting local planning officials make the actual decisions allowed them to make decisions that smart-growth advocates would consider bad. But -- fortunately for Marylanders -- Glendenning did not have the power or political support to impose an Oregon-style state planning regime on local governments.
Frece also notes that smart-growth advocates failed to institutionalize the program sufficiently for it to survive the "regime change" that took place when Republican Robert Ehrlich replaced Democrat Parris Glendenning as governnor. Too bad he doesn't learn the real lesson here: unpopular programs, now matter how you dress them up in cute names, will not long survive in a democracy. It is notable that the previous "program" of letting people live where and how they wanted managed to survive decades of "regime changes" in Maryland and other states.
Frece still believes in smart growth, and merely laments the fact that Glendenning couldn't force it through on a permanent basis. A more objective observer might question whether a program that requires enormous government power to overcome the interests and desires of individual families and landowners is really in the best interest of society.
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