Bank Conference Speakers Warn
Against Land-Use Planning Myth

By David Bowser

SAN ANTONIO — If there was a predominant message at the Federal Reserve Bank's conference here this month, it was that market forces can best decide land use.

Speakers at the conference hosted by the San Antonio branch of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank indicated that central planning and government dictates often achieve results opposite of those for which they were designed. Although many of their comments were directed to urban sprawl, there is a lesson for rural America as well.

Such speakers as Dr. Samuel R. Staley with Reason Public Policy Institute pointed to an increasing tendency to replace sound science with political science.

Staley said an analysis of land-use trends at the national and state levels shows that less than five percent of the nation's land is developed and three-quarters of the nation's population lives on 3.5 percent of the land area.

"Over three-quarters of the states have more than 90 percent of their land in rural uses, including forests, cropland, pasture, wildlife preserves and parks," Staley pointed out.

As the federal government implements plans to buy more private land for public use in the face of urban sprawl, Staley said acreage in protected wildlife areas and rural parks already exceeds urbanized areas by 50 percent.

Staley contended that urban development does not threaten the nation's food supply.

"About one quarter of the farmland lost since 1945 is attributable to urbanization," he said. "More importantly, predictions of future farmland loss based on past trends are misleading because farmland loss has moderated significantly, falling from 6.2 percent per decade in the 1960s to 2.7 percent per decade in the 1990s.

Staley said a major concern in the nation today is air quality, and research indicates that air quality deteriorates as residential densities increase.

"The metropolitan areas with the worst smog ratings from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have the highest population densities," he pointed out.

Open spaces, one of the catch phrases for the "New Urbanism" movement, are increasingly protected through the private sector, not government action, Staley added.

Among the things Staley suggests is a strengthening of private property rights.

"Private property rights should be protected, including the right to use and sell property as the owner sees fit," Staley insisted.

The Ohio resident, who works for the California-based think tank, said rules and regulations should allow communities to change and evolve. He warned against letting land-use regulations become instruments of preservation.

"The dangers of giving in to antigrowth sentiment are significant, since, by 2010, the U.S. economy is expected to grow by 11.5 percent, population by 11 percent, and employment by 15 percent," Staley said. "Current residents and citizens will expect their quality of life to increase with their incomes. These trends require accommodating rather than restricting growth."

Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute appeared to speak up for private property rights and took Staley's comments a step further.

A native of the Portland, Oregon, area, O'Toole protested steps that city took over the last decade which made it the poster child for the New Urbanism.

In 1992, Portland was terrified that its growing city was going to become the Pacific Northwest's new Los Angeles. Officials feared it would become a congested, polluted city with too many cars and too little sense of community.

They created Metro, a regional planning authority with dictatorial land-use planning powers over 24 cities and three counties, O'Toole said.

"To hear Metro boosters describe it, Portland-area residents can now rest easy," O'Toole said.

But O'Toole countered that Metro means Portland will squeeze more people and more businesses into smaller spaces under tighter regulatory control. Metro's plan restricts development outside an urban growth boundary that allows only a six percent expansion of the urbanized area for at least two decades. The plan doubles or triples the population density of many neighborhoods by rezoning them to high-density housing.

Metro sets strict population targets for each of its 24 cities and three counties, forcing them to convert 10,000 acres of prime farmlands, golf courses, city parks and other open spaces, O'Toole added.

"There's only one little problem," O'Toole said. "Metro's own data says the plan is doomed to failure."

Among Metro's plans is one to double public transit usage.

"Since transit currently carries less than 2.5 percent of Portland area trips," O'Toole said, "doubling that doesn't get you very far toward a car-free utopia."

Metro expects that at best, auto usage would decline from 92 percent to 88 percent. Given the 75 percent population increase that Metro predicts over the next 50 years, that translates into five cars driving around for every three cars today, O'Toole pointed out. Planners estimate that traffic congestion will triple or quadruple and that air pollution will increase.

O'Toole said Metro wants to increase property taxes to finance public transit. At the same time they are giving developers tax breaks to build high-density housing, apartments and row houses.

Because of the artificial shortage of land caused by the urban growth boundary established by Metro, housing prices have soared. Once one of the most affordable housing markets in the nation, Portland is now the second least affordable housing market in the U.S., second only to San Francisco.

While Metro was established initially to keep Portland from becoming another Los Angeles, a study by Metro planners in 1994 indicated that the future of Portland would probably be one closely resembling Los Angeles.

Indeed, planners, after studying the research, came to the conclusion that the Los Angeles model displays an investment pattern with regard to density and road per capita mileage that Portland should replicate.

Despite such contradictions, cities ranging from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Missoula, Mont., have adopted similar plans.

"Welcome to the crazy world of the New Urbanism, the latest fad in urban planning," O'Toole said.

He said a recent Sierra Club study, "The Dark Side of the American Dream," is representative of New Urbanist thinking.

"The automobile way of life is unhealthy, anti-social and unsustainable," said the report, which was partially funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

New Urbanism, by contrast, seeks to create neighborhoods where jobs, shopping, services and recreation are all nearby, so people can get around without cars.

According to the report, urban sprawl leads to increased congestion, longer commutes, increased dependence on fossil fuels, crowded schools, worsening air and water pollution, lost open space and wetlands, increased flooding, destroyed habitat, higher taxes and dying city centers.

"None of these claims is documented, which isn't surprising, because none of them is true," O'Toole said.

A number of friendly federal agencies directly finance the New Urbanist agenda, O'Toole continued. Under the Transportation Partners Program, for instance, EPA gives several hundred nonprofit organizations money to lobby for transit and pedestrian ways and against highways.

EPA boasts that these partners reduced annual vehicle travel by 1.25 billion miles in 1997.

"That's a questionable figure," O'Toole said, "but even if valid, it represents less than .1 percent of all urban driving."

But while O'Toole objects to governmental agencies decreeing what can be done with land and private property, he also noted that the mandated open spaces in the Portland area were farmed with pesticides and intensively grazed by cattle.

"It might be better to urbanize some of that farmland," O'Toole said.

Everybody, it seems, has their own personal agenda.