The Changing Climate of Smart Growth

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

It wasn't all that long ago that when you heard talk of smart growth, it focused on reducing sprawl in order to preserve farmland and open space, reduce infrastructure investment costs, and develop more walkable, livable neighborhoods with a mix of uses. Certainly, that's still integral to smart growth. But one new element seems to have come to the fore of the smart growth agenda: climate change.

Yes, minimizing energy consumption has always been part of smart growth's aims, but if this February's national Smart Growth Conference in Washington, D.C., is any indicator, climate change and global warming are now an important way of "framing" the benefits of smart growth.

The Conference's opening plenary session, titled "Let's Change the Climate," was specifically oriented to how smart growth can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This was immediately followed by a session headed up by Conference honoree Dr. Richard Jackson on "Climate Change, Public Health and Smart Growth." And many other conference sessions also paid attention to the link between climate change and smart growth.

During the Let's Change the Climate panel discussion, Steve Winkelman, the Transportation Program Director for the Center for Clean Air Policy (and co-author of Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change) directly made the point that framing climate change as the major issue we're facing as a nation can help promote smart growth principles. Or as panelist Jemae Hoffman (head of Sustainable Transportation and Climate Change in the Seattle Dept. of Transportation) put it, "climate change is another good [reason] to do what we all want to do," adding that it is also "putting pressure on us to move faster on transportation issues."

Indeed, putting climate change on the front burner elevates the focus on transportation policy, especially efforts to reduce vehicle miles traveled. After all, it is the transportation sector (through motor vehicle fuel use) that is in most places the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, during the Conference sesssion Winkelman noted we'll soon "need to get to vehicle miles traveled taxes."

Concern about global warming has certainly -- and with good reason -- fired the public's interest. With many smart growth policies aimed at reducing single vehicle auto useage (for example, by providing for higher density developments in mixed use neighborhoods) there's a natural fit between smart growth and climate change goals. As Judy Corbett, Executive Director of the Local Government Commission (which sponsored the Conference) observed, dealing with global warming is part and parcel of the "quality of life" message needed to promote smart growth.

Moreover, just as climate change concerns have helped ignite the green build movement (see my post "Jamming in the Green"), we can expect the same to propel smart growth policies to even broader acceptance.

Keep an eye on California as one early indicator of how this will play out. The State -- in what is referred to as A.B. (Assembly Bill) 32 -- has adopted extremely ambitious goals for reducing energy consumption. See below from the California Air Resources Board web site.

One part of its implementation will almost certainly center on local smart growth strategies.

Note: you'll notice that in my posting I mentioned several times the word "framing" -- planners are increasingly recognizing the importance of how we frame land use and related issues. For more on this, see excerpts from Dave Stauffer's "Smart Messages" published in the Planning Commissioners Journal.

Comments

[Frank Grande]

It's sad to see the Journal bye into the climate change hype. Without to much information on the subject, keep in mind that 95% of greenhouse gas is water vaper. That leaves 5% other gases of witch a small % is CO2. That and the fact that historical climate tempurature rise's, procede a rise in CO2 by about 800 yrs would lead one to conclude the very opposite of the carbon debate as framed by AL GORE et al.