"SMART" Growth meets small town America

Letters from a small town ...

This whole cap and trade thing reminds me of a discussion I took part in as part of our city’s Master Plan Rewrite Committee.

As part of the Master Plan Rewrite we filled out an SGRAT survey (Smart Growth Readiness Assessment Tool, a product of Michigan State University). It allows you to evaluate your city by SMART growth standards. The intent of SMART growth is to stress the reuse of property and so inhibit urban sprawl. If I am not boring you yet, here are the ten tenets of SMART growth.



1. Create a range of housing opportunities and choices—( I told them that affordable housing is impossible to achieve and maintain, but foreclosures are natures way of creating affordable housing, needless to say that didn’t go over well. The city tax base can’t afford foreclosures for one thing. )

2. Create walkable neighborhoods

3. Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration

4. Foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place--- (I hate trite phrases like “a strong sense of place”. Its like “branding”. )

5. Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective (Not if cap and trade and LEED certification becomes the standard)

6. Mix land uses

7. Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas

8. Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities

9. Provide a variety of transportation choices

10. Take advantage of compact building design



Some of these things are admirable, but I told the committee that I am suspicious of anything that calls itself SMART because only the brave or the foolish would be against something that is called SMART since the opposite would necessarily be STUPID. SMART growth is all about social engineering and I do not agree with taking away people’s freedom by more regulations.



Another thing they were going to do was give “incentives” for businesses to build LEED certified buildings (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED is the environmentally correct standard for building—read “expensive” but is supposed to save you money in the long run). I said that putting these kind of “incentives” on LEED buildings would be a disincentive to non LEED buildings and in the Michigan economy any disincentive to any business is not what we need to stimulate our economy. I had one other person who agreed and that led to a discussion where this was dropped, but if I hadn’t said that it very well would have carried the day because it sounds so darn good. I picture the Obama administration and the Pelosi law writers with few dissenting votes in the pool of ideas and I believe that is how a lot of this stuff gets written. There is no one to say, hey wait a minute, if you do that, you will cause this consequence and that won’t be good.



They also were floating the trial balloon of making all trees subject to city control. The trees between the sidewalk and the street are city responsibility, but there is an idea afoot that all trees should be regulated by the city. You would need their permission to trim or cut down trees on your own property. I asked if this were the case, and a limb fell on my house who was responsible. The answer was that is was my responsibility. It is amazing to me that these kinds of things are even thought of let alone already the law in some communities.



It is like the windmill thing. We are all about burying our power lines because we are told people buying high priced condos don’t want their view obstructed by those ugly power lines and in Europe they are all buried. We are really a backward nation. Lost is the idea that it will cost a gazillion dollars to bury those lines and with what the Board of Light and Power has to pay to keep up with environmental quality standards they really can’t afford to give this little perk to out of town condo buyers. But while wanting to bury these ugly power lines, we also want to build windmills. So my question is why you want to clear the view of power lines and then fill that same view with wind mills. The other question I have asked people is how many windmills would it take to power Chicago, the windy city, and where would you put them. The usual answer is I don’t know, but that doesn’t dissuade them from the belief in wind mills or that coal is evil.