Vol. 4 No. 2 (Winter) 1998 Douglas R. Porter, Managing Editor

Only a year or so after Portland Metro adopted its 2040 regional plan, along comes the Metropolitan Council (Minneapolis/St.Paul) with a similar plan, like Portland's in many ways but with somewhat different procedures for implementation. The Council, after being combined with the regional sewer and transit agencies to form a new regional agency, quickly produced a Regional Blueprint in 1994 that laid out some basic features of a new regional plan. The plan focused on social and economic concerns as much as urban form and infrastructure systems issues traditionally addressed by earlier plans. The Council spent the next two years refining those proposals and adding a growth strategy component that put teeth in the plan's goals and policies. The Blueprint was formally amended in December, 1996 and implementation activities are well underway.

The growth strategy element, referred to as Metro 2040: A Growth Strategy for the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, defines an urban growth pattern and spells out policies and actions needed to carry it out. It is intended to accommodate the 330,000 new households and 650,000 more people projected for the seven-county region over the next 25 years in ways that meet the Blueprint long-range goals. The strategy is a hybrid option determined after evaluations of three scenarios (current trends, concentrated development, growth centers). Key features are:

• directing two-thirds of expected growth inside the current urban services area, allowing the remaining third to locate within 80,000 acres at the urbanizing edge (compared to 170,000 acres that might occur without restrictions);

• achieving more compact development at higher densities than recent development and concentrating jobs in the regional core and at activity centers along transit routes; the Council has defined a minimum of three dwelling units per acre as a benchmark to future subdivisions, compared to current single-family develop-ment averaging 1.7 units per acre;

• creating an urban reserve of at least 120,000 acres earmarked for urban development after 2020;

• permanently preserving agricultural areas and a rural environment outside the urban reserve.

The new plan is intended to guide the efforts of almost 200 local governments in the region in revising their plans to meet regional goals and principles. The Council staff is assisting local officials to draw lines designating the urban service area and the urban reserve. Those local plans, once coordinated with adjacent communities, are to be submitted to the Council for a review of consistency with Blueprint and regional system plans for aviation, recreation/open space, transportation, and water resources. Once the Council certifies its approval, local plans can proceed to implementation. The Council can require modifications if it determines that plans will have an adverse effect on the system plans. However, the Council has indicated that it wishes to obtain consensus agreements without resort to threats; the Council generally will follow a policy of "ruthless disclosure" of plans inconsistent with regional goals and plans. The planning period is expected to extend through 1999.

So, rather quietly, without the national attention given the Portland planning process, the Twin Cities region has put in place a plan and process that can have far-reaching implications for future growth. It re-establishes the Metropolitan Council as a regional agency to watch for concepts and lessons adaptable to other metropolitan regions.

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One focus of GMI's efforts to stimulate revitalization of the three-county corridor along Florida's southeast coast is on infill opportunities around transit stations, an activity that has raised several issues that need resolution to stimulate station-area development.

Two active rail transit lines and one potential one supply the station locations. The Metro-Dade Transit Agency operates a 21-mile rail system in Miami and Dade County (plus a four-mile people mover in downtown Miami). The 67-mile Tri-Rail commuter-rail system, owned by the state, links central Miami with Broward and Palm Beach counties to the north. Both agencies have been aggressive in seeking joint development of agency-owned land around stations. Metro-Rail has succeeded in generating a mixed-use project on a county-owned tract at Dadeland South, a public office building over a downtown station, several developments adjoining downtown stations, and some small projects planned for some southern station areas. Tri-Rail has acquired additional properties to round out its station-area holdings and is actively seeking developers for several parcels adjoining stations. The agency is working with a developer to plan a major commercial development at one station.

The local governments responsible for planning along these lines, however, have been slow to engage in planning and implementing station-area development. Metrorail stations in the northern part of Miami and Dade County are in locations considered problematical for attracting near-term development. Local planners appear to discount the value of the Tri-Rail system, on which service is limited by its single track, which currently attracts only 10,000 daily passengers, and is located inland from the centers of many communities along the coast.

To complicate matters, the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) extends through the centers of communities along the coast from the northern parts of the Eastward Ho! corridor south to the center of Miami. Although passenger service on the line was dropped years ago, many community officials believe that the revival of service could provide convenient access to transit service all along the corridor. The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council (covering Palm Beach County and counties north of it) has worked with many communities to prepare designs for town-center revitalization, all of which include a revived rail station as a centerpiece.

Both the Tri-Rail and FEC routes need substantial funding to provide adequate trackage for passenger service. Tri-Rail has been seeking such funding for some time, but the FEC is owned by a private corporation that has just expanded (including acquisition of the Arvida development company) and is reorganizing.

The path -- or track -- to stimulating station-area development, therefore, would seem to require some resolution of the issues regarding funding and FEC's willingness to consider adding passenger service. This could be facilitated by regionwide action to define, evaluate, and implement a transit plan and program for the corridor, which in turn would profit from the organization of a regionwide entity to lead that effort. The South Florida Regional Planning Council is leading efforts to initiate an informal group that might provide the nucleus for such an organization.

This context for just one facet of Eastward Ho! revitalization efforts suggests the complexities in institutional, physical, and economic terms of facilitating urban restoration in a fast-growing area.

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Planners in Queen Anne's County, Maryland have been busy over the past year converting the county's innovative flexible zoning ordinance to a more conservative Euclidean ordinance. The ordinance adopted in 1987 followed Lane Kendig's model of regulating land uses and development densities according to performance standards. Floor area ratios, impervious surface ratios, open space multipliers, and natural resource multipliers provided standards by which property owners could determine permitted lot sizes, building locations and densities, and open space requirements, including buffering provisions that established the width and type of plantings required between uses.

Over the years, however, county planners found that working out typical subdivision designs could necessitate pages of mathematical formulas and a considerable amount of administrative interpretation. The system was difficult to understand and explain. Adjustments made over time to respond to problems seemed to make matter worse due to the difficulty of tracking relationships among the various ratios and multipliers.

These issues propelled the county's decision to remake the ordinance in a more conservative form. In addition, several of the key zoning provisions seemed to be obsolete in the light of state-mandated open space programs and standards.

Queen Anne's County is just one of several communities found in a recent survey that have decided to return to the days of traditional, prescriptive, Euclidean zoning. At the same time, these local governments have retained many of the performance measures within the new regulatory format. These experiences are explained in greater detail in the January, 1998 Zoning News, published by the American Planning Association. Entitled "Flexible Zoning: A Status Report on Performance Standards," the report was prepared by yours truly.

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For those concerned with revitalizing central cities as an alternative to urban sprawl, two journals recently supplied a number of essays that explore the pros and cons of that policy.

Fannie Mae's Housing Policy Debate, Volume 8, Issue 2 in 1997, presents a group of papers prepared for the 1996 Annual Housing Conference of the Fannie Mae Foundation. John D. Kasarda, Stephen J. Appold, Stuart H. Sweeney, and Elaine Sieff analyzed metropolitan household migration patterns based on census data from 1980 to the present. Despite signs that population losses have slowed and certain neighborhoods have turned around, the dominant trend in residential movements is still toward suburbs and a widespread back-to-the-city movement is not in the cards in the foreseeable future. Noting the tendency for economically viable households and firms to move to suburbs and not move back, Anthony Downs concludes that the most effective strategy for changing the dynamics causing decline -- major structural reform of metropolitan institutions -- lacks political support from the majority of metropolitan residents who gain some benefit from the existing arrangements.

Roberto G. Quercia and George C. Galster suggest that threshold numbers of middle-income households must be surpassed before significant fiscal and economic gains can be realized. Nevertheless, Robert E. Lang, James W. Hughes, and Karen A. Danielsen observe that marketing that targets certain groups of middle-income suburbanites may entice their relocation to central cities, although they conclude that such a trend would produce only marginal gains in such house-holds. Mitchell Moss presents further thoughts on the possibility of targeting nontraditional households who can play a part in urban redevelopment.

The Lusk Review published by the Lusk Center for Real Estate Development at the University of Southern California also ponders the future of central cities in its Fall, 1997 issue, Volume III, No. 2.

Repeating his warning in the Housing Policy Debate, Anthony Downs cites the near-term impossibility of re-creating central city neighborhoods but holds out the promise of improvement over time if enough public policy initiatives and programs can be focused on that objective. Christopher B. Leinberger predicts that a "new season" for successful downtowns will dawn early in the next century, basing this forecast on the downtown gains made in the 1980s and the knowledge we now possess about the many economic and institutional strengths of downtowns.

Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, however, proceed to trash this idea, making the case that downtowns, and for that matter the entire cores of central cities, are in a trajectory of long-term decline. They argue that the relentless "silent migration" of labor and capital to the suburbs has made downtowns and most central cities obsolete and irrelevant to future metropolitan economies.

Whether you find these commentaries refreshing or depressing, they informatively ring the changes on the issues of growth and decline in central cities. Given the importance of restoring central city viability in the the national concern for combating urban sprawl, these arguments for and against the likelihood of achieving that objective are extremely significant.

(The Housing Policy Debate can be obtained from Fannie Mae Foundation, 4000 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016-2804. Subscriptions to the Lusk Review are available from Lusk Review, P.O. Box 773, Point Arena, CA 95468 (Telephone 800/931-9373.)

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Lest you think that Oregon officials are resting on their laurels, they continue to revise and improve its path-breaking state program for managing growth. A biennial report, Shaping Oregon's Future, covering activities of the Department of Land Conservation and Development (LCDC) from 1995 to 1997, describes initiatives in several areas. They include:

• a complete overhaul of planning goal 5 and related rules on natural resource planning;

• an analysis of concerns and potential remedies pertaining to planning goal 14 on urbanization, including the establishment of urban growth boundaries;

• development of a new program for regional problem solving with pilot projects in five areas;

• significant amendments in 1995 to the transportation planning rule to emphasize consideration of non-automobile forms of travel such as transit, biking, and walking;

• participation in a new multi-agency state "community solutions team" to help cities and counties;

• giving grants and technical assistance to dozens of communities to help deal with rapid urban growth;

• initiation of a joint effort with the Department of Transportation to develop new rules for land use around airports;

• working with coastal communities to reduce risks and damages from natural hazards and coordination of the state floodplain management program during the 1996 floods.

At the end of 1997, Governor John A. Kitzhaber capped these accomplishments with issuance of Executive Order No. EP 97-22 that ordered state agencies involved in community development to use their programs and activities to help build and maintain quality communities that promote state goals and objectives.

The evolution of the state's transportation planning rule is particularly noteworthy. During 1990 and 1991, the department worked closely with the Department of Transportation and local governments to develop a rule to link transportation planning with state development goals. In particular, the rule emphasizes planning for development patterns that will reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Focusing on planning in the larger urban areas, the rule calls for planning transportation facilities and services to support planned land uses, developing plans and revising zoning to make walking, cycling, and transit more convenient, creating local street networks that reduce traffic impacts on state highways, allow narrower streets to reduce development costs and increase livability, and changing land use plans to encourage more efficient use of existing transportation facilities. Amendments in 1995 put even greater emphasis on encouraging walking, biking, and transit use.

The rule also posts a target for the state's four metropolitan areas (Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Medford): to reduce vehicle miles traveled per person by 10 percent over the next 20 years. Estimated savings in road expansions costs: $11.5 billion. That target, however, is now being evaluated, along with a second look at the rule's requirement for reducing parking.

Current work on revising Goal 14, the urbanization goal, will be of interest to many, because the evaluation focuses on the requirements for urban growth boundaries. The working paper prepared for the LCDC by Cogan Owens Cogan points out that the criteria for urban growth boundaries are still somewhat vague, goals and guidelines fail to address urban form issues and provides unclear direction for exceptions, and current definitions and procedures have responded more to litigation than sound departmental strategies. Stay tuned for updates on this activity.

Along the way, state officials still had the energy to prepare an update of Oregon's benchmarking program adopted in 1989. Oregon Shines II: Updating Oregon's Strategic Plan, published by the Oregon Progress Board in January, 1997, provides a scorecard for progress towards meeting the original 259 benchmarks but proposes reducing the number to 92 measurable indicators plus 26 "developmental benchmarks" for areas where indicators may become available in the future. The Board also is developing a tiered system that will show how benchmarks are related.

Editor's Note: The above information on Oregon was obtained in the process of preparing an update on state growth management programs to be published by the Urban Land Institute: ULI in the Future -- Smart Growth: Development, Community, Environment. In the next GMR newsletter: an update on New Jersey's program, which just got a strong endorsement from Governor Whitman in her inaugural address.

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The title hints at an oxymoron. Who would think booming Las Vegas -- and proud of it -- is interested in growth management? As a member of the ULI advisory panel sponsored by Las Vegas area governments I had an opportunity to see and evaluate the region's growth and growth management problems first hand.

There's no doubt that the Las Vegas Valley is growing by leaps and bounds -- up 69 percent from 1987 to 1997, to about 1.2 million. Building permits for housing are now running at about 30,000 per year.

All this due to the incredible expansion of the gaming industry as corporate owners have moved into big-time financing of hotels, casinos, and various types of entertainment venues. Las Vegas has more hotel rooms (over 115,000 and counting) than any other U.S. city and bigger hotel/casino complexes are coming out of the ground regularly.

But the Valley's growth patterns are skewed in unique ways. Most residents draw their paychecks as blue-collar service workers or from pension funds. There is no downtown to speak of; the commercial core is the Strip of casinos and hotels. The Valley has no interesting ethnic or historic neighborhoods and over half its residents have lived there less than six years. More than two-thirds of homebuyers are one- or two-person adult households. About half of all housing is being built within large-scale gated communities, most planned to provide lots of amenities.

Keeping up with demands for public facilities and services has been a frantic pursuit. In many ways, public efforts have been successful at providing basic infrastructure, a job made easier by the fact that the Valley has only five significant local jurisdictions.

On the other hand, some services such as schools and parks are well below standards, and jurisdictional differences complicate service delivery. The famous Strip, for example, is part of the unincorporated county, wedged in between sections of the City of Las Vegas. North Las Vegas appears to form a lower-income enclave outside the city center while Henderson is casting its image as a higher-income suburban haven.

The questions posed to the ULI panel centered on ways to bring some order into the expansion boom -- not stopping it, but attending to long-term infrastructure needs, quality-of-life concerns, and desires for economic diversification. A summary of the panel's recommendations includes:

1. Valley leadership should form a regional organization to provide leadership, strategic planning, and coordination of the Valley's growth. The panel urged that management of the Valley's assets and future growth should move beyond the increasingly independent actions of local governments to thinking and acting regionally. The Valley's local governments should determine through intergovernmental agreements to assign responsibilities for strategic planning and guidance of local actions to a regional agency.

2. High priority should be given to building strategic leadership and a sense of community. ULI panel members were struck by the relative paucity of civic interest among the region's residents, perhaps due to the transciency of local residents. In particular, action is needed to overcome the increasing divisiveness of governmental units and formulate a shared vision of regional expansion.

3. Local leaders are gambling on the future adequacy of land and water to support continued growth; the panel recommends that serious thought be given to probable long-term limits on Valley expansion and steps taken now to avert future crises. The continued availability of developable land from conversion of Bureau of Land Management properties, and water supplies based on the 1931 Colorado River Compact are both in doubt. In addition, projections for a population of 3 million by 2015 appear to rest on problematic estimates of available land within the present urbanizing area. To avoid future crises and escalating development costs, alternatives to current low-density forms of development and unconservative use of water should be defined.

4. Specific actions can add value to core components of the quality of life and economy of the Valley. The panel pointed out that the Strip, if considered in its entirety as the Valley's core, could be improved to function more hospitably for visitors and residents alike, and that designation of a greenway system and promotion of economic diversity, among other possible actions, could enhance the region's livability.

The full report of the panel, which contains details on issues and answers in Valley growth management, is expected momentarily.

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www.gmionline.org. GMI's fledgling website is up and running. We allowed a trial period to iron out bugs but expect to keep adding to its features. Your ideas on additional features and content are welcomed.

Maryland Smart Growth. GMI was given a grant by the Abell Foundation in Baltimore to critique the new state "Smart Growth" legislation and recommend improvements. GMI will be interviewing many of the people involved in the legislation since the first proposal in 1991.