Curbing Sprawl Requires Regionalism
Eric Braun, Charlotte Business Journal
If sprawl is such a bad thing, why does it continue to happen? In spite of the oceans of ink spilled on the problem, sprawl remains the dominant development pattern in North Carolina. Some blame "greedy" developers, others note that the lifestyle ideals of most Americans are not consistent with "smart growth."
However, one factor that has not received enough attention in the debate is the extent to which sprawl results from the failure of local governments to adopt regionally coordinated planning policies.
The frustrating thing about the lack of coordination between governments is that it is the most easily identified cause of sprawl, and also is the one over which policy makers at the state and local levels have the most control.
North Carolina has failed to recognize or address the fact that nearly every significant urban area in the state merely is one part of a larger socio-economic region consisting of multiple, separate county and municipal jurisdictions with varying political agendas. They have independent comprehensive plans, zoning and subdivision ordinances and transportation plans.
As a result, planning goals among these multiple jurisdictions are not consistent either for the best of reasons (because one community's sprawl is another's crucial economic development and tax-base expansion), or the worst of reasons (because of political or personality conflicts between individual local government officials).
Although local officials may have responsibility for only one jurisdiction, their constituents live and work throughout the region.
The days when everyone lived and worked in one town or even county largely are gone.
We all commute, and therefore, if there is no coordination among jurisdictions, we all end up sitting in traffic.
The bottom line is that no matter how good planning theories are, they are doomed to failure if they are applied in a vacuum on a community-by-community basis without regional coordination.
Conflicts and competition
In 2002 North Carolina had 541 municipal governments and 319 special-district governmental agencies. Wake County alone consists of 22 governments (one county, 12 municipalities and nine special districts). Nearly every crossroads in the Charlotte area is a separate town. Although the mere existence of multiple jurisdictions within a region is not problematic per se, the implicit and explicit conflicts and competition among the various jurisdictions tend to give rise to sprawl.
North Carolina cities and counties have broad authority to make their own choices regarding land use, development and growth. Local governments respond to the desires of their residents with regard to planning.
These desires often are both internally inconsistent (everyone hates both sprawl and density), and externally inconsistent in that neighboring communities adopt different development patterns (one chooses a mixed-use, high-density pattern, while the other opts for a low-density residential pattern). Each government operates autonomously and in its own self-interest.
The resulting crazy quilt of development patterns, uncoordinated transportation policies and regional sprawl defeats the goals of each individual community.
Low-density advocates complain about their high-density neighbors and vice versa, traffic patterns are incoherent and sprawl just gets worse as people seek better living by spreading farther out or heading into the next town where the grass is greener.
Those of us whose lives occur across the region (e.g., live in Concord, work in Charlotte, send the kids to college in Chapel Hill) are the ultimate losers.
Localism vs. regionalism
This conflict between localism and regionalism is fueled in two ways.
First, jurisdictions compete with one another for property and sales tax revenues and other benefits of which there is a limited supply.
Second, the leaders of each jurisdiction are held responsible for only a fragment of the harm caused by regional sprawl and therefore are able to deflect the political backlash of the problem and feel no need to expend resources to address it.
This combination of local economic self-interest and the lack of political heat to resolve the problem means there is little incentive for local decision makers to take action.
In order to reduce the tendency toward local self-interest, elected officials must explore revenue-sharing structures that will provide sufficient resources to all communities within a region as an incentive to individual communities to accept regional solutions to regional problems.
Further, voters must assist their representatives to understand and accept responsibility for region-wide problems by expressing their dissatisfaction at the polls.
Local leaders must recognize that growth problems are not isolated within discrete political boundaries, and that they will not achieve their policy goals if the artificial barriers created by the boundaries of political jurisdictions are not lowered.
In other words, meaningful regional governing and financing structures must be established to coordinate growth throughout a given region and to address the inevitable impacts associated with the continued urbanization of North Carolina.
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