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- The critical issue for the smart growth
movement, says Funders' Network leader Ben Starrett, is
choice in the residential communities that will available
for the projected 60 million new Americans by 2020. Starrett
cites USC research, funded by his Network, predicting the
demand for more dense housing will double, with close to
half the population, by 2015, preferring more urbane, diverse
housing choices. But the market, he notes, is only providing
a tiny percentage that way right now -- even as "housing
prices fly through the roof" in higher quality neighborhoods
across the country. The smart growth movement can't and
won't, Starrett suggests, curb future demand from the half
of Americans who'll likely still want a large lot and not
mind a long commute. (Let them have their choice "as
long as government money doesn't subsidize them," he
suggests). The smart growth movement, Starrett believes,
needs to focus its efforts on expanding future choices for
the other half -- people who'll be searching for quality,
pedestrian-oriented urban neighborhoods with varieties of
housing and transportation choices (either in retrofitted
older neighborhoods or new developments planned with more
compact, New Urbanist-like principles).
- Starrett suggests that tangles with conservative
or libertarian groups, for example backers of the "Preserving
the American Dream of Mobility and Homeownership" conference
that's scheduled for Washington in February, should be undertaken
by Smart Growth America or other advocacy groups. "They're
field leaders; we are a funders' organization."
- The Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative
had an interesting birth. Originally private philanthropists
including Paul Growald and Eileen Rockefeller Growald (the
Growald Family Fund), upset by rampant sprawl in Chittenden
County (Burlington), commissioned a study on which Vermont
environmental organizations were doing what to curb the
trend. The diagnostic, by Peter Stein (Lyme Timber Co.,
formerly Trust for Public Land) and Ann Fowler Wallace (lead
New England environmental writer), found overlapping and
ill-coordinated efforts -- but also major possible synergies.
In autumn 2000 several funders and Vermont's lead environmental
organizations met and the Vermont Smart Growth Collaborative
was launched. Among them: the Vermont Forum on Sprawl (Beth
Humstone), Conservation Law Foundation (Mark Sinclair),
Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions, Friends
of the Earth, Preservation Trust of Vermont, Vermont Businesses
for Social Responsibility, Vermont Health Foundation, Vermont
Natural Resources Council, Vermont Public Interest Research
Group. The first-year budget was $368,000, from the Ittleson
Foundation, Jessie Cox Trust, John Merck Fund, Growald Family
Fund, Argosy Foundation and Kelsey Trust.
- There's little doubt that the Vermont
Collaborative has made a nationally significant breakthrough
in getting groups to define their specialities, share their
divergent skills, devise a shared statewide strategy, and
hold each other accountable for results. But not without
some rough spots -- organizational conflicts, disagreements
on how to spend limited funds, disagreements on how soon
or whether to resort to litigation, according to Humstone
and Sinclair. The Collaborative believes its stands will
save unneeded government infrastructure spending and is
anxious to add more business supporters. But its opposition
to a major circumferential road around Burlington, heavily
supported by IBM, Vermont's largest employer, may complicate
private sector recruitment.
- Vermont smart growth leaders believe
their Collaborative is a model applicable across New England,
and indeed the U.S. They'll present its case at the national
meeting of the Growth Management Leadership Alliance, scheduled
in Vermont in October 2003. In the meantime, notes Ben Starrett,
parallel efforts have begun in Ohio, New Hampshire, Maine,
Rhode Island and elsewhere.
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Leaders Advising Leaders - Academy Brochure
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