THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280004
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY LEE R. EPSTEIN
LENGTH: 61 lines
As long-time, very interested observers of the land-use scene in Virginia and throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed, we couldn't agree with you more. Your May 5, 1996, editorial on suburban sprawl was right on target. But there's more to sprawl than what one observer has called ``the geography of nowhere.''
There is first the direct connection between sprawl and the public debt of local communities. Sprawl is often wasteful of public dollars, and suburbs in Virginia have found that serving sprawling communities with schools, police and fire, and sewer and water, usually costs much more than the new development brings in taxes. What a colossal waste of scarce financial resources to close 10 older inner suburban schools and build 10 new outer suburban ones. Or forget closing old schools in already overcrowded areas - just building a single new high school these days costs upwards of $30 million.
Just as important, to accommodate the growth expected in the Bay's watershed over the next 15 to 20 years - some 2.5 million more people and many more jobs - a sprawling pattern will literally consume four to five times the open, resource land (farms, forests and wetlands) than a compact pattern. Having destroyed these environmentally and economically productive resource lands that provide habitat and absorb stormwater, sprawl will actually increase the amount of polluted runoff that further degrades the Bay.
Of particular relevance to Hampton Roads, sprawl produces four times the vehicle trips with their attendant air pollution and road congestion, than does a more-compact pattern. For a region that is close to non-attainment of clean-air standards, the cost of sprawl-induced air pollution will be new tailpipe inspections for residents and stricter controls on local industry. Adding more traffic to an already congested road system will require the consumption of even more public resources to meet the needs of the region.
And it's not helping the cities much either. There's a downward spiral that self-perpetuates as the exodus of people and tax base leads to disintergrating city services and the loss of downtown jobs. Crime and schools surely need attention at the core, but outlying jurisdictions also need to manage their growth, and re-focus inward. The consequence of a failure to do so could be a metro area whose hollowed out, impoverished center acts like a vacuum, sucking the image, energy and economy out of an entire region.
It doesn't have to be that way. We can help shape our 21st-century growth. The planning decisions being made now in Hampton Roads communities can slow and reverse the trend toward ever more sprawl and its costly consequences. In Norfolk, the bold new plan for redeveloping East Ocean View creates the kind of community you called for in your editorial, and would inject new life into the city.
The future vision offered in your editorial - of networks of livable, compact, clustered, ``Bay-friendly'' communities that mix residential with commercial and employment opportunities, are linked by light rail or busways, and are surrounded by green, productive open lands - is the ticket to sustainability. The choice is ours, and we can make it at the planning commission, at the ballot box and in the decisions we make in our everyday lives. MEMO: Mr. Epstein is director of the non-profit Chesapeake Bay
Foundation's Lands Program. by CNB