What & How

So what is smart growth and how did it begin?

The key to creating smart growth is having a high density area where people can walk, easily go in and out of shops and enjoy where they are. The smart growth environment is healthier because of how easy it is to walk around, it saves money due to less gas being used, and it is safer as there are not as many cars and therefor not as many accidents. In an urban sprawl area there is low density and it is very reliant on the automobile making it unhealthier and less safe. Urban sprawl areas also have isolated neighborhoods and isolated shopping and are typically not as pleasant to be in. 

Americans began to leave subdivisions in the 1950s in search of the American dream. Having a single family home, large back yards, and a family car to drive to town in. American were able to leave the city because factories and business began to develop outside the city which created jobs for people and enable them to move. Automobiles also play a large role in why people could move outside the city. When you can drive it is no longer necessary to live close enough to work or stores to be able to walk to them. As areas around cities began to develop problems started to arise. Problems with the environment, Americans health, our lifestyles and our quality of life. In the 1970's some cities such as Portland Oregon and the Twin Cities began to take steps towards smart growth. 

Taking a Closer Look

"The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible." - James H Kunstler

In this video James Kunstler dissects numerous problems with the American landscape. Kunstler's main objective is to get across to the audience that the voice of the American landscape says "we don't care" - we don't care about what is provided for us or how our demands are met and Kunstler want Americans to demand better for themselves. To be just another person in America who contributes to the deterioration of our society through our acceptance of mediocre is intolerable because we have the power to make environments for ourselves that enhance our daily lives. 

Choices

There are many possible futures when it comes what the American landscape will come to look like but right now we have two basic choices. We can either allow sprawl to continue  or we can take action to change our lifestyles through smart growth.





"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy,                          

but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard"       

-George McGovern

As this quote from George McGovern, a political leader, says as Americans we can accept the current state of our lives as the best option for all of us or we can demand better for ourselves. When I look around the American landscape I think we can do anything we want with this world and this is what we chose to do with it? Our communities are not good enough for American citizens.  

This tables shows the advantages and disadvantages of smart growth and urban sprawl communities. 

As you can see the advantages or strengths of smart growth heavily out weigh that of urban sprawl. The disadvantages of smart growth are much easier to combat than are the weaknesses or disadvantages of urban sprawl. The lifestyle that comes with smart growth is far superior for every age group and most types of people in America. 

Urban sprawl affects America negatively in four main ways - 

It harms the environment, does not encourage a healthy lifestyle and can be unsafe, provides a poor quality of life, and is expensive and inconvenient.


When we look at the carbon footprint of an average sprawl home we get - 

The carbon footprint of an average suburban American is 12.2 – Assuming they:

-Live in a single family home

  - With three bedrooms

  - Four residents

-  Drive a van made in 2005 and   travel 10-15K a year


Where as the carbon footprint of an average smart growth American is - 

The carbon footprint of an average urban American is 4.9 – Assuming they:

-Live in a five unit apartment  complex 

--Three bedrooms

-- Four residents

-Two seater car made in 2005 and travel 100-1000




The biggest difference between the two lifestyles comes from the use of transportation. In a smart growth area it would be easier for residents to walk to work or to go get groceries. It also makes a large difference to live in a multi-unit complex.


Smart growth is also environmentally savvy because it focuses on redeveloping rather than compromising farmland or parks.  

Next Steps

It is easy to identify between a sprawl region and a smart growth region. The challenge is creating change in a community and generating ideas that are that applicable to the existing undesired conditions of a region or town.


There are four main ways to enhance smart growth across America -


•Tax incentives

• Brownfield redevelopment

• Elimination of sprawl-enhancing subsidies

•Urban growth boundaries

Brown field redevelopment like the one in the picture below from Atlanta Georgia are great ways to make use of land already part of the community and enable communities to become mixed use - having residential and commercial next to each other. 

In this picture the idea is to take an old building along side railroad tracks that are still being used. By putting a light rail track down along the railroad track it allows the people who would visit here not a way to get here as well as a more green way to get around Atlanta. Light rail would also make the area more walkable as the stops would be more frequent and right along the sidewalk which is right up in front of the commercial development. Building here rather than on undeveloped land around the city of Atlanta is not only more environmentally savvy but makes it more assessable to the residents of the city. By using the old building materials are being saved which is also environmentally smart and this old building lends itself nicely to mixed use because shopping can easily be put in place on the bottom part where as businesses and residential can be put on the higher floors.  

Just as the government effectively offered tax incentives to get Americans into neighborhoods outside of the cities the government could offer tax incentives for get people to assimilate in abiding by smart growth regulations. The American people as active voters have the power to create urban growth boundaries that can  halt urban sprawl and keep communities focused on smart growth.  The American people also need to be more aware of political leaders who support sprawl enhancing subsidies to put a stop to them.  

Current State of the American Landscape

When we look at the American landscape, our neighborhoods, what do we see? 

The clip above is the introduction to a Showtime show called Weeds. I think it illustrates the psychological and social problems that are part of many American subdivisions or neighborhoods. The monotony that is shown through each person following the same routine, having the same material items, and from the lyrics of the song Little Boxes, feeling the same pressure to be the all alike by following the same steps in life from college to career choice is juxtaposed in the neighborhoods we inhabit. Even without their inhabitants neighborhoods like this one personify the lifestyle styles that course through them. From the monochromatic colors of the houses to the large garages and long driveways it is clear that who ever would come to live here is held to a standard not by the other people who live here but the landscape itself. The landscape of where we live has a large impact on how we behave and tells where our expectations stand. 

Let's look at an average home (This one is in Mishawaka Indiana) - 

From looking at the front of the house there are several things to point out about the lack of function and message this house sends that contributes to the one the entire neighborhood and landscape is sending. To quote James Kunstler, "This is really in fact a television broadcasting a show 24/7 called we're normal, we're normal . . . please respect us" which is the message this house is sending. The front of this house is like a TV screen. The house itself like a TV. The sides of it have no windows, if you look at the house to left you'll see that it too has no windows on the sides, and the back of the house has two windows. Which leaves the front as the only side of house viewer worthy. The front is where we and the neighbors can watch the story of the people who live inside. Looking at the functionality of the house it tells several things. One being that the family that lives here relies on automobiles from the garage and really likes them because they have not one but two. It has a very small porch which can not even function as a porch it is so small but tries to through the delta covering and columns on either side, a full four feet apart from each other. The side walk out front which gets the most use from cars driving over it everyday as the residents of this neighbor can not walk any where but down the street and what is there aside from more house just like their own. The shutters that frame the windows on the main part of the house serve only one function and that is to say, "these shutters show we're are part of the American culture because they are just like shutters that once appeared on log cabins before window pains". The windows above the garage do not even pretend to carry any part of culture or design. The tan color of the house communicates it is just the same as all the others on street and that the people living there are just the same as well. 

Looking the street the house is on - 

From this view we can see how all the houses are set up the same. Same sized unused yard, long driveways and we begin to see the outline of the streets and col-de-sacs. 

Looking at the surrounding entire subdivision - 

This is the whole neighborhood the house is a part of. The streets are constructed in distorted square and circular blocks to make room for retention ponds that will later be called lakes and given placeless names like Carriage Field Waters. The streets are also fractioned to make sure each person has room for their car and that their yard is large enough so they do not have to interact with their neighbor if they do not want. 

Subdivisions in the surrounding areas - 

The neighborhood we looked at is in the left side of the picture about half way down. This picture is a prime example of sprawl. There are blocks of large subdivisions rather than blocks of houses. Each subdivision isolated from the next in terms of walking and all isolated from supermarkets and other commercial development.