The Myth of Smart Growth

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Thanks to some generous support I finally had the opportunity to write what I
really think about Smart Growth.  I hope you will enjoy the commentary,
which is available on my website at the link below. While this piece is overdue,
it’s better late than never! Feel free to share it, distribute it in any
manner, or to use all or portions of it in publications or newsletters. Your
feedback is welcomed.

The Myth of Smart Growth:
http://www.fodorandassociates.com/Reports/Myth_of_Smart_Growth.pdf

Best wishes!
Eben

Fodor & Associates • Eugene, Oregon • www.fodorandassociates.com

The Myth of Smart Growth

Copyright ©2012 by Fodor & Associates LLC

By Eben Fodor

July 2012

Overview

“Smart growth” is an urban growth management strategy that applies planning
and design principles which are intended to mitigate the impacts of continued
growth. If properly applied, these principles represent a positive contribution
to new urban development. However, smart growth is part of the “culture of
growth” that perpetuates the “endless growth model.” The rhetoric of smart
growth is that population levels and growth rates are not the problem; it’s
merely a matter of how we grow. According to the “smart growth” program, if
we are less wasteful and more efficient in our urban growth, everything will
work out fine. “Smart growth” does not see an end to growth or a need to end
growth.

The term “smart growth,” and the movement associated with it, have tended to
undermine earnest public concern about the environmental, social, and economic
impacts of continued growth. Using smart growth rhetoric, public concern about
the amount and pace of growth has been transformed into a discussion about how
we should best continue growing. “Smart growth” is cast as a comprehensive
solution, when it is actually just a means of postponing the inevitable
consequences of too much growth. The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates
• Page 2

What is Smart Growth?

The “smart growth” (SG) movement began to emerge in the late 1990s as a
response to the problems resulting from a decade of intensive urban growth. To a
large extent, SG is the current incarnation of urban growth management, which
was bred in the 1960s and 70s. The strategies advocated under SG are not new.
They simply incorporated planning and design practices developed 40 or more
years ago. These practices have been packaged into a prescription for today’s
growth ailments.

SG is largely a response to widespread public dislike of urban sprawl, and
hence, SG advocates identify sprawl as the primary culprit. This relatively
low-density, market-driven development pattern uses land in an inefficient
manner. Sprawl results in the accelerated loss of undeveloped rural land and
open space. Sprawling development is associated with environmental impacts,
costly and inefficient demand for new public infrastructure and services,
overreliance on automobile transportation, and loss of community character.

SG strives for denser development patterns that require less land. Accompanying
this compact development are mixed-use and neighborhood design strategies that
help make the denser development more appealing. SG has the potential to make
development more profitable by reducing developer costs for land, roadways,
parking, and utilities. These savings may be offset by the extra amenities
required to make such compact development attractive to homebuyers and
businesses.

The five main elements of SG have been effectively summarized by Gabor Zovanyi
as:1

1 The Role of Initial Statewide Smart-Growth Legislation in Advancing the Tenets
of Smart Growth, by Gabor Zovanyi, The Urban Lawyer, Vol. 39, No. 2, Spring
2007, p 371-414.

ï‚· Growth containment in compact settlements

ï‚· Protection of the environment, resource lands, and open space

ï‚· Multi-modal transportation systems

ï‚· Mixed-use development

ï‚· Collaborative planning and decision making

In essence, SG represents an effort to promote greater efficiency in new urban
development. Under the SG regimen, new development will use less land and have
lower impacts on a per-capita or per-unit basis.

The SG goal of reigning in sprawl is ostensibly based on an underlying desire to
protect The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page 3

undeveloped rural lands, farms, forests, natural areas, and open spaces from
development. However, the clear impression one gets from smart growth literature
is that, as long as new growth is compact and efficiently-planned, it is
acceptable for development to continue consuming rural land and for the urban
footprint to keep expanding. In other words, from the SG perspective, it’s
okay to develop rural lands as long as it’s done properly in an orderly and
efficient manner.

It is highly notable that SG proponents do not identify growth itself as part of
the problem. Instead, all problems associated with growth are attributed to the
manner in which growth occurs, not the amount or pace of growth. Thus, SG
proponents maintain that growth itself is benign and that growth-related
problems can be adequately addressed by influencing where and how growth occurs.

Members of the SG movement are frequently quoted in the media prefacing their
remarks about local land use, growth, and development issues by saying “We are
not opposed to growth.” They may clarify that they are merely concerned that
growth occurs in a “responsible way.” Thus, they have preemptively swept
critical aspects of the growth debate off the table and out of the public
dialogue, shifting the focus to the details of how growth should occur.

Smart Growth is More Growth

SG is a pro-growth movement, as the name implies. It is ultimately about
accommodating and facilitating more growth. It does not include any strategies
for slowing or limiting growth and does not envision or contemplate an end to
growth. While sprawling development is viewed as undesirable, non-sprawling
development is viewed as beneficial and desirable. Thus, SG proponents believe
that growth, if done properly, can be transformed from a costly blight on the
landscape into an attractive development with predominantly positive impacts on
the community.

U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer from Portland, Oregon, has been a champion of
SG from its beginnings. He was interviewed on the topic by NPR a number of years
ago. When asked if people in Oregon were concerned about too much growth, he
replied that Oregon has about the same land area as the United Kingdom, but the
UK has 20 times the population. His statement seemed to dismiss well-known
concerns in Oregon about population growth as unjustified and implied the state
could accommodate 20 times the population without a significant problem or any
need for concern. The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page 4

The NPR interviewer accepted Congressman Blumenauer’s statement and did not
follow up to ask him if he believed this much growth would be desirable, or if
the people he represents in Oregon were in favor of a 20-fold increase in the
state’s population. Perhaps when the population of Oregon reaches the UK’s
population of 60 million, the Congressman will cite an example such as
Singapore. With a population density of 19,000 people per square mile, Singapore
is accommodating 475 times more people per square mile than Oregon.

SG not only means more growth, it means endless growth. The principles of SG are
based on a fundamental assumption that we can keep growing indefinitely and that
any real limitations to more growth either don’t exist or are too distant in
the future to be of concern – even within the typical 20-year urban planning
horizon of most cities.

Is More Growth Smart?

Is SG the solution we are looking for? The answer depends on our understanding
of the problem. SG proponents have identified the problem as poorly-planned,
sprawling development. However, it seems clear that sprawl is one symptom of the
real problem, which is growth: growth in population and the associated urban
development.

SG advocates claim we don’t need to worry about the rate of growth or the
number of people we will have in the future if we keep growing. They argue that
we can continue to accommodate growth indefinitely through better planning and
mitigation of negative impacts. Growth is not the problem, they tell us, it’s
just how we grow that needs to be addressed. SG has a recipe for growth and, if
followed closely, SG advocates promise it will keep us on the path of growth
without sacrificing our environment, eroding our quality of life, or losing the
amenities and attributes that we care about in our communities. Small towns need
not worry about becoming overrun by growth, they say, with SG, the “small-town
feeling” will be maintained even as the town becomes a city.

The gospel of SG is certainly seductive: we can keep on doing what we’ve been
doing, and with a few fairly easy changes, protect all that we care about. But
are these claims realistic? Can we really just keep on growing while protecting
the environment, our natural resources, and the quality of the community for
current and future generations? Many people want to believe so.

However, such belief in SG fails to recognize that even the smartest growth
places a heavy burden on our environment and our communities, and creates
significant The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page 5

impacts, most of which cannot be fully mitigated. An expanding local population
requires more land, more expensive infrastructure, more services, more energy,
more natural resources, more waste production, more greenhouse gas emissions,
more water, more food production, and more transportation.

SG proponents are making an implied tradeoff: they are concluding that the
benefits from continued growth are greater than the costs, as long as their SG
formula is applied. But what precisely are these benefits from growth? Where are
they documented? And how do they compare with the costs? None of this sort of
objective accounting is ever performed by the SG proponents. Since continued
urban growth will have major impacts on our cities, towns, and rural areas
across the country, an objective analysis of the costs and benefits seems
obligatory.

The “technological fix” theory argues that we can address the needs of an
expanding population and its environmental impacts through technological
solutions. SG is a form of the technological fix that tries to solve growth
problems through better planning and design. But how far can this type of
solution go?

Amory Lovins, in his book Factor Four, estimated that, by fully utilizing
technology to achieve greater efficiency and productivity, the world could
potentially sustain the same lifestyle and wealth we enjoy today with 1/4th the
energy and resource use.2 To make this outcome sound even more appealing, the
author suggested we use the achievable savings to double our wealth while
halving our resource use. In either case, this seems to offer a remarkable
possibility of continued growth without placing more demand on the world’s
resources.

2 Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use, Ernst Ulrich Weizsäcker,
Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Earthscan, London, 1998, 322 pages.

However, the book notes that if consumption were to grow at a 4% annual rate, it
would quadruple in just 35 years and all the savings achieved by this tremendous
efficiency improvement would be neutralized. So, while eliminating waste and
using our limited resources wisely seems like a good idea, it does not
ultimately solve the problem of growth.

We must distinguish between solutions that fix the problem, and solutions that
buy us more time to fix the problem. SG buys us a little more time by reducing
the per-capita impacts of growth. But if the SG movement fails to recognize the
rest of the solution, then any extra time is wasted while the problem grows
bigger. The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page 6

The consequences of this failure are illustrated by Kenneth Boulding’s
“Dismal Theorems” describing our options for the future and how “technical
solutions” like SG impact them:

The “Dismal Theorems” on Growth 3

3 Kenneth E. Boulding, Collected Papers of Kenneth E. Boulding, Vol. 2, Colorado
Associated U. Press, Boulder, CO, 1971, p. 137.

1st Theorem: “The Dismal Theorem”

If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the
population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth.

2nd Theorem: “The Utterly Dismal Theorem”

Any technical improvement can only relieve misery for a while, for so long as
misery is the only check on population, the improvement will enable population
to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in misery than before. The
final result of improvements, therefore, is to increase the equilibrium
population, which is to increase the total sum of human misery.

3rd Theorem: “The moderately cheerful form of the Dismal Theorem”

Fortunately, it is not too difficult to restate the Dismal Theorem in a
moderately cheerful form: if something else, other than misery and starvation,
can be found which will keep a prosperous population in check, the population
does not have to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably
prosperous.

Those of us working towards the “moderately cheerful” path recognize that
relying solely on technical improvements, as SG does, leads to the “utterly
dismal” path – the worst possible outcome. If endless growth was truly our
fate, then SG might postpone the “day of reckoning,” but would not prevent
its arrival. Smart growth may be better than dumb growth, but if it doesn’t
ultimately help us solve the problem of too much growth, then it just ends up
becoming a diversion, and thereby part of the problem. The Myth of Smart Growth
• Fodor & Associates • Page 7

Recognizing Limits to Growth

Given the historically-unprecedented magnitude of growth and change we have been
witnessing, it’s hard to comprehend the optimism surrounding SG. Globally,
more people were added to the population in the past 50 years than in all prior
history. We’ve passed the 7 billion mark and added the latest billion people
in just the last 12 years. With more than half of these people living in poverty
and one billion of them in hunger, it seems heartless and even cruel to actively
pursue a policy of continued growth.

A 50-year-old individual living in the U.S. has been witness to more development
of the American landscape than occurred in all previous human history. One-third
of all the land ever developed in the U.S. was developed in just the last 25
years. Land converted to development in the U.S. averaged 2.2 million acres a
year from 1992 to 2001, a land area greater than South Carolina in just nine
years.4

4 National Resources Inventory, 2001 Annual NRI, Urbanization and Development of
Rural Land, July 2003, by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

5 Analysis by author, May 2010, from US Census and USDA National Agricultural
Statistics Service data.

Total U.S. farmland is steadily declining as farms become subdivisions. The
combination of population growth and farmland loss resulted in an alarming
decline in the amount of farmland per-capita from 4 acres to 3 acres in the 20
years from 1989 to 2009.5 The US became a net food importer in 2005 for the
first time in at least 50 years. Current agricultural productivity is highly
dependent on fossil fuels, making it vulnerable to energy price and supply
fluctuations.

These are just a few examples of our unsustainable and
historically-unprecedented level of growth and land development. The result of
continuing the growth we have experienced in the past is that we will quickly
grow to absurd and ridiculous proportions that will be unsustainable by almost
any definition. The number of people, the size of the economy, and the amount of
urban development associated with this growth would clearly overwhelm our
planet’s resources. Why would continuing this trend make sense to the smart,
educated people who coined the term “smart” growth?

There will always be those who remain in denial about the impacts of human
expansion on the planet. No amount of evidence will convince them. There are
those who think that perpetual growth is desirable. Even if it can be shown that
this growth is not beneficial or is harmful, it does not matter because growth
is inevitable. So they believe The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates
• Page 8

that not only is growth desirable, it’s unavoidable.

Rational people know that the limits to growth will have been reached when we
begin to degrade the life-supporting capacity of the earth. We have seen this
evidence for the past 20 years, with the species extinction rate and declining
biodiversity, fisheries collapse, groundwater decline, deforestation, soil
erosion, farmland loss, and anthropogenic climate change.

Why I can’t be a Smart Growther

After my book Better Not Bigger was first released in 1999, I had the
opportunity to give hundreds of presentations on urban growth to communities
across the country. These were communities struggling with intense growth
pressures and the consequences of past growth. In spite of interest in the topic
of SG, I felt it would be dishonest to tell people that compact,
transit-friendly development would be their salvation. I felt that portraying SG
as the solution to problems it cannot solve would be morally wrong. It would be
especially reprehensible due to the potential consequences of decades of
additional growth that could be spawned by a smart growth approach.

Instead, I chose to describe the dynamics of growth, to explain why we grow, and
to address the real impacts of growth on communities so that people could have
better-informed and more-productive discussions about the future of their
communities.

If you are knowledgeable about the consequence of continued growth, it is a
difficult step to get on the SG bandwagon because it requires you to abandon
further discussion about growth itself, to disavow legitimate concerns about
continued growth, and to embrace the SG package as the complete and ultimate
solution to the problems of growth. You must believe that SG will take us
farther than is rationally possible. This requires a leap of faith not unlike a
religious conversion.

While I could not bring myself to join the SG movement, I did not initially wish
to belittle this nascent movement that was promoting planning and design
principles that I supported. However, after years of observation, I have noted
that there is a dark side to SG. Not only does this movement have a decidedly
pro-growth focus and misleadingly portray itself as the ultimate solution to
growth problems, but it also seems to be hostile to citizens or groups
expressing legitimate concerns about continued growth. SG advocates often try to
discredit and marginalize these viewpoints by casting them as extremist,
radical, or illegitimate. This is in spite of the fact that such views are often
The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page 9

mainstream, with surveys showing a majority of the public has concerns about too
much growth. It is also in spite of ample evidence that most urban development
has predominantly negative environmental and fiscal impacts.

Conclusion

The SG program contains many sensible planning and design strategies that have
been tested and proven over the past 40-plus years. If properly applied, they
should improve the quality of new development. However, SG advocates have taken
this formula too far by claiming their medicine is a cure for the growth
ailment.

The myth of SG is that it represents the complete and ultimate solution to our
growth-related problems. At best, SG is a partial and temporary solution that
has the potential to mitigate some of the impacts of continued growth on
environmental quality, natural resources, the fiscal condition of local
governments, transportation systems, and livability.

The moral dilemma with SG is that it provides a rationale for allowing us to
make the problem bigger. To the extent that SG serves to perpetuate growth by
commandeering the public dialogue about growth and by misleading citizens into
believing it is the complete solution to growth-related problems, it serves to
delay real problem-solving while allowing the problem to grow.

SG serves to placate citizens and environmentalists who are legitimately
concerned about the consequences of continued urban expansion. People who might
otherwise express their opposition to new development, file lawsuits, and object
to more growth planning, are instead told that SG will address their concerns
and will assure that growth occurs in the least-impactful manner.

Many environmental organizations that sign on to the SG agenda are not being
fully honest with their memberships. They must be clear that SG is only a
temporary approach intended to modestly reduce the negative impacts of growth
while we take stronger steps toward real sustainability. They must acknowledge
that SG buys us more time, but does not fix the problem.

At its worst, SG is a weak and ineffective approach to managing growth that not
only fails to fix the problem, but undermines efforts to do so. It is a way to
put off until tomorrow what should be done today. It shirks the responsibilities
of today’s generation The Myth of Smart Growth • Fodor & Associates • Page
10

and transfers the burden to future generations, forcing them to address bigger
problems with fewer remaining resources.
Instead of building more urban development under the SG banner, we need less
development. We need to leave our remaining greenfields green. We need to keep
our urban footprints from expanding onto more farms, forests, and open spaces.
We must move beyond SG and begin to plan stable and sustainable communities that
allow humans to prosper without overrunning the landscape and overwhelming the
natural life support system. We must respect the local and regional carrying
capacity, while leaving ample breathing room for other life on the planet to
also prosper. Doing so will assure an enduring legacy of humans in balance with
the earth. ï‚ž
Eben Fodor

Fodor & Associates LLC
Eugene, OR
541-345-8246
www.fodorandassociates.com