by Alex Alexiev
As California stumbles through an unprecedented economic crisis caused by years of profligate spending, burdensome regulations and assaults on the free market economy by the leftist political establishment that dominates the state, one of the policies that has contributed significantly to the economic implosion of the formerly Golden State continues its work undermining its economic foundations unabated. Known as “smart growth” to its proponents, it aims to radically restructure traditional American land use policies in the name of a collectivist utopia under environmental disguise. Though it is often implemented stealthily and is therefore poorly understood by the citizenry, it has already become the guiding principle in land use policies up and down the state with devastating consequences for traditional property rights, housing markets and, ultimately, the economic well-being of the people (Footnote 1). And because these policies are invariably imposed through the coercive powers of the government, they directly impact the constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of Americans.
The remainder of this article will try to document the disingenuous and deceptive propaganda and methods used by ‘smart growth’ advocates to push their agenda in the Central Coast county of San Luis Obispo, a sparsely populated county that has none of the problems that ‘smart growth’ is ostensibly designed to address.
So what exactly is ‘smart growth’? Essentially, it is a planning vision or an urban utopia, promising us a better, environmentally sound way to live by reorienting current housing development patterns to high-density, mixed-use and mass transit-based urban communities. According to its supporters, it will, when implemented, stop urban sprawl, alleviate traffic congestion and pollution, reduce crime, create jobs and make cities more livable by making it possible for people to live in close proximity to their jobs and amenities, and, last but most, alleviate global warming. Utopian or not, there is nothing wrong with this vision if its proponents were simply trying to persuade people to embrace it and make it a reality voluntarily.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with it that make it a pie-in-the-sky fantasy if left to the people’s choice. First, the vast majority of American cities were built for the automobile and the kind of 19th century high-density, walkable city smart growth seems to conjure up is simply impossible to recreate short of bulldozing our urban communities and starting over again. Secondly, the vast majority of Americans, as countless surveys and the market have shown, prefer to live in single family homes with a yard if given a choice.
Faced with this reality, the smart growth utopians choose to force their vision on their fellow citizens through the coercive powers of government. Specifically, the method followed in most cases involves the drawing of an arbitrary “urban growth” boundary around cities and forcing all future growth inside it, while denying building permits to property owners outside of it. The result is that property values outside this arbitrary boundary plummet, even as prices inside the boundary often skyrocket (Footnote 2). The end effect of this government assault on property rights is tantamount to government-sponsored destruction of private property values and ought to be unconstitutional under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Despite its openly coercive nature, ‘smart growth’ has become the received wisdom of the politically dominant Left and allied environmental lobbies throughout California and is increasingly the rule rather than the exception in land use policies. It has already wreaked havoc with the housing market of the state and will surely destroy American property rights if not stopped.
In practical terms, the imposition of this coercive utopia on the often unsuspecting citizenship in San Luis Obispo county and elsewhere follows a well-established pattern. The first order of business is packing county and city planning departments and commissions with leftist environmental zealots, which is not altogether difficult since most of these planners are the product of urban planning schools and faculties, which, with very few exceptions, are a domain of anti-market central planning ideologies. The result is that most of these people have little or no experience in the private sector and view themselves called upon to implement their collectivist schemes with little concern about their economic impact. And because these unelected central planners acquire tremendous de facto power through their monopoly on building permit issuance they often come to dominate land use policies and regulations to a greater extent than elected officials. In San Luis Obispo, a county of only 265,000 residents, for instance, an army of well over a hundred full-time planners and planning commissioners both design and implement land use policies with little more than rubber-stamp supervision by county supervisors who often appear poorly informed of the issues involved (Footnote 3).
The planners’ objectives are greatly facilitated by the steady drumbeat of pro-smart growth propaganda and disinformation disseminated by well-organized radical environmental groups, their allies in government and the uncritical and politically correct mainstream media. What is involved is a massive scare-mongering effort designed to convince the public that only smart growth policies can prevent imminent environmental doom. Thus, the public is told that traditional market-driven land use policies will soon result in out-of-control urban sprawl, gobble up most open space, endanger agriculture, make it impossible for local governments to provide even basic services, lead to traffic gridlock, pollution and crime and generally destroy the county’s quality of life (Footnote 4).
The actual reality in SLO county cannot be further from this deceptive picture. The county is already heavily urbanized with 81.2% of the population living in cities or urban clusters and only 18% in the rural areas (Footnote 5). Despite this high level of urbanization, only 3% of the land is in urban developments with the rest remaining open space (51% pasture, 27% farmland, 18% timberland, brush etc.) (Footnote 6). Most of the open space (at least 80% in some estimates) is already locked in state and federal parkland, Williamson Act acreage, easements like Hearst Ranch, etc., and is unlikely to be developed with or without smart growth.
Further, far from being consumed by urban sprawl, the county is extremely sparsely populated at 75 persons per square mile (compared to 10,000 in Los Angeles) or three times less the California average (217) and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Far from the “untrammeled growth” claimed by smart growth propagandists, SLOC is growing at less than 1% per year currently and may now be losing population under the impact of the housing crisis (Footnote 7). Nor is there much traffic congestion or pollution in a county with virtually no heavy industry and an average commuting time of 21 min., a third less than the average for California (Footnote 8). Finally, there is no shortage of high-density housing in the county for those who want it with 18.6% of all housing units in multi-unit structures already by 2000 (Footnote 9).
While ‘smart growth’ planners in the county are keen on disseminating deliberately deceptive information of the kind documented above, there are much less keen on revealing to the public the coercive nature of their schemes or of the methods they intend to use to impose them. Nonetheless, the central planners’ publications designed to prove the superior virtues of ‘smart growth’ occasionally and perhaps inadvertently reveal what’s in store for the public. For instance, in an effort to help the incorporation of the ‘smart growth’ principles into the SLO county general plan and thus make the law of the county in March of 2009, SLOC’s planning department published a document designed to show the superiority of smart growth (which the county has recently started calling ‘strategic growth’) to conventional development (Footnote 10). While, like most similar partisan documents, this study engages liberally in the already mentioned deceptive tactics, it also provides rare glimpses of what the central planners really have in mind (Footnote 11).
We find out, for example, that while conventional, market-driven and therefore voluntary housing patterns in the county call for roughly 90% detached housing on large lots and 10% multi-family units, ‘smart growth’ zoning intends to replace that with 40% multi-family housing, 32% detached housing on tiny (less than 6000 square foot) lots and only 28% single-family housing on lots over 6000 sq. foot (Footnote 12).
While this kind of radical zoning change would be difficult or impossible to introduce quickly in cities with established zoning laws, the unincorporated areas of the county are clearly envisaged as the guinea pigs of smart growth experimentation. The document specifically mentions three such SLOC communities (Nipomo, Shandon and Los Osos) as designed by the central planners to absorb 30%, 20% and 18% respectively of the projected growth (Footnote 13). In practice, this would mean nearly doubling the population of Nipomo and increasing that of Shandon eightfold! It is worth mentioning here that these two communities do not have adequate water supplies even for their present much smaller populations, while Los Osos currently lacks a functioning sewage system. It is a testimony to the arrogance of the smart growth planners that none of these communities seem to have been consulted by them as to their own future.
In yet another demonstration of the arrogance of power demonstrated by these coercive utopians, in foisting their disastrous smart growth agendas on the public, the planners have refused to provide an environmental impact report of their likely negative implications for the environment as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This brazen disregard of existing law has finally galvanized grassroots resistance to the smart growth steamroller and a lawsuit against the county for failing to comply with CEQA has been filed by a group opposing its radical agenda. It is to be hoped that the growing exposure of the dishonest smart growth shenanigans of these zealots will convince the citizens of San Luis Obispo county and California beyond, that what is at stake is nothing less than their fundamental rights and freedoms as Americans.
Alex Alexiev, a veteran national security analyst, is currently a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He served nearly 20 years as a senior analyst with the national security division of the Rand Corporation. Alexiev directed numerous research projects for the Department of Defense and other agencies. He is the author of several books and myriad articles on national security issues. His present research focuses on issues related to Islamic extremism and terrorism. He is a resident of San Luis Obispo county and a member of the board of directors of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business of San Luis Obispo (COLABSLO).
Footnotes:
1 – In just one example of how ‘smart growth’ affected the housing bubble that was a decisive contributor to the current economic crisis, empirical evidence has shown that the greatest price increases followed by the steepest collapse occurred exactly in cities and regions that imposed smart growth land use restrictions like San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego etc. In fact, there was little appreciation and therefore not much of a housing crisis in areas that pursued conventional land use policies. For example, in the 25 large US cities (over one million population) with conventional land use policies, properties experienced price increases averaging 11.5% ($148,000 to $161,400) between 2000 and 2007, while the 25 cities with smart growth policies averaged 97.5% increase ($189,200 to $363,200) in the same period. See this link. As even the left-wing New York Times columnist and economist, Paul Krugman, was forced to admit, the housing price bubble was limited to “urban areas with restrictive land use regulations.” Link.
2 – This, for instance, is what happened in one of the largest experiments with ‘smart growth’ in the U.S. to date in Portland, Oregon. For a detailed analysis and critique of the Portland smart growth experience see Randal O’Toole, “Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn’t Work,” Policy Analysis #596, July, 2007, Cato Institute, available here.
3 – A good example of this is a key vote by the SLO County Board of Supervisors in the Spring of 2005 which approved the smart growth principles for land use policy. A review of the videotape of the meeting reveals that while the two environmental activists on the board called numerous government witnesses extolling the virtues of smart growth, the three “conservative” members constituting the board majority at the time, appeared uninformed if not clueless about the issue and ended up voting unanimously for smart growth.
4 – For a typical example of such propaganda by two prominent smart growth supporters see John Shoals and Bruce Gibson, “Viewpoint: Smart is the Way to Go for SLO,” San Luis Obispo Tribune, May 6, 2008.
5 – Link.
7 – Between April 1, 2000 and July 1, 2008 the county population increased by only 7.5% or less than 1% per year. Link.
8 – Quick Facts, op. cit.
9 – Ibid.
10 – See “Growth Assessment: Comparing Conventional and Strategic Growth,” Department of Planning and Building, County of San Luis Obispo. Available electronically here.
11 – To mention just one glaring and deliberate disinformation, the planners’ projection for population increase by 2030 in the unincorporated areas of the county, which are the first and prime target of smart growth implementation, is twice the size of the official California (Dept. of Finance) projection (39,738 vs.19,751) and physically impossible based on current trends according to the US Census Bureau.
12 – Growth Assessment, op. cit. p.4.
13 – Ibid.
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