Look for a bumper sticker that begins with 'Save the...' and you can bet smart growth can help.  Sprawl is a well-known culprit for many of our environmental problems today.  Luckily, through creative thinking and common sense solutions, we can begin to turn back the tide.

NOT HOLDING OUR WATER WELL
SMART CONSERVATION
BE STRATEGIC ABOUT OPEN SPACE
ENCOURAGE SMART GROWTH DEVELOPMENT

Of all of the ill effects of sprawl, few are as well documented as its environmental consequences.  In addition to an abundance of scientific evidence, examples of the impact of sprawl on nature are all around us. Seeing cornfields transformed into office parks, scenic vistas soiled with monster homes, and billboards lining historic roads, one does not need a PhD to know something is wrong.

Not Holding our Water Well
Poor water quality remains a persistent problem across the nation, with more than one third of assessed rivers and streams not meeting water quality standards.  Sprawl adds to this crisis in several ways.  Rain and snowmelt move across highways, roads, parking lots and yards, sweeping a variety of contaminants into our storm drains and into our rivers and lakes.  As land in the watershed is converted to hard surfaces that are impervious to water, the area loses its ability to absorb and store rainfall.  Many of those hard surfaces are roads, which collect oil, solvents and other contaminants that are then washed into streams or other bodies of water.  For example, one study of the lower San Francisco Bay found that half of the cadmium and zinc in the bay came from tire wear.  Also, abundant research suggests that when impervious surfaces cover more than 10 percent of a watershed, the water bodies they surround become degraded.  If current sprawling growth trends continue, many healthy watersheds will cross that threshold over the next 25 years and the U.S. will experience sharp and irreversible declines in the health of coastal areas.

Low-density, automobile-dependent development is a leading cause of the increase in imperviousness.  Transportation-related hard surfaces account for over 60% of the total imperviousness in suburban areas.  For instance, a one-acre parking lot produces 16 times more runoff than an undeveloped meadow.  Wide streets and excessive parking around single-family homes in sprawling developments also contribute to runoff. 

In addition, rain runs off of hard surfaces much more rapidly and in much greater volume than under natural conditions.  The result is an increase in flash flooding, and a decrease in groundwater flows into streams, and less recharge into aquifers,.  While sprawl cannot cause drought, it can lead to making many of the effects drought worse because of decreased recharge. See Paving Our Way.

Where the Wild Things Aren’t While America has always been a place on the move, the nature of development has dramatically changed.  In the last 50 years the amount of urban land has quadrupled, and the sprawling auto-oriented development is bumping up against the boundaries of national parks, forests and other protected land.  See Biodiversity Translation paper.

As development spreads farther into wild lands – what scientists refer to as the “urban/rural interface” – wildlife habitat becomes become fragmented.  It is this fragmentation that is leading several scientists and wildlife preservation organizations to target sprawl as the key indicator of species loss.  In addition to sprawl’s danger to biodiversity, there is a growing threat to the human species in these “urban/rural interface” regions through a heightened risk of “natural” disasters, such as extreme flooding and fires.

Trouble Breathing Current development patterns also bring substantial air pollution, largely because of the increased automobile dependence that is associated with sprawl. For most people, especially those in conventional suburban developments, the only realistic choice for running these errands is to drive.  Motor vehicle use in America doubled from one to two trillion miles per year between 1970 to 1990.  SGA’s Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact found that a family of four living in a very sprawling region will drive 40 more miles a day than the same family in a more compact region.  The more sprawling areas have higher peak ozone levels.

All this means degraded air quality for many metropolitan regions in the U.S. and increased greenhouse gases for the world.  Although emission controls have improved over the past thirty years, unhealthy air pollution levels still plague virtually every major city in the United States. Urban air pollution also disproportionately affects low-income communities and people of color because of a history of running highways through poorer neighborhoods. More likely to suffer from exposure to air pollution, African Americans are also almost three times more likely than whites to die from asthma.

Lately, the connection between greenhouse gases and sprawl is becoming clearer.  About 32 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions (carbon dioxide is the major contributor to global warming) originate with transportation.  The federal Department of Energy projects that total U.S. carbon emissions will continue to grow at an average rate of 1.0 percent per year, with transportation sources growing 20 percent faster.


Smart Conservation
One of the core organizing principles of smart growth is to alleviate pressure to develop open spaces and farmland by reinvesting in existing communities and making them better places to live.  In addition to this over-arching goal, there are specific policies that can make conservation smarter and more effective. 

Protect Open Space, Especially Critical Aquatic Areas All levels of government can do more to identify and protect undeveloped areas because of the many services they provide.  Land preservation efforts should be especially targeted toward critical aquatic areas (groundwater recharge zones, wetlands, streamsides, floodplains, small tributary streams).  Local governments can protect these areas from development by aligning zoning, establishing protected areas, and changing development guidelines to use land more efficiently. States and counties should also offer tax incentives and direct sources of funding for land purchases or easements.

On the federal level, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) provides money to federal, state and local governments to purchase land, water and wetlands for inclusion in the National Forest System. Given the freshwater challenges we face, targeting LWCF funds to better protect headwater streams and riparian buffer areas would be a prudent strategy for the 21st Century. 

Some other federal programs for which funding should increase include:
• National Rivers Budget
• The Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), which helps landowners develop and
implement practices to protect and restore important wildlife habitat;
• The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which supports land retirement for 10-15 years;
• The Wetland Reserve Program (WRP), which supports permanent and long-term retirement and restoration of wetlands;
• The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which offers special incentives in designated priority areas that focus on programs identified by the States; and
• The Farmland Protection Program, which provides matching funds to state and local farmland protection programs.


Be Strategic about Open Space
In 2002, voters approved 75 percent of ballot initiatives to preserve open space. The proliferation of land trusts around the country is one of the real conservation success stories of the last twenty years.  By 2000, the Land Trust Alliance reports that regional and local land trusts had protected 6.2 million acres in the 50 states.

However, more needs to be done than saving land just to save it.  Many of the investments in open space preservation have been reactions to impending loss rather than a strategic effort to save critical areas. 

Just as transportation planners need to think of the whole region when planning projects, those involved with land preservation need make their “green infrastructure” investments with a long-term vision and the needs of the region in mind.


Encourage Smart Growth Development
Communities should facilitate smart growth development that minimizes impervious cover, encourages less driving and maximizes groundwater recharge.  For example, some communities have adopted “performance zoning” (a.k.a. “cluster zoning” or “conservation zoning”), which include standards for open space, development densities, narrower streets, impervious surfaces, and other water-related considerations. Unfortunately, many communities have yet to adopt such innovative policies, even though consumers increasingly favor their outcomes. A diverse group of stakeholders – developers, new homeowners, and rural residents – support market-based cluster zoning in which everyone wins.  Residents gain access to open space, developers and local governments save money on infrastructure investments such as roads and sewers, and local governments get an additional community amenity at limited cost, because home buyers pay for preserving open space.

Some communities are creating direct incentives for smart growth development. The city of Austin, Texas, for example, created a program that rewards developers for locating projects within the city’s existing neighborhoods and downtown. Under this Smart Growth Matrix program, developments are awarded points for a variety of attributes, such as transit access, brownfield redevelopment, whether or not water and sewer lines exist on site, and good urban design.