The Debate Over Mobile Home Parks

  • Because mobile homes can be transported they're not taxed the way permanent homes are. They're taxed like vehicles (when they're bought and sold). Mobile home owners pay a small tax for the small plot of land they sit on. (Photo by Chris McCarus)

People who live in mobile homes might be seeing their property taxes going up. Some government officials say it’s an attempt to tax for the services used and to discourage mobile home parks from sprawling across former farm fields. But others wonder if higher taxes aren’t a form of discrimination against this kind of affordable housing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

People who live in mobile homes might be seeing their property taxes going up. Some government officials say it’s an attempt to tax for the services used and to discourage mobile home parks from sprawling across former farm fields. But others wonder if higher taxes aren’t a form of discrimination against this kind of affordable housing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


(sound of expressway traffic)


The Capital Crossings mobile home park sits on rolling farmland near an Interstate highway. The residents of the 15 homes have moved here either to retire or to make the 30 minute daily commute to nearby Lansing, Michigan. And more mobile homes are being pulled in.


(sound of construction)


Workers are building porches and attaching the skirting between the ground and the house. It’s supposed to show permanence, like a foundation. But mobile homes are not permanent. And mobile homes are not taxed the same way as other houses. They’re taxed like vehicles. Taxed when they’re purchased. Taxed when they’re sold. Still there are no property taxes on the homes. Only on the tiny lots on which they sit.


Some government officials say the $3 a month that these park residents have been paying for property taxes don’t cover the costs of police and fire protection or other government services. They want a tax hike to give local governments more money. Dave Morris is a farmer and the local township supervisor.


“We all have to pay our fair share for services such as sheriff, ambulance, fire department as well as schools. Schools is a big issue of course. And they aren’t paying their share. That’s all.”


But advocates for affordable housing say hiking taxes on mobile home residents is more likely just an attempt to discourage that kind of housing. They say zoning mobile homes out of existence has been tried, but taxing them out is a new idea. Higher taxes will likely lead to mobile home parks closing.”


John McIlwain is with the Urban Land Institute. He says as mobile home parks become more expensive to operate, their owners will sell off to subdivision or big box store developers.


“The numbers are going to be so attractive that the people who own mobile home parks are going to be much more interested in selling the land to a housing developer than in continuing to run the mobile home park. So in time the parks are probably going to disappear on their own anyway and trying to raise the taxes on them specifically is simply going to make that day come earlier.”


In Michigan there is a proposal to raise the taxes on mobile home sites four times higher. State Senator Valde Garcia says the $3 a month that mobile home park owners pay for each home site is not nearly enough.


“What we are trying to do is really change the tax structure so it’s fair to everyone. The system hasn’t changed in 45 years. It’s time we do so but we need to do it in a gradual manner.”


Senator Garcia’s colleagues in the state house have voted to raise the tax to $12 a month. He’d like to raise it to at least $40 a month. The mobile home park industry has hired a public relations firm to produce a video criticizing the tax increase.


“Site built homes pay sales tax only the materials used in their homes and don’t pay tax on resale. Manufactured home owners pay sales tax on materials, labor, transportation profit of a home and they pay sales tax every time a home is resold. ”


The two sides don’t agree on the math. Tim Dewitt of the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association says $3 a month sounds low because it doesn’t show hidden costs. The biggest cost comes when park owners have to pay the higher commercial property tax instead of the lower homestead tax. Dewitt says the park owners then pass the tax to the home owners whose average family income is only about $28,000 a year.


“That’s our worst fear. It could put people who could least afford any type of tax increase into a tough position.”


15 million people live in mobile home parks around the country. And different local governments have tried to find ways to increase taxes on mobile home parks. But Michigan is one of the first states to propose hiking taxes this much. State Senator Garcia says he is not trying to hurt the mobile home industry or make life harder for mobile home park residents. He dismisses the idea that he’s being pressured by wealthier constituents who don’t like to see the mobile home parks being developed.


John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute says a bias against mobile home parks is part of the mentality that leads to sprawl. When people from the city and the suburbs move a little further into rural areas they want the look and feel of suburbia.


“The mobile home parks are no longer things that they want to see. And so they find ways to discourage those mobile home parks. The ones that are there try to see if they can be purchased, turned into stick built housing or otherwise discourage them and encourage them to move on elsewhere.”


But often the people who move in also want the shopping centers, restaurants and conveniences they once had instead of the mobile home parks.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.

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RACE’S ROLE IN URBAN SPRAWL (Part I)

  • Urban sprawl sometimes conjures up images of subdivisions sprouting up in cornfields. But land use experts say the term should also include a focus on the central cities that are left behind. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White flight began the exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in perpetuating sprawl. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often overlooked:

Transcript

Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White
flight began the
exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in
perpetuating sprawl.
In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often
overlooked:


Land use advocates argue that urban sprawl and deteriorating inner cities are two
sides of the
same coin. The tax money that pays for new roads and sewer systems for sprawl and the
investments that pay for new strip malls is money that’s spent at the expense of
city centers
because it’s not invested there.


For the most part, all of that investment is made in communities that are
overwhelmingly white.
Those left behind in the cities are often people of color who are struggling with
high taxes to pay
for the deteriorating infrastructure and government services designed for
populations much larger
than are left today.


White flight was aided by government and business institutions. Government home
loans for
veterans of World War II that made those nice subdivisions possible didn’t seem to
make it into
the hands of black veterans. Banks often followed a practice of redlining. And
real estate
brokers also worked to make sure the races remained segregated.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies
Center. Farley says today, when planners and government officials talk about white
flight and
segregation, they talk in the past tense. They don’t like to acknowledge that
racism like that
still exists…


“Well, I think there is a lot of effort to underestimate the continued importance of
racial
discrimination and the importance of race in choosing a place to live. There’s been
a modest
decrease in segregation in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it would be a serious
mistake to
overlook the importance of race in the future of the older cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.”


Farley says as recently as two years ago a federal government study looked at real
estate
marketing practices and found there were still “code phrases” that indicated whether
neighborhoods were white or black.


“Subtle words would clearly convey to white customers the possibility that there are
blacks
living there, the schools aren’t in good quality. And the subtle words could convey
to blacks
that they wouldn’t be welcomed in living in a white neighborhood.”


In the North… racism has evolved from overt to covert. It’s a wariness between
the races not talked about in polite society. It becomes more evident as solidly
middle-class blacks begin to move into older suburbs and whites flee once again to
newer
subdivisions even farther from the city core.


Land Use and ‘Smart Growth’ advocates say it’s time to face up to the continuing
practice of
segregation. Charlene Crowell is with the Michigan Land Use Institute. She says it
starts by
talking about the fears between white people and black people.


“By not addressing those fears, the isolation and the separation has grown. So,
until we are able
to talk and communicate candidly, then we’ll continue to have our problems.”


But it’s uncomfortable for most people to talk about race with people of another
race. Often we
don’t talk frankly. Crowell says we’ll be forced to deal with our feelings about
race sooner or
later. That’s because as more African-Americans join the middle-class, the suburbs
are no longer
exclusively white…


“My hope is that those who feel comfortable in moving further and further away from
the urban
core will come to understand that they cannot run, that there are in fact black
homeowners who
are in the suburbs and moving into the McMansions just as many whites are. And we
all have to
look at each other. And we all have to understand that this is one country and we
are one
people.”


In cities such as Detroit, white flight led to rampant urban sprawl in the
surrounding areas
and left huge pockets of poverty and streets of abandoned houses in the inner city.
Heaster
Wheeler is the Executive Director of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. He says
while his
constituents often worry about more pressing urban issues, he knows that it’s
important that
African-Americans living in the city recognize farmland preservation and urban
revitalization
are connected. The investment that paves over a corn field is investment that’s not
going to
rebuild the city. But… black politicians largely have not been
involved in land use issues and usually they’re not asked to get involved…


“There is a racial divide on this particular issue. Often times African-Americans,
people of color and folk who live in the urban centers are not present at the
discussions about
Smart Growth.”


Wheeler says policymakers on both sides of the racial divide need to recognize that
land use
issues are as much about abandoned city centers as they are about disappearing
farmland…
which could put urban legislators and rural legislators on the same team. That’s a
coalition
that could carry a lot of sway in many states.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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IS IT SPRAWL? OR URBAN ABANDONMENT? (Part II)

  • Urban sprawl doesn't just alter the land in the suburbs. Central cities are affected by the loss of investment when people leave the cities and tax dollars are instead invested in building roads and sewers in the surrounding areas. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts. Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the divide between city and suburb:

Transcript

Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic
congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts.
Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax
money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the
suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
looks at the divide between city and suburb:


What some people call urban sprawl got started as the federal government’s answer to
a severe housing shortage. There wasn’t a lot of building going
on during the Great Depression. At the end of World War II, returning GIs needed
houses.


Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies Center. Farley says the federal government offered veterans low-interest
loans and developers started building modest homes on green lawns on the edge of
cities. But because of discrimination, the loans didn’t as often make it into the
hands of African-American veterans. Instead of segregated neighborhoods in the
city, segregation lines were newly drawn between city and
suburb.


“Very low-cost mortgages accelerated the movement of whites from the central city
out to the suburbs… built upon the long racial animosity that characterized cities
beginning at the time of the first World War and continuing, perhaps up to the
present.”


With segregation, there was a shift of wealth. Farley says jobs and purchasing
power were exported to the suburbs with the help of the interstate highway system.
And big new shopping centers displaced retail in downtowns.


People with low-incomes, often people of color, were left behind in cities of
abandoned houses and vacant storefronts that often didn’t have enough tax base to
maintain roads and services.


John Powell is a professor at Ohio State University. He’s written extensively on
urban sprawl and its effects on urban centers.


“So, we move jobs away, we move tax base away, we move good schools away and then
the city becomes really desperate and they’re trying to fix the problems, but all
the resources have been moved away.”


With no way found to fix the cities, whites have been moving out of cities to the
suburbs for decades. And now, middle-class blacks are moving out too. For some
metropolitan areas, leaving the city has become a
matter of income… although Powell says even then African-Americans have a more
difficult time finding a way out.


“Race never drops out of the equation. In reality, even middle-class blacks don’t
have the same mobility to move to opportunity that even working-class whites do
because of the way race works in our society.”


So, segregation continues. But now the line is drawn between middle-class blacks in
the older, inner-ring suburbs, whites in the outer-ring suburbs… and for the most
part in cities such as Detroit, poorer blacks left behind in the central city.


Smarth Growth advocates say part of the answer to urban sprawl is finding a way to
get more money back into the central-cities to make them more attractive to
everyone. That’s worked in cities such as Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis-St.
Paul. But those cities and their suburbs are predominantly white. For Northern
cities with greater racial divides, cities such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St.
Louis and Detroit it’s different. A lot of white suburbanites don’t want tax
dollars going to blacks in the city. And African-Americans in the city don’t see
urban sprawl as their issue, so ideas such as tax revenue sharing for a metropolitan
region are not a priority. The issue of regional tax equity that
works in predominantly white regions… becomes muddied by racial animosity in
segregated regions.


“Buzz’ Thomas is state senator in Michigan who has taken on the issue of urban
sprawl and its counterpart, the deterioration of city centers. Senator Thomas says
if state legislatures can’t find an answer to help cities, sprawl in the suburbs
will continue, paving over green space and farmland.


“You know, poverty and jobs and access to health care and access to quality
education are very realistic issues for cities like Detroit. But, a reality is they
go hand-in-hand with sprawl. As your black middle-class moves out of the inner city
because they’re not satisfied with those resolution to those issues. You know, it
links sprawl.”


Senator Thomas says legislators from rural areas and from urban areas are beginning
to realize they have a common issue. But before they can get to discussions of
regional tax equity, they first have to talk about the more difficult issue of
race…


“And have a discussion that might make me uncomfortable, that might make those
that I discuss it with uncomfortable. Only then, I think, can we really adequately
figure out how long it’s going to take us to resolve that issue.”


In the meantime, many cities are still losing population and revenue. Suburbs
continue to sprawl. And farms are becoming subdivisions, retail strip malls and
fast food restaurants.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Essay: Tuning in to Urban Frogs

  • Ed Herrmann tries to hear some frogs through the traffic near the Rouge River. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for amphibians, and has this essay:

Transcript

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s
not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for
amphibians, and has this essay:


I’ve always enjoyed being outside and listening to nature. Recording nature sounds is a
hobby of mine. So when I saw an ad asking for people to listen for frogs and toads, I
thought, “All right. Beats watching campaign commercials.”


I called up Friends of the Rouge…(that’s a local group dedicated to helping out the Rouge
River watershed) and a few days later I got a package in the mail. It was full of maps and
information, and had a CD with the songs of the local frogs and toads. I studied my area,
and found some good looking wet spots where I thought they might live.


I memorized the sound of the Wood Frog (sound), Chorus Frog (sound), Spring Peeper
(sound), and American Toad. Then, on the first night when the temperature and wind
conditions were just right, I headed out to hear some frogs.


(sound of traffic roaring by)


I don’t know what I was thinking. This is suburban Detroit, not exactly a wildlife refuge.
In fact, the only animal I see is a rabbit dodging traffic. And the only thing I hear is…
(more traffic sound)


The Rouge River flows into the Detroit River and then Lake Erie. It used to be one of the
dirtiest rivers around, mainly from all the industry down by the mouth. That problem is
more or less under control but now there’s a larger one.


If you look at a map from the 1970s, you see miles of wetlands, small farms and
orchards. Today you see nonstop subdivisions and shopping malls. It might seem like
progress to you, but for the river, the constant barrage of fertilizers, pesticides, soap and
other chemicals that everybody uses to keep their suburbs looking pretty is a lot worse
than an occasional dose of battery acid from a factory. Also having acres of concrete
instead of wetlands means there’s nothing to soak up and filter the water, which means
after a big rain, it floods. It’s obvious this river needs some help.


(sound of river)


In 1998, volunteers began surveying the frogs and toads in the Rouge watershed. These
creatures were chosen because they sing, so they’re easy to track. The reason they’re
good indicators is that, like other amphibians, they absorb water through their skin. That
means they get poisoned by everything that we in the civilized world pour into the water.
Plus, their eggs hatch in water and their larvae (the tadpoles) live in water. It’s pretty
simple: if the water is good, there’s plenty of frogs and toads. If not, they disappear.


So, night after night, I’m out there listening. Listening in the dark. Listening hard.


Not a peep.


I’m beginning to think that the price of all these well-manicured lawns is a silent spring.
Then finally one night, (sound of American toads) the good old American toad! All
right, it is the most common species around, but at least it’s a start.


(sound of chorus frogs and green frogs)


A few weeks later, I join a group at a “mitigated” wetland. That means that when a
developer decided that a real wetland would be the perfect place to build condos and a
golf course, the government said, “Sure, go ahead. Drain it. Just be sure to dig a hole
over here and fill it with water.” Now, five years later, some frogs have moved in and
seem to be fine.


But they still have a little problem…


(jet roars overhead, followed by a few green frogs)


Ah, location, location. This new wetland is right
next to the airport.


Now, the reason these frogs sing is to attract a mate. So if nobody hears them, there are
not going to be any tadpoles to make next year’s frogs. In order to survive, they need not
only to sing, but to be heard.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ed Herrmann.


(frogs fade out)

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Bigger Homes, Better Living?

  • American houses are getting bigger and bigger, but some architects question whether more square footage leads to a happier life. Photo by Lester Graham.

Although family size is growing smaller in the U.S., house sizes are growing larger. The square footage of a home built in the 1950’s seems tiny compared to the houses typically built in the suburbs today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the trend of ever-larger houses:

Transcript

Although family size is growing smaller in the U.S., house sizes are growing larger. The square
footage of a home built in the 1950’s seems tiny compared to the houses typically built in the
suburbs today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the trend of ever-
larger houses:


There’s no one answer as to why we’re building bigger houses. For some people, it’s a matter of
investing. Housing prices continue to rise and bigger houses sell well. People trade up. But…
for some homebuyers, it’s more than that. It’s a statement.


Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Home Builders.


“A lot of that could be a status symbol. Move out of the city; move into a rural-like area because
‘I’ve made it,’ because ‘This is my dream.’ It used to be people would move up, sell their homes
every seven to ten years. That’s changed now and the sale of homes is now three to five years.
You build up the equity in a new home or an existing home, you have the opportunity to build or
move into something else later. It is an investment.”


Investing in a house only explains some of the reason houses are getting larger. Another reason is
government. Local governments are zoning residential areas into large lot subdivisions. Egbert
says that means the builder has to build a big house, just to recoup the cost of the sizeable piece
of land.


“That is a preclusion, a prohibition against Smart Growth. When they have large lots sizes, it
absolutely dictates and mandates that anybody who moves in there is going to have a large
home.”


It’s an attempt by towns to keep out lower-income people who might build homes that lower the
property values of a neighborhood.


But there’s a demand for the bigger houses and it doesn’t seem to be letting up. So, cities and
towns zone for them, builders build them, and people buy them – bigger and bigger.


Linda Groat is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture. She
says it’s not too surprising. People feel less connected to the community at large because they
move often, drive somewhere else to work, and see their home as a refuge. Home is where they
can relax and escape from the rest of the world.


“There may be, on the part of some people, a feeling of need to really make it more of a castle to
compensate for what feels more complicated or out of control in the larger world.”


We feel we need private places that we can call our own. But there might be social costs to that
refuge. There’s often little interaction with neighbors and the rest of the community in which we
live. And Groat says even within the home all that space means family members don’t have to
bump into each other on the way to the bathroom. Groat says in the new large suburban homes,
sometimes derisively called McMansions, everyone can pursue their own activities in different
parts of the house.


“If you buy a McMansion and the master bedroom is off on one wing and or a different floor and
the kids are off in huge rooms way on the other side of the house, is that really going to foster
family connection?”


Some architects are becoming aware the scale of housing is beginning to leave smaller
families with a sense of emptiness, not a sense of space. Sarah Susanka is one of the leaders of a
movement to re-evaluate the concept of whether bigger is really better. The first question is
“Why?” Why are we building bigger houses?


“Well, there’s obviously a large market for larger and larger homes. And my belief is that people
are trying to fill a void in their lives with the only tool that we’ve really defined for ourselves in
this culture which is: more. More stuff. More square footage. You know, more indication that
we’ve arrived. All that stuff.”


But Susanka says there’s a longing underneath all that, an idea that there should be some better
quality of life that’s not being satisfied by just more square footage. She’s the author of a series
of books that started with one entitled “The Not So Big House.” She argues that people can use
the money they’d spend on additional square footage for space that’s rarely used for better
designed spaces where they actually live day-to-day. She says if the house is an investment, then
it should be an investment in quality craftsmanship and better living, not just more space.


“When something is thrown together and just is sort of raw space, but not much else, over time
it’s going to degenerate. And, the amount of square footage obviously has a direct correlation
with the amount of resources it takes to build it. So by making something that’s tailored to fit – in
other words, not with excess material – and then that’s going to last a long time that that should be
the first step in sustainable design.”


Graham: “So, you suspect a lot of these McMansions or starter-castles, as you call them, aren’t going to be
around very long?”


“Yeah, I think in the long haul those are not going to survive in the same way and are probably
not going to be looked after in the same way over time just because they’re not as well put
together and they don’t have the charm that’s going to make somebody want to look after them in
the future.”


Susanka says using resources for bigger houses is not environmentally friendly and does not
necessarily mean better living. She says builders and homebuyers should think about it this way:
build the space you need and do it well and do it in a way that somebody in the future will want to
preserve.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

What Is “Smart Growth?”

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart Growth” means:

Transcript

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed
attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to
address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart
Growth” means:


Many urban planners have been alarmed over the last couple of decades as metropolitan areas have
sprung up where farmland or wooded areas once stood. Following new subdivisions have been
strip malls, parking lots and fast food franchises in a not always attractive fashion.


Last year’s election saw a number of states with new governors and some of them are looking at
what can be done to control that kind of unbridled growth. Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm noted it
during her State of the State speech.


“We will develop a cooperative, common sense approach to how we use our land so we can protect
our forests and farms, prevent the sprawl that chokes our suburban communities and threatens our
water quality, and bring new life to our cities and older suburbs.”


Governor Granholm says she wants “Smart Growth.” It’s a popular term, but what is it? What
does it mean?


“I think that Smart Growth is really hard to – certainly hard to describe.”


Barry Rabe is a Professor of Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan’s School of
Natural Resources and Environment. He says “Smarth Growth” sounds great.


“I don’t know anyone who’s really against Smart Growth. But, you can spend a long academic
seminar or actually a lifetime in search of the one common definition of exactly what that means.
Again, it has sort of an intuitive appeal. It resonates. We can all think of examples that are not so
Smart Growth or dumb growth. But, I think clearly this is something that lends itself to differing
kinds of interpretations by different groups.”


And as you ask the people who’ll be sitting at the table debating “Smart Growth,” it becomes clear
that each one has a different definition.


Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Home Builders. He says “Smart Growth”
is a private citizen building a home wherever he or she thinks is an ideal site.


“Our basis continues to be and our primary focus is, and it will remain, that it’s private property
rights under the U.S. Constitution that have to be maintained and that is an individual right. It is a
citizen’s right. And we have to work with local and state government to make sure that that’s
achieved and balanced.”


Egbert says the culprit causing urban sprawl is not the choices that landowners make. He says it’s
too much government regulation. Egbert says, generally, municipalities that zone areas into large
lots stop home builders from building more houses on smaller plots of land.


Others also place much of the blame for sprawl on government, but for different reasons. Hans
Voss is with the Michigan Land Use Institute.

______________
“Landowners do have a right to live in the area in which they choose as long as they follow local
land-use regulations and pay the full cost of that lifestyle. And right now the taxpayers in the cities
and across the whole states are actually subsidizing that style of development.”


Voss says to implement “Smart Growth,” the government has to stop subsidizing urban sprawl by
building highways and sewer systems that all of us have to pay for with our taxes instead of just the
residents who benefit from them. He says that money could be better used to revitalize older
suburbs and the center of deteriorating cities.


There are a lot more ideas of what “Smart Growth” means… and there’s a bit of public relations
spinning because of the ambiguity of the term “Smart Growth.”


The University of Michigan’s Barry Rabe says we’ll hear a lot about “Smart Growth” for some
time to come.


“It’s one of these buzz words that everybody likes. But, to come up with a common definition of
it, much less figure out how that would be implemented in public policy is tricky.”


Ultimately, compromise will define “Smart Growth” as states grapple with trying to find better ways
to use land without losing so much farmland to sprawling subdivisions and paving over natural areas
for parking lots.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Rethinking the Subdivision Design

Big homes on big lawns on long winding roads. That’s how many
residential subdivisions have been designed for decades. Now, some
people are trying to change these traditional methods and make
development less damaging to the environment. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Todd Witter visits one site: