Tag: american planning association

Highway Debate Dividing Communities

  • Landowners who are opposed to the beltway say no matter which route it follows, it'll be cutting through prime farmland. Proponents of the beltway say the highway is needed to support the already fast-growing suburbs. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

As suburbs grow, politicians and city planners often promote new highways as a way to ease congestion and encourage more economic growth. Rebecca Williams reports on the struggle between local officials who want to encourage that growth and people who worry a new highway will fuel more sprawl:

Transcript

As suburbs grow, politicians and city planners often promote new highways as
a way to ease congestion and encourage more economic growth. Rebecca
Williams reports on the struggle between local officials who want to
encourage that growth and people who worry a new highway will fuel more
sprawl:


The Census Bureau says commutes to work are getting longer in the nation’s
biggest cities. Demographers say that’s because people are moving
out farther and farther from their jobs in search of more house for the
money or a quieter way of life. More people moving out to the fringes of the suburbs
means more pressure on two-lane roads and more congestion.


New highways are one of the tools local officials reach for when traffic
gets worse. People living in the fast-growing suburbs west of Chicago have
been debating a proposed new highway nicknamed the Prairie Parkway. The
four-lane beltway would connect these outer suburbs.


Jan Carlson is the Transportation Commissioner for Kane County, about 40
miles from downtown Chicago. He’s been looking forward to the beltway since
plans were unveiled five years ago:


“If you listen to the complaints, as I do, of people stuck in traffic and if
you consider the many economic advantages that moving that traffic brings to
us, it appears to me that the greater good is to move forward with the
project.”


Carlson says he knows new highways can rapidly speed up development in an
area, but he points to census data that show his county and others nearby
are already among the fastest-growing in the nation without a new highway:


“I am not one of those who subscribes to the theory that if you don’t build
it, they will not come.”


Jan Carlson says the new highway will make the local economy stronger,
bringing in much needed jobs to the suburbs, but many people are strongly opposed to the
beltway. Marvel Davis lives on a farm that’s been in her family for 170 years. Some of
her farmland lies within a corridor that the state has set aside for the proposed beltway.


“I tell people that’s the way sprawl happens. You think, well I’ve lost
that field to the farm, so the first guy that comes along and offers you
$50,000 an acre, your temptation is going to be pretty great, isn’t it?”


Davis says even though construction on the beltway isn’t expected to begin
until 2009, she’s seen a lot of new buildings spring up. She says it’s true
the area’s already growing, but she thinks the prospect of a new highway
might be encouraging more growth:


“So which comes first, the chicken or the egg? If word goes forth this
road’s going to happen and you come in with all kinds of developers, it’s
almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”


And urban planners agree it really is a chicken and egg relationship. It’s
hard to say which comes first. Highways speed up the pace of growth. And
growth causes a need for more highways.


Bill Klein is the director of research with the American Planning
Association. He says new highways do ease traffic congestion, but only for
a short time, before those highways get packed with people driving out to
their new homes in the suburbs.


“It’s very difficult to build your way out of sprawl. The more highways you
build, the more sprawl you get. Intellectually we’ve known this stuff for a
good long time but sometimes the political will to do anything about it is
the bigger problem.”


In the case of the Prairie Parkway, there is a political heavyweight in the
parkway’s corner. US House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been promoting the
concept of an outer beltway in his district since he went to Congress in the
late 1980’s. Just last year, Speaker Hastert earmarked 207 million dollars
for the beltway in the federal transportation bill.


Landowner Marvel Davis suspects the beltway might not go forward if it
weren’t for the Speaker’s support. She says if someone could show her the
beltway was in the country’s best interest, she’d support it.


“But if I’m going to lose my farm and my community to make a few people
multimillionaires then I’m not willing to do it.”


Marvel Davis says she knows she could make a lot of money if she sold her
land to developers, and she did actually sell more than 100 acres recently.
But she sold it to her county’s forest preserve for half of what she could
get from a developer.


Even though it’s years away, the promise of a new highway is sharply
dividing these communities. Whether or not they see growth as a good thing,
almost everyone agrees a new highway will speed up the pace of that growth.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Re-Using Land to Meet City’s Changing Needs

  • Don Mikulic with the Illinois Geological survey hunts for the fossilized brachiopods and snails available in the quarry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park … from below ground
level:

Transcript

Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park from below ground level:


At first blush, an old quarry site doesn’t seem to be a good candidate for a new city park, especially this one.


For the past fifteen years, the city of Chicago has used this quarry as a landfill. The site, called Stearns Quarry, lies off the beaten track, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, more than two miles southwest of downtown.


Right now it’s kind of ugly. Tractors are patting down a mound of debris and dirt that’s piled up thirty-feet above the nearby street.


(Sound of trucks)


I find the project manager, Claudine Malik inside the site’s construction trailer. She’s hovering over a map of what the park might look like by next year.


“It’s a twenty-seven acre site. It’s roughly a square and if you think of it as broken up into about four separate areas, that helps you map it out mentally. As you come in, there’s an athletic field, It goes down to a pond, which will be stocked for fishing. The majority of the section is a sledding mound. And along the back wall, which is a long preserved quarry wall, is a series of wetland cells that lead down into the pond.”


That’s a lot of different uses to cram into the site’s 27 acres. It’s hard to imagine a stone quarry turned into a landfill and then turned into a city park. To get a better idea of how it will be transformed, Malik and her team take me on a ride around the site.


(Sound of truck starting)


The plan puts every inch of ground to use because there aren’t many chances to put new parks in the city. Malik says rising land values in Chicago make even small land purchases pricey. And everybody seems to have ideas for the park.


Local residents, the state of Illinois and the city gave designers a tall order to fill. Since they’re all putting money into the five million-dollar project, everybody gets something they want.


Soon we spot Don Mikolic, a scientist with Illinois’ Geological Survey. He’s checking the quarry walls before the park’s complete.


(Sound of tapping)


“There’s part of a snail right there.”


Turns out, the quarry’s produced some of the best aquatic fossils in the Midwest.


“In fact you can probably find specimens from this specific quarry sitting in some of the biggest museums around the world.”


And some of the limestone exposed by quarrying will be left for park visitors to view. These walls offer more than just natural history though. Stearns Quarry is part of the region’s architectural history too. The quarry opened in 1833, a few years before Chicago became a city. Its limestone strengthened Chicago harbor and can be found in historic Midwestern churches.


Malik says the site’s history will find its way into the design as well. Just another thing for the planners to work into the park. Which makes you wonder, what’s driving a park to be all these things at once? To get some perspective, I head to the offices of the American Planning Association.


The APA is a professional organization for urban planners. Megan Lewis researches parks for the APA. Lewis says parks like Stearns Quarry face bigger challenges than the grand old parks designed in the 19th century.


“Now, you can’t really approach park planning especially in a city in the same way, because you don’t have the luxury of having all of that land available to you. So you sort of have to see what is there that can become a park and what do we do with it?”


Lewis says the mix of recreation, open space, even history, has a lot to do with the demands from so many competing interests. To see how thing have changed, she gives the example of Frederick Law Olmsted. He’s most famous for developing New York’s Central Park, a hundred and fifty years ago.


“The planning was sort of done in isolation. He would come up with his grand idea and he maybe only had a few people involved. But I think that now, so many people are empowered to say, This is what I want this place to be like, that planning doesn’t really happen in isolation anymore. Which is good, because you want it to be a democratic process.”


(Sound of quarry)


Back at Stearns Quarry, you can see just how those demands are being incorporated. Meeting all those different needs in a relatively small area with a relatively small budget is played out in each square foot.


This new use of the site is again reflecting the city’s needs. The little piece of land has evolved as the city has evolved. First it provided stone for building the city. Then it was a dumping ground. And now it’s a break from the asphalt and concrete, a place to play and rest in a bit of nature.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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STATE REVAMPS PLANNING LAWS (Shorter Version)

A survey reveals most states are working from development planning
statutes put together in the 1920’s. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… one group is urging states to update their laws
to help prevent urban sprawl:

Transcript

A survey reveals most states are working from development planning statutes
put together in the 1920’s. One group is urging states to update their laws to help

prevent urban sprawl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The American Planning Association says when Herbert Hoover was Secretary of
Commerce, the Department adopted some model planning acts. Today, many state
planning laws are still based on them. Stuart Meck is a senior researcher
with the American planning association. He says local governments control
much of zoning and planning. But the state is often the most powerful
influence on development.


“Every time a state department of transportation programs a highway
widening, or puts in a new interchange, or authorizes some type of loan to
local government to build or expand a treatment plant, that has some sort of
an impact on development.”


Meck says some states are tinkering around the edges of their planning laws.
But he argues if states are going to control urban sprawl, they need to
completely overhaul their planning statutes.


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

State Revamps Planning Laws


In the Great Lakes region states have been slow to put together
legislation to address urban sprawl. Only one state in the region,
Wisconsin, has passed comprehensive reforms of its planning statutes.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… now
developers, environmentalists, and political leaders in that state are
all reading from the same blue-print:

Transcript

In the Great Lakes region states have been slow to put together legislation
to address urban sprawl. Only one state in the region, Wisconsin, has passed
comprehensive reforms of its planning statutes. Now developers, environmentalists,

and
political leaders in that state are all reading from the same blueprint. The Great

Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


At the American Planning Association’s office in Chicago, Stuart Meck says
there’s been a huge surge in interest in trying to curb out-of-control
growth.


“It was almost as if somebody had turned on a switch in communities
across the United States and in state legislatures and there was just this
whole different environment starting about three years ago and it was no
longer business as usual.”


Meck is a senior researcher with the American Planning Association. He’s
been working to compile updated models for planning and zoning legislation.
He says the group found most state planning statutes are based on model acts
adopted by the U.S. Commerce Department in the 1920’s.


After World War II, development in the suburbs boomed, but planning laws
didn’t keep pace. Meck says most communities reacted to growth by turning to
the state, and the state reacted by building roads. Meck says few places
actually followed any kind of plan.


“And we’ve tried all these fixes like, you know, expanding our
interstate system, and widening highways and stuff like that and it doesn’t
seem to be working. The cumulative effect of all of those things is they use
up a lot of farmland; they create suburban areas in which there’s no
activity after dark, and we think what’s going on right now is sort of a
revisiting of some of earlier types of development forums, and seeing
whether there’s some value to that.”


Stuart Meck says the American Planning Association is finding cities want to turn away from endless

tracts of suburban homes on meandering streets and instead look at building neighborhoods of homes,

stores, and schools.


But an urban area’s growth is affected by development outside a single community. Meck says that’s

why state governments need to establish a framework for planning, uniform laws that help individual

communities and larger areas manage growth.


In the Great Lakes region, only one state has passed legislation that over-hauls its planning

statutes: Wisconsin.


Tom Larson is the director of land use and environmental affairs with the Wisconsin Realtors

Association. He says in the past, Wisconsin’s debate was about whether growth should be stopped.

That argument pitted pro-growth developers against anti-growth environmentalists, and towns were

not thinking of anything beyond their own borders.


‘Communities were often planning very myopically, looking at only one particular issue without

looking at potential impacts on various… on other areas of their community.”


Larson says Wisconsin’s new comprehensive planning statues acknowledge there will be growth, and

tackles the question of how to grow better.


The new statutes require more public involvement. Public hearings must be held so that residents

and neighboring communities know what the state or local government is planning. Tom Larson says

communities now have to think about how development affects not just the prosperity of a community,

but how it affects things such as parks, transportation patterns, and schools. The statutes also

close loopholes that allowed communities to ignore their own plans whenever it suited them.


Brian Ohm is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He’s credited with

bringing together environmentalists, realtors, homebuilders, and government planners to draft the

legislation. Ohm says Wisconsin’s planning law reforms are broad. They’re not just about preserving

land.


“It goes way beyond just saving an acre of farmland here or there. There’s a lot of issue that are

involved and hopefully through good local comprehensive planning as a base, we can begin to address

the broader and more complex issues of sprawl.”


Ohm says reforming Wisconsin’s planning statutes won’t necessarily stop sprawl. But the

comprehensive planning process adopted by the state will make communities aware of what they’re

doing.


‘You know, communities, through their plans, will still be able to be as pro or anti sprawl as they

want. The state’s not going to dictate the outcome of that, but again it’s going to have to be—

those decisions as made
my local governments are going to be made on a more informed set of factors
through the comprehensive planning process.”


Ohm says the new planning statutes will mean local communities, counties,
and the state will all be aware of each other’s plans and how their plans
affect overall growth in an area.

Tom Larson at the Wisconsin Realtors Association says following the
comprehensive planning process will mean some changes and some
inconveniences for realtors and developers. But he says it will also mean
everyone will understand what a community’s goals are and how every sector
fits into the plan.


“What our end goal was, was to be able to plan through consensus, to
bring all the interest groups together at the local level as well as at the
state level and say, ‘How do we want our communities to grow; how do we open
up communication, make everybody part of this process, and how do we build
through consensus?’ I think that’s what… hopefully that’s what our message
is and hopefully what the legislation will encourage communities to do.”


All the parties involved say changing Wisconsin’s planning statutes was not
easy. Not every issue was resolved. They also say Wisconsin never could have
managed its growth without over-hauling the law. The American Planning
Association says states that try to tinker around the edges of their 1920’s-style

planning laws will find little success.


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

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Region Grades Poorly on Sprawl

A nationwide report on how well states and communities plan
for growth finds the Great Lakes region not planning much at all. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

Farmland Threatened by Development

The outward growth of big city suburbs and of small towns booming because of retirees getting out of the city is putting pressure on some farm areas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports state governments are stepping in to regulate some of the seemingly out-of-control growth: