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Smart Growth in the Southeast:
The Southeast is blessed with abundant riches-breathtaking natural beauty, productive farmland, distinctive and thriving communities, and a rich natural, cultural and historic heritage. These resources provide an excellent quality of life that makes the region an attractive place to live, work, and visit.
Yet the Southeast is being transformed. Its strong quality of life has been a primary factor spurring the unprecedented population growth, land use development, and economic expansion redefining the region. This growth has brought positive results—higher incomes and low overall unemployment, but it also has produced unforeseen consequences. Pockets of the region are grappling with the adverse impacts of rapid growth—sprawling development that consumes open space and farmland, jams roadways, causes air and water pollution, and raises taxpayer expense to serve sprawl. The problem is less that we are growing than it is how we are growing. Scattered, highly land-consumptive development patterns have made the Southeast the most rapidly and haphazardly developing region of the country. Over 3.6 million acres were developed in just five years between 1992 and 1997 in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. This is an average of almost 2,000 acres converted to highways, strip malls, and subdivisions each day. Yet, at the same time we are paving our countryside, a tremendous amount of already-developed land is underutilized or abandoned in cities, towns, and inner suburbs. As we spread farther out, the number of miles and the amount of time spent in our cars escalates. Moreover, the road-centered transportation programs of states and localities subsidize sprawl and provide few alternatives to driving. As a result, the Southeast has the highest driving rates in the country. There are abundant opportunities to develop better ways to grow. These include creative new approaches to transportation and land use that can provide a wider range of choices and more sustainable long-term growth while protecting our open spaces, strengthening existing communities, and safeguarding environmental and human health. Citizens, business leaders and policymakers increasingly recognize that growth needs to be guided to maintain a strong, competitive economy that does not come at the expense of communities and the environment. Innovative projects are spreading throughout the region as interest builds in developing ways to harness economic growth without harming our quality of life. These steps indicate an enormous potential for promoting better development.
Promising smarter growth arenas! Building Better Communities Efforts are spreading to revitalize existing communities and to promote more traditional patterns of neighborhood and town center development that require less land and less driving. Successful strategies include targeting public infrastructure expenditures to existing communities and designated development areas, as well as providing state and local financial incentives to encourage rehabilitation and reuse of existing structures, such as the City of Richmond’s real estate tax abatement program that helped spur a tripling of rehabilitation projects. Further, a growing number of localities such as Nashville are revising regulatory provisions that prohibit or present barriers to more traditional neighborhood and mixed use development. Increasing Transportation Choices Some states and localities also have moved toward a more balanced transportation approach that provides meaningful alternatives to extensive driving. For example, Charlotte voters approved funding a 25-year plan that includes $1 billion in transit improvements and seeking to guide growth to corridors served by transit. In addition, there has been a resurgence in bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout the region, although such projects still receive little transportation funding. Land Conservation Finally, numerous tools are available to protect rural, natural, and historic areas from explosive development. These tools include establishing parks and greenways and conserving forest, farmland, and other forms of open space—whether through acquisition, purchasing development rights, or using conservation easements to limit development that threatens resources such as clean water and green space. For example, it has been estimated that land trusts have protected almost 625,000 acres in the Southeast as of 2000. In addition, Florida has had the nation’s largest land acquisition program; since 1990, over one million acres have been protected. |
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