Land Use and Campaign 2000

Few words have entered the American cultural and political lexicon with the relative ease of the word "Sprawl'. Almost overnight, the word has leapt from the marginalia of the academy to the front pages of the Nation's major news and entertainment outlets. IT is as if the elephant lurking in the room were finally given its proper name. Consensus, recognition and acknowledgment were largely instantaneous. We all know what sprawl is - a generation of us have grown up in its midst . Perhaps because of its ubiquity, we were unable to properly identify it. Now, as the preeminence of the word reveals, we have.

This essay is concerned with the following questions: What are the political questions addressed by this issue, and where on the political spectrum are they being articulated? What, if any, should the role of the Federal Government be in addressing Growth issues? And, reiteratively, where do the campaigns stand on the issue?

That Sprawl - or land use patterns designed for the automobile - is a cultural and environmental concern of the highest order, seems at this point to be widely acknowledged. The particulars of the problem and their proposed solutions however, reflect the full range of the political spectrum.

From the Left, the critique of Sprawl is largely ecological. From before the fuel crisis of the 1970's the Green movement in this country has been assailing the preeminence of the Internal combustion engine as the primary culprit in the dissemination of atmosphere altering gases. Their appropriation of land use and town planning as an environmental issue, is, well, natural An emerging theme on the Left, which was brought to the fore by recent events in Seattle, is the rejection of 'Globalization'. Chief Among the targets of this attack are consumer driven institutions such as Starbucks, The Gap and McDonalds, and the cultural homogenization they inevitably engender. Intrinsically linked to these institutions is the setting in which they are most prevalent - The American Strip and the American Strip Mall, the Siamese twin paradigms of the post-war American built environment.

From the Right, Values are the principal concern. The neighborhoods of lore - that Golden Moment of American Innocence - somewhere between 1940 and 1960 - could never have transpired in today's auto sub-divisions. Main Street, the Corner Store, the stickball game - all of these Rockwellian images of an American cultural Eden, are embedded in the collective memory of those who grew up in the shadow of 'Greatest generation'. The lifestyle that paradigm celebrated - Father as breadwinner, Mother as homemaker, , locally owned stores on a tree lined street - are as foreign to Today's suburbs as are pedestrians. TO these critics of sprawl, Columbinesque, latch-key anti-values and the events to which they give rise are a natural result of the dissolution of family, community and traditional boundaries that sprawl has, at the very least, facilitated.

What is clear is that Sprawl is a nuanced political issue that transcends the conventional boundaries of Left & Right. As with all questions political, the critical question before the Candidates concerns the role of the Federal Government. Where do the Major Parties stand on this issue in Campaign 2000?

A search engine at the Bush/Cheney campaign web-site greeted the words "sprawl", "land use", and "smart growth" with no matching responses. That the issue is not considered such by the Bush team suggests that if the Republican Party does acknowledge a problem with land use patterns of the past half-century, It does not believe that the problem ought be addressed at the Federal Level. It is safe to assume, that as with the issues of environmental standards and education, that a President Bush would allocate funds to states and local municipalities to solve land use problems at the local level: "All reform begins with freedom and local control."(A Culture of Achievement p.5) It may also be safe to assume that the tradition of rugged individualism, so indelibly forged into the Texas psyche, would consider private property and its transportation manifestation - the car - as sacrosanct, and beyond the realm of policy discussion or initiative.

To conclude however, that the Republican Nominee would ignore land use issues entirely as president would be to fundamentally misread the ground shift in American Conservatism that Governor Bush represents. The Governor, with his platform of "Compassionate Conservatism" is a product of the neo-conservatism whose most articulate, if not most beloved voices include, Newt Gingrich and William F. Buckley. The distinguishing characteristic of Neo-Conservatism is its activism - not on the part of the Federal Government, but rather on the part of local community groups and prominent individuals. It is a call for civic action in the private sector. In this it is further from Libertarianism than its predecessor how might an activist conservative administration confront issues of land use at the Federal Level? Again, only speculation can be posited: however, some of the Governor's observations on other significant issues offer clues:

What the Governor seems to suggest is that with the transfer of power from Washington to the States which was wrought by the '94 congressional elections, problems of 'cultural decline' were confronted successfully at the local level. Should a President Bush conclude that Sprawl is just such an issue, it is not hard to imagine leadership, in the form of block grants, flowing from Washington to the states to address issues of Land Use. The seeds of such a strategy may also be glimpsed in the Governor's optimistic assessment of the National ethos at the Millennium:

That Sprawl should elude the Governor's list of critical problems may result from his ties to the Fuel Oil Industry, or simply his desire to avoid alienating his base constituency - the "silent majority", to whom talk of Land Use and the Federal Government is more than ominous.

That the author of "Earth in the Balance" should extend his ecological critique to Planning Issues should come as no surprise. What is surprising however, is how Al Gore's pervasive rhetoric on Sprawl is often characterized by his appeal to the Right, by his reliance on the language of Values:

In an address to the American Institute of Architects in January of 1999, Mr. Gore provided an outline of the administration's position on Land Use and its attendant issues of transportation, development and environmental protection. His "Livability Agenda for the 21^st Century" uses Sprawl as a point of departure for a comprehensive menu of reform. The this of this speech did not focus on the environmental impact of sprawl, though it was given ample space. The theme, rather, was the impact that automobile driven land use policies and lifestyles have on the quality of life and cultural priorities of people's lives.

In the most effective manner of President Clinton, pioneer of 'Third Way' politics, Mr. Gore is here appropriating the language and issues of his ideological opponents to forward his own party's agenda. This appropriation continues by forging a link between quality of life an economic performance:

Neither does Mr. Gore hesitate to summon the Greatest Generation to his argument - a nostalgic gesture unthinkable to the previous generation of democratic leadership, for whom only the progressive future was appropriate inspiration:

After paying homage to the holy trinity of conservatism, - values, tradition and prosperity, Mr. Gore reveals a vast spending plan to target livability issues from the Federal Level which is consistent with the progressive government ethos characteristic of the pre-Clinton Democratic Party. That Federal Initiative has a four part strategy. First, a $700 million tax credit will be devoted to the creation of "better America bonds" which will be designed to help localities "build more livable communities". Second, 1 Billion will be directed to the research and development of public transit as an alternative to "clogged highways". Thirdly, $50 million is to be directed towards the creation of a "regional Connections Initiative", design to introduce "Smart growth" strategies between communities. And lastly $10 million is to be offered to localities to encourage community involvement in the design and planning of civic institutions such as schools. The Federal Role, it would seem, is that of well financed Coach and cheerleader.

Lest such ambiguous descriptions of the Federal Role should cause discomfort among those who found the beginning of his speech so compelling, Mr. Gore is quick to delineate the limits of that role

What is clear is that Mr. Gore, despite his surgical caveats suggesting otherwise, has great faith in the Federal Government to solve the Nation's problems, including Sprawl. Mr. Bush does not appear to share this faith, and would rely instead on the marketplace and local initiatives to confront the problem.

For those among us who consider Livability and Land Use the critical domestic issues of the day, the choice between candidates is less clear than it would initially appear . Will the free market, in the guise of enlightened real estate development, solve land use problems without government interference? How long will this process take? How much more Sprawl can the rebuild endure before the markets correct the perilous land use patterns of the last 50 years?

If the Federal Government assumes an active role, will the implicit tax hikes adversely effect any progressive trend in real setae? Will a cadre of Washington bureaucrats, armed with master plans and building codes descend on every municipality across the fruited plan?