Resources, Naturally
Smart Growth from the County Perspective

Of several definitions gathered, this one was found (most subjectively and by a jury of one) to be the most useful (or, at least, the most pleasing to one particular world view):

Smart Growth: “A perspective, method, and goal for managing the growth of a community. It focuses on the long-term implications of growth and how it may affect the community, instead of viewing growth as an end in itself. The community can vary in size; it may be as small as a city block or a neighborhood, or as large as a city, a metropolitan area, or even a region. Smart Growth promotes cooperation between often diverse groups to arrive at sustainable long-term strategies for managing growth. It is designed to create livable cities, promote economic development, and protect open spaces, environmentally sensitive areas, and agricultural lands.”

We’ve written about smart growth before and will certainly do so again. What prods us this time is SB 2169 by Senator Rodney Ellis, passed by the Legislature but vetoed by the governor this past session. The bill passed out of the Senate on its Local and Uncontested Calendar, passed in the House on its Local and Consent Calendar (early in May, before the House ground to a halt late in May), then fell to the veto pen in June. The idea of the bill was to create, at the state agency level, a smart growth policy work group and begin the development of a smart growth policy for this state with this stated goal: “…for the state to prepare for the projected population growth in the state.” Of course, projections are that areas of the state are seeing and will continue to see significant growth while other areas remain steady or in decline.

There is opposition aplenty to smart growth, often propelled by arguments that a market-driven approach provides better density results, government is not the solution to these problems, and so on. We might also sprinkle in a little history as well — land speculation has long driven how our state and our nation have developed. Development, then, has been influenced by the wisdom of the market (and the market’s regular bouts of insanity), tempered by, at least at the county level, decidedly limited regulatory authority.

In his veto message, the governor notes “decisions about the growth of communities should be made by local governments closest to the people living and working in those areas…” and that this is one-size fits all, bottom-down approach won’t work in our large and diverse Texas. The acknowledgement of the importance of local control is laudable: local officials don’t want to be told by the state government how their communities should grow. But shouldn’t there be some connection between what state government and county governments are doing to address growth issues? An example of this is Section 232.0033, Local Government Code “Additional Requirements: Future Transportation Corridors,” added in 2007. This allows for cooperative planning between TXDOT and counties to, at the very least, let someone know the home they are buying is right alongside a “future transportation corridor.”

But this shouldn’t be an all or nothing issue — as a people, we have long chosen the best elements of different political and economic, even social, systems to meld into our own systems. This harkens back to the Constitution and the Framers creating a polity, a mix of systems and elements of systems: this is their true genius. They looked back to the Ancients as models, not the least of whom (at least so far as the idea of a polity, a mix of elements) was Aristotle. They valued the individual as well as the community, as do we, their descendents, and sought — as we continue to seek — to balance freedom and authority, individual and collective rights.