The Brawl Over Sprawl

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    In Chicago's southwestern suburbs, residents have joined with environmentalists in a lawsuit to block a 12.5-mile extension of Interstate 355, one they fear will bring more traffic, more houses, more everything. Two months ago, Illinois transportation officials announced they would stop appealing a federal judge's decision that has stalled the project since early 1997. The ruling held that state officials had failed to take into account the new road's projected impact on population growth. Opponents are hopeful that alternatives to building the toll road will receive serious consideration. "Highways are billed as antidotes to congestion," says Mike Truppa, a policy specialist at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, which joined the suit. "But inevitably they create more."

    Since development tends to pop up any place it finds a foothold, the battle to contain it never ends. In the rolling country of Shelburne, Vt., McCabe Brook meanders through the former Clark farm. A developer liked the place so much that he planned to build 26 houses on its 120 acres. But David Miskell, 50, a bushy-bearded organic-tomato farmer, and dairy farmer Robert Mack, 44, both of whom had been working to preserve other open spaces in the area, helped organize public gatherings to discuss the fact that the development would require taxpayers to finance firehouses and classrooms. "My tomatoes don't go to school," Miskell says. "I think that woke people up."

    When Shelburne approved the development anyway, a neighboring town took Shelburne to court, arguing that it would suffer costs from the project. To dramatize how construction would change the area, Miskell constructed scaffolds on the endangered land that approximated the proposed height and footprint of a few of the houses. In December 1997, the embattled developer sold the property to the Preservation Trust of Vermont. "If you are not into controversy," says Miskell, "you are not doing anything."

    Keeping land open is just half the battle. The other half is keeping downtowns livable and affordable so people stay happily bunched there. That way new construction tends to cluster within developed zones and use existing roads, schools and utility lines. But for the centerless "edge cities" that collect around major highways, the problem is to create a downtown in the first place. So in Tysons Corner, Va., just outside Washington, county officials have just approved an instant town center--an 18-acre collection of small office buildings that will also house shops and restaurants around a plaza. Albuquerque, N.M., is examining a proposal to refurbish a 12-block area, nearly one-fifth of the city's downtown, into an urban center with entertainment, retail and high-density housing. "It's a typical American problem, the abandoned center," says architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who designed the scheme. "It doesn't have to be like this."

    Polyzoides is chairman of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a group of architects and city planners who believe sprawl can be remedied in part through better town design--a return to sidewalks, narrower streets that don't encourage fast driving, a mix of homes and shops. Endlessly elastic suburbia "is not a way we're going to be building in the future," he predicts. The revival of downtowns in places like San Diego and Denver--and, for that matter, Atlanta--and the reaction against sprawl among the suburbanites who spawned it may also be signs, as he says, that the problem can be fixed. But sprawl is mostly indelible ink. Once the roads and houses and strip malls set in, you can't just get them out. The best way to fight sprawl is to stop it before it starts.

    Gore's Livability Agenda: Can It Work?
    BOND AID
    States and localities would sell "Better America Bonds," yielding federal tax credits instead of interest. If Congress approves the idea--a big if--the bonds could raise $9.5 billion to buy open space, protect water supplies and clean polluted industrial sites. Price in lost tax revenue: $700 million over five years. But worth it.

    BUSES AND TRAINS
    The plan has $6.1 billion for mass transit, but most of it was in last year's big transportation bill. So what's new?

    PLANNING AID
    $40 million in grants would help towns do computer mapping, a smart growth-planning tool. But that's a drop in the bucket. Bottom line: one good idea--the bonds--doesn't add up to an agenda.

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