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Parris N. Glendening is president of Smart Growth Leadership Institute, a project of Smart Growth America, a nationwide coalition of nearly 100 organizations promoting a better way to grow. Prior to that, Mr. Glendening spent eight years as Governor of the State of Maryland, where he made the environment the heart of his legislative, administrative and personal agenda. Glendening also served as chairman of the National Governor’s Association, where he made quality of life issues his top agenda item. He answered some questions about smart growth for Brownfield News.
How do you define smart growth?
As governor, we largely described smart growth as focusing on creating and maintaining
thriving cities, suburbs and towns, lowering costs and protecting open space.
Since moving to Smart Growth America, we have broadened that focus to include
neighborhood livability, better access and less traffic plus shared benefits,
especially equity in housing choice.
How did smart growth come to
be an important issue for you, personally and professionally?
The seeds of smart growth were planted for me way back in my college days. I
was working my way through college at Florida State University. That meant traveling
from Tallahassee to Hialeah whenever I had a long weekend or break to work in
a machine shop. The 500-mile trip took the “back roads” that cut
through the edge of the Everglades.
In the five years it took me to finish up a couple degrees, I saw these narrow country roads become four- and six-lane highways lined with miles of subdivisions. It was clear to me, even as a 24-year-old, that sprawl was destroying the Everglades.
Later, as a city council member for Hyattsville, Maryland and then as Prince Georges County, Maryland county executive, I was constantly frustrated in our efforts to revitalize the older declining parts of our communities. Business leaders and investors repeatedly told me it was easier, less expensive and more profitable buy a farm “out there” in our greenfields than it was to reuse or infill in these older areas.
As governor, I finally had the opportunity to change the “rules of the game” to level the playing field, or in many ways, to tilt it in favor of reinvestment and reuse.