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By Storm Cunningham |
Smart growth was one of the two healthiest, most valuable dialogues to hit planning and economic development circles in closing decades of the 20th Century (the other being sustainable development).
As dialogues, they are vital and productive, but we are now at the point where
these dialogues are bearing fruit, and people are forgetting that they are “just”
dialogues. We’re now trying to turn smart growth (and sustainable development)
into real modes of development, and that exposes some serious limitations.
The phrases “smart growth” and “sustainable development”
were invented as compromise terms that would be attractive — or at least
less terrifying — to environmentalists, politicians and business leaders
(especially developers). But a dialogue, no matter how useful, is not the same
as a system.
If you’ve ever wondered how a highly-destructive sprawl development could get away with billing itself as “smart” or “sustainable” simply be-cause it was ten percent “greener” than the normal sprawl, this paucity of rigor in the definitions of smart growth and sustainable development is one cause.
The other cause is the fact that neither of them uses a lifecycle-based taxonomy. By not separating restorative projects from new projects (sprawl), we end up with greener sprawl projects being labeled smart or sustainable.
Why not just work to eliminate the sprawl, instead of lessening its damage? Green sprawl is better than brown sprawl, I’ll admit, but only because it will kill us at a slightly slower rate. Is that really the model we want to use?
A Solution
Here’s a solution, and it’s eminently simple (which is not synonymous
with “easy”). We should restructure our planning and budgeting to
reflect the full natural lifecycle of our built and natural environments. All
structures, all organisms and all complex living systems (including economies
and communities) progress through three basic lifecycles: new development, maintenance/conservation
and restorative development (which includes replacement, revitalization and
most of the other “re” words, such as reuse, remediation, renovation,
etc.).
Currently, our budgeting, planning and reporting systems only reflect the first
two modes. Restorative development (such as having to renovate a sewage system,
replace a bridge, etc.) usually takes communities by surprise, resulting in
special bond issues, referenda and other disruptive, crisis-driven behaviors.
It’s currently impossible for a planning commission or city council to
make a simple declaration such as: “For the next 20 years, we’ll
put 20 percent of our budget into new development, 40 percent into maintenance
and conservation, and 40 percent into restorative development.”
They can’t do it because “restorative development” isn’t
in their vocabulary, and their budgets aren’t structured to reflect that
natural lifecycle.
It’s time for our economic development programs and our governance systems
to reflect the fact that we are here to stay, and that no new real estate will
be found until interplanetary development begins.
The smart growth and sustainable development dialogues got us to the point where we realize that infill development, brownfield remediation, waterfront redevelopment, infrastructure renovation, wetland restoration and all other forms of redevelopment, reuse and regeneration are the only truly smart or sustainable behaviors. They are the only activities that result in a world that is healthier, wealthier and more beautiful with each passing year.
Once we’ve got our budgets properly organized, each community, county, state and nation should have a Department of Restorative Development — or an Office of Integrated Revitalization — to help create visions and plans based on the systematic renewal of all eight sectors of restorable assets (what used to be called “problems”): Restoring ecosystems, watersheds, fisheries, agricultural lands, brownfields, infrastructure, heritage and catastrophes.
No community has the budget resources to address all eight sectors simultaneously.
Integrated revitalization strategies help them determine where to start, which
restorative projects to combine for synergies and how to trigger a self-sustaining
revitalization that continually attracts new investment in their rebirth.
Five thousand years of sprawl and plundering are at their natural end, and we’ve
entered the Age of Revitalization.
Storm Cunningham is executive director of The Revitalization Institute and author of The Restoration Economy.
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