Three Nonprofit Groups Augment Smart Growth Planning
There are many ways to define "smart growth", some more controversial than others. For the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities, smart growth is one approach to achieving sustainability for the region. According to Andrew Michael of the Bay Area Council, who is active in the Alliance, the Alliance is not only supportive of the Smart Growth Strategy for the region (see June/July 2004 issue), but is also watchful to see that the agencies and the region "don't lose sight of the vision".
The Alliance's vision is contained in the Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area, which was crafted in 1997 to describe how "the three E's"—Environment, Economy and social Equity—play key roles in achieving improved quality of life for the Bay Area now and in the future. Alliance members are a diverse group of business and development interests, environmental and social equity-focused nonprofits, regional agencies, and others, including LWVBA. Within the Alliance, these members have organized themselves into caucuses based on each of the 3Es. The Steering Committee includes representatives from PG&E, the Sierra Club, Urban Habitat, and the Bay Area Council, in addition to the president of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).
As a means of bringing the Compact to life, the Alliance began its Regional Livability Footprint Project, which was later merged with the Smart Growth Strategy process. The Alliance continues to monitor and contribute to the implementation of the Smart Growth Strategy, with Alliance representatives seated on the Regional Agency Coordinating Committee.
The Alliance is a sponsor or participant in several regional initiatives related to sustainability and smart growth. One is creation of a regional report card which identifies and measures indicators of how well the region is doing in meeting criteria for regional sustainability. The first report card on sustainability appeared in August 2003. In June 2004 an update was issued, as well as a more detailed report on the indicators relating to families and communities, produced in collaboration with the Northern California Council for the Community and the United Way of the Bay Area.
The Alliance has worked with a consultant, Redefining Progress, to add two innovative measurements to these report cards, the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Ecological Footprint. The GPI adjusts the Gross Domestic Product indicator commonly used to evaluate economic health, adding values for socially desirable but non-monetary contributions such as volunteer work and subtracting value for transactions which society would prefer to avoid, such as environmental cleanup. The Ecological Footprint quantifies the use of ecological resources in the region compared to what is available. The Bay Area Ecological Footprint, which is similar to that for the country as a whole, shows that if everyone on earth consumed resources at the same level as the region, five planets would be needed to supply the demands.
The regional report card is a way to evaluate what needs to be done. The Alliance also looks at what has already been accomplished. Quarterly Alliance meetings have "showcased" successful smart growth and other planning efforts around the region, community by community, looking for common strategies, best practices, and suggestions for changes in regulations and other government actions. The Alliance also sponsors a Sustainability Roundtable and hosts a Web-based report on local efforts called "Faces of Sustainability".
A series of Smart Growth Conversations among Alliance members, chaired by the Bay Area
Council's Michael, has covered the Smart Growth
Strategy, housing in the Bay Area, and jobs growth and
infill, looking for common ground. "The
Conversations were aimed at bringing together partners to
more strongly advocate for changes that are positive
for smart growth," Michael says. "We are about to
go out with three major efforts to work more
aggressively toward these changes." The three areas
of focus are 1) reducing the fiscalization of land
use which results from current state budget policies
on financing local government, 2) reforming the
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to
accommodate smart growth, and 3) improving the ability of local
government to finance infrastructure through changes such as reducing the vote
threshold for approving taxes. The Alliance has been following legislation in these
areas and working with statewide smart growth organizations, supplementing
the efforts of ABAG and the Smart Growth Working Group.
Putting money behind policies is also important, and the Alliance has helped to form and fund the Community Capital Investment Initiative, to attract private investment to projects in the 46 most impoverished neighborhoods in the Bay Area. The initiative includes the Smart Growth Fund, the Community Equity Fund, and the Bay Area component of the statewide California Environment Redevelopment Fund for cleanup of "brownfield" properties. Over $150 million has been raised for investment. Projects which have already been funded through the Smart Growth Fund include upgrading a strip mall in Vallejo, and rehabilitating housing in several of the target neighborhoods.
The Alliance may offer the best opportunity for addressing those parts of the Smart Growth Strategy which are not explicitly a part of the charge of an individual regional agency, such as regional planning for open space or affordable housing.
While the Bay Area Alliance has usually played a support role for agencies working on smart growth, the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) has tried to lead them toward the goal, pressing agencies for stronger links between transportation and land use and better support for transit. TALC's 90 members are primarily environmental, labor and housing organizations. Stuart Cohen, TALC's Executive Director, says his organization is pleased with the direction that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is taking with the proposed Transportation/Land Use Platform (see June/July 2004 issue).
The component which TALC feels is particularly worthy of attention is the commitment by MTC to condition funds for major transit expansion projects on supportive land uses which will enable the transit projects to be cost-effective investments in infrastructure. Cohen says, "Out of all the items [in the Platform], the concept of conditioning regional funds is by far the most powerful—but a policy can sound good and make not a bit of difference if the criteria that are adopted and the method by which they are implemented are poorly crafted."
Greenbelt Alliance and the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, both TALC members, have assisted TALC in a 7-month coalition process to create criteria that could be applied to transit expansion proposals submitted to MTC for funding. Proposals which meet the criteria would facilitate transit-oriented development, provide incentives for affordable housing near transit, protect open space, and ensure that transit investments are accompanied by good planning and design in the communities they affect. Cohen says, "Smart growth is not just density—we need communities that are desirable places to live and walk. We shouldn't just think of how do we get people someplace—we should think in terms of civic centers and destination points that also have a transit station there."
The criteria offer specific suggestions about policies such as the required net density for development within a certain distance of a bus stop or rail station, or maximum parking requirements. "Instead of talking in broad terms about what cities should do, we want to show what is really needed to make the policies work, like shared parking," says Cohen.
The criteria, which will be released publicly in August, are structured with the hope that they will be readily accepted by local jurisdictions. "We are striving for something implementable," says Cohen. "We are not looking at any infringement of local control." The criteria will be used as a basis for advocacy by TALC and its member organizations as MTC integrates the Platform into the Transportation 2030 Plan in Fall 2004.
As MTC prepares the Transportation 2030 Plan, most of the environmental analysis will be based on the Smart Growth projections prepared by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Projections 2003. However, one alternative in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will base land use on the Smart Growth Scenario in the October 2002 final report from the Smart Growth Strategy/Regional Footprint Project (see August/September 2002 issue).
This alternative, called the TRANSDEF Smart Growth Alternative, will be added to the EIR as part of a lawsuit settlement between MTC, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund (TRANSDEF) and Citizens for a Better Environment. Unlike the Bay Area Alliance and TALC, TRANSDEF is a small group, known primarily for its spokesman, David Schonbrunn, a regular critic of regional agencies.
According to Schonbrunn, "This alternative will test aggressive Smart Growth land use against the more `realistic' modified sprawl of Projections 2003". A product of ten years of advocacy by TRANSDEF, the alternative will present ideas and approaches that haven't been seen before in MTC's regional transportation plans, he says. It will invest most of the transportation expansion dollars in cost-effective transit. "TRANSDEF's transit network will be much more cost-effective than past MTC practice, partly because it is designed in conjunction with future land use, and uses pricing mechanisms as incentives for transit use," Schonbrunn claims.
TRANSDEF's development of an alternative transportation plan based on the Smart Growth Scenario represents another way in which non-agency groups are supplementing agency work and using the Smart Growth planning process to change the future of the region.
Leslie Stewart
For more information:
Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development, http://www.bayareaalliance.org; Andrew Michael, Bay Area Council, 415-981-6600, amichael@bayareacouncil.org
Transportation and Land Use Coalition, http://www.transcoalition.org; Stuart Cohen, 510-740-3150, stuart@transcoalition.org
Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, http://www.mtcwatch.com; David Schonbrunn, 415-380-8600, david@schonbrunn.org