Municipal Land Use Center at TCNJ

From The Director’s Desk

I recently attended the 7th Annual Smart Growth National Conference in Washington D.C. The conference featured a wide range of participants from throughout the country who shared experiences related to smart growth implementation.  The conference included over 96 sessions over a three-day period.

Among the more interesting sessions was one that showcased California and the steps Californians have taken to address global warming and climate change through the application of smart growth principles and techniques. Did Californians suggest that they had all the answers? No. But many of the lessons shared were at least familiar to this New Jerseyan.  

The California presenters took great satisfaction in addressing climate change in the area of electric power generation. They were more skeptical when talking about transportation, which they identified as a formidable challenge. One panelist estimated that California’s population grew by 1.8% between 1975 and 2004, while the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMTs) increased by more than double that percentage during the same period. He also estimated that by 2020, VMTs will have increased by more than 15% over California’s 1990 level.

Transportation was such an intractable problem because it involved much more than just transportation. Solutions were deeply embedded in the California lifestyle, its coincidence with the automobile and as translated into California’s sprawling settlement patterns.  One panelist suggested that even if California succeeded in “greening” all its construction over the next 30 years, greenhouse gas emissions generated by daily commuter traffic would dwarf those efforts.

How can California get the transportation sector right? The answers posed had little to do with transportation and more to do with transforming the nature of the state’s land use patterns. According to more than one speaker, the remedy would lie with providing incentives to produce higher densities and ensure the development of more walkable, accessible mixed-use communities.    

One speaker urged the State of California to establish itself as a leader and a model to be emulated in terms of its own facilities. The state also needed to devise and disseminate meaningful metrics with targets to local jurisdictions, while simultaneously establishing a statewide registry to measure municipal progress.  

In more effectively addressing land use issues, the panelists were unanimous in pointing to the work that needs to be done by local government decision-makers. Land use is the key to solving the transportation-related emissions problem.

All agreed that changing local government behaviors will not be easy. A California local government official described municipal government as “retail government.” It was the place “where politics gets personal.” Another pointed to the difficulty of managing what are frequently the contradictory demands on local government, including unfunded mandates that often come down from Federal and state policies and programs. A third talked about local government as the place where issues related to property taxes and land uses collide. Was it any mystery that local governments jealously guard their local land use decision-making powers?

All this west coast talk had a very “New Jersey” ring to it. The New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan had identified the importance of these issues more than two decades ago, even before climate change was an issue thrown into this mix. All this talk reaffirmed my sense that MLUC @ TCNJ has appropriately positioned itself in working with municipalities on issues related to sustainability, global warming, transportation and land use.