September 14, 3970
Page 31530
URBAN GROWTH POLICY
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the August-September 1970 issue of City, the bimonthly magazine of the National Urban Coalition, contains a thought provoking article by Donald Canty entitled "What Is This Thing Called Urban Growth Policy?” As its editor, Mr. Canty has sought to make City a more effective instrument of urban improvement. As a writer, Mr. Canty has told us what an"urban growth policy" is not and cautions us that it may be an idea whose time has come and already is passing.
Mr President; because of the perceptiveness of Mr. Canty’s remarks; I ask unanimous consent that his article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED URBAN GROWTH POLICY?
The concept of a national urban growth policy maybe an idea whose time has finally come and is rapidly going. It began entering the public and political consciousness a scant two years ago (in large part because of the efforts of an ad hoc group of government officials and others called the National Committee on Urban Growth Policy; the oratorical interest of then-Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman in achieving something called "urban-rural balance” and a diligently researched, if less-than-lucidly expressed, report by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations)
The idea reached its apogee early this year when it showed up, first in the President’s State of the Union Message and then in legislation bearing such sterling Democratic names as those of Senators Muskie and Sparkman. The Administration, it became known, was busily preparing legislation of its own. Enthusiastic expressions of support for urban growth policy came from Secretaries Romney of HUD and Stans of Commerce (see City for June-July).
Since then, interest in the idea has perceptibly subsided. The Administration made no secret of its distaste for the Democratic bill (principally sponsored in the House by Rep. Thomas Ludlow Ashley of Ohio), in late spring let word out that there would be no Administration alternative offered this year. The reasons for the subsidence, which also was manifested in some skeptical commentaries in the press, were not entirely clear; but, in addition to political and economic considerations, they seemed to include over-enthusiasm on the part of some proponents of the idea, obfuscation by some opponents, and a consequent confusion. over just what this thing called urban growth policy might be, do, and cost.
It will be argued here that the idea is eminently worth reviving; that, indeed, the stakes riding on it are very high in terms of the nation’s future. The first step in its revival must be the clearing away of the general confusion. A good place to start is by examining some of the things which an urban growth policy needs to do to significantly alter the future, and some of the things it is not.
First among the goals of an urban growth policy must be the opening of new options and opportunities for the poor and minorities.
The growth period just past – wartime to mid-century – has effectively diminished these options and opportunities.
The developmental history of the period is depressingly familiar in this respect. Both economic and population growth have occurred mainly in the suburbs. Yet the poor have been priced out of the suburbs, and the minorities kept out by an ingenious variety of exclusionary devices.
Combined with waves of rural-to-metropolitan migration, the result has been the continual and seemingly inexorable spread of slums and ghettos in the central cities and our present metropolitan condition of de facto apartheid. Three-fourths of the nation now shares the precarious and unpleasant experience of living in a house divided.
A second goal of urban growth policy must be the less profligate use of natural resources – notably air, water and land. We are at last awakening to the degree to which past growth has wasted and polluted these resources. The fact needs no elaboration; it is part of the daily life experience of the same three-fourths of the nation and is spreading to plague the rest.
A third goal must be to create a living environment that is more efficient and more nourishing, to both body and spirit. The environment built in the process of past growth is perhaps, the most unlovely agglomeration of unrelated objects ever assembled by civilized man. It not only assaults the eye; it also doesn’t work, not even for those of a suitable color and degree of affluence to seek the satisfactions of suburbia. For all but the most affluent metropolitan Americans, choices of living arrangements involve a series of trade-offs in which the price of convenience and amenity can be very high indeed..
For example, the choice of a suburban house and garden means leaving behind the kind of cultural, educational, and even medical facilities which only city-size concentrations of population can support. It also means, most often, a long commute on clogged highways or laggardly public transportation.
There are known ways, ways used for generations in other nations, to lower these prices and make the trade-offs less painful. They involve something called Planning, which in America has been a paper exercise, divorced from the realities of both development and politics. For the sakes of the built and the natural environment, then, a major goal of urban growth policy must be to make planning possible.
The following are some of the things which an urban growth policy designed to meet these goals is not.
1. It is not simply a settlement policy.
Former Secretary Freeman, in his quest for "urban-rural balance," and secretary Stans, in his warnings against the prospect of "an anthill society," essentially were arguing for a policy that would stem urban growth and divert population elsewhere.
Implicit in their and others’ arguments, was the traditional Jeffersonian American view that the city is a place of evil, an unnatural and destructive environment for man. They expressed concern for the city, but mainly in terms of preventing its inundation by migration. Secretary Freeman advocated slowing this migration at its rural source source by inducing growth in small non-metropolitan communities. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations also placed considerable stress on this approach, which it termed the creation of "alternate growth centers." Such an approach could properly be part of an urban growth policy, but not the whole. For one thing, experience elsewhere indicates that only limited success can be expected of any effort to put a lid on the growth of major metropolises. Britain, with its long and distinguished planning history, has not succeeded in stopping London from growing; and Russia, with its centralized state powers, has experienced similar frustration in respect to Moscow.
Also, migration has ceased to be the problem for the cities that it was in post-war decades. The Census Bureau, in fact, tells us that migration from the rural South to the urban North has almost entirely ceased. But the major reason for distinguishing between a settlement policy and an urban growth policy that would meet the above goals is that a settlement policy would deal only with where growth occurs. The more crucial matters are how it occurs in terms of environmental quality and whom it serves. Without these qualitative and social components, a settlement policy could merely result in recreation of the waste and divisiveness of past growth in new locations.
2.An urban growth policy is not a "new towns" program. When the National Committee on Urban Growth Policy released its report, the recommendation that dominated press attention was for "the creation of 100 new communities averaging 100,000 population each and 10 new communities of at least 1 million in population." The committee made clear that its specifications for the new communities would include the qualitative and social factors previously cited.
But the committee also had to admit that even its ambitious new communities program would only accommodate 20 per cent of the growth anticipated in the remainder of this century. Once again, the fact must be accepted that most of this growth will occur in or around present metropolitan areas. Like "alternate growth centers," then, new communities can only be expected to be a partial solution, not the whole of urban growth policy.
3. An urban growth policy is not a public works program. The question it addresses is not whether we build enough housing andother community facilities for the population increment in the coming decades of growth. Rather, such a policy addresses the aforementioned questions of where, how, and for whom we build.
This distinction impacts heavily upon the further question of what an urban growth policy would cost.
The Administration explained its decision to defer urban growth legislation on the grounds of economy. However, a HUD official acknowledged that no particular policy proposals had been "costed out" in detail, and that the decision was based mainly on concern for the "psychological impact" of introducing large new ideas at this inflationary moment in history.
Similarly, the Administration based its opposition to the Democratic bill on the grounds that it. would cost $22 billion. But an assiduous survey of HUD and White House sources by this magazine turned up no computation on which this figure had been based. What would be the costs of an urban growth policy adequate to meet the goals above? Clearly, no answer can be ventured without drafting such a policy in detail, which is a task beyond the purview of this essay.
But some general points about cost can be made. In any computation, a careful breakdown must be made between those costs which the nation would face anyway and those which could be directly assigned to the urban growth policy in question. Thus, the matter of whether the nation meets its housing deficits and commitments, particularly for the poor, is not a matter of whether or not the nation has an urban growth policy.
The second point relates to the crucial resource of land. It is difficult to conceive how an urban growth policy could meet all of these goals without more direct and positive public involvement in land deployment. Until now, we have relied mainly on negative devices, such as zoning, to assert the public interest in the way land is used, and to make planning possible. The present metropolitan environment is sufficient evidence of the failure of this approach.
There is a growing body of opinion that the only way the public can effectively influence the deployment of land and thus the course of future urban development is to own it. The National Committee an Urban Growth Policy proposed a system by which states (or state-chartered agencies) would buy land in the path of urban growth with the help of federal loans or grants; put in the roads, utilities, and other public facilities that would make the land developable; make detailed plans for its use, including specifications for accommodation of the poor and minorities; then sell it to private developers, stipulating adherence the plan.
Such a proposal could be the revenue-producing element of an urban growth policy. At present the public pays the bill for making land suitable for development. This raises the value of the land, but the profit goes to private owners – often speculators. The committee’s proposed system would return the profit to the public, along with benefits of a nourishing and humane environment.