Spotlight Vol. 8, No. 18: Linking Land Use To Our Economic Future Is Vital For New York

by Tom Ryan, Web Editor, Empire State Future

Early in my reporting career, working in the rural Northern Catskills in the 1970's for a weekly newspaper, I saw many landowners go berserk whenever a planner advised local government to adopt or enforce zoning laws as a way to control development. "We pay the taxes on our land, who are you to tell us what we can do with it?" people yelled. Looking back, many of those public hearings make the recent congressional Town Hall meetings on health care reform seem like church choir rehearsal.

These days, a very different phenomenon is more common in upstate New York: people complaining loudly to local officials about a formerly beautiful viewshed mysteriously disrupted by a strip mall or track houses, far removed from a town center or in a previously undeveloped area. "When was the hearing, and who let this happen?" has become a much more common question in recent years. And when their tax bills continue to rise despite the additions to the tax base, things really get interesting.

"Suburban sprawl" is no longer a vague or subjective term to a growing number of New Yorkers: more people seem to understand the cause and effect. As more and more of our state's land mass is taken up with unsustainable growth, covered by asphalt, colossal shopping centers, and high-end single family homes in three-acre developments, one wonders when government will finally sit up and really take notice.

This has particular relevance and poignancy in upstate New York, a region hit by economic decline and population loss, which is still somehow, unbelievably, plagued by suburban sprawl that expand the cost and scope of public services, even as center cities and older suburbs decline in population.

All this forms the backdrop for Empire State Future (www.empirestatefuture.org). Formed under the sponsorship of RPA and other economic development, environmental and smart growth organizations in 2007, it recently co-sponsored a major statewide conference in Schenectady with the New York Department of State. The conference energized its 200 participants to advance an agenda that concentrates growth primarily in urban areas and town centers where infrastructure already exists, and can more economically support new development.

Empire State Future, led by Executive Director Peter Fleischer, is a consortium of 30 organizations that works to revitalize New York's faded industrial cities and help restore them to prosperity. It seeks to stop unsustainable development and curb sprawl, as well as prepare the way for future economic growth. Smart Growth - the effort to build a healthy economy that offers real choices in transportation, housing and education for New York citizens while respecting farmland, open space, and our precious natural and historic resources - is the focus of everything Empire State Future does.

Smart growth is not just about saving government money or preserving pretty scenery. Besides focusing development in centers where it will be most efficient and productive, Smart Growth also supports the critical but often neglected agricultural industry. According to the New York State Wine & Grape Foundation, nearly a quarter of the New York State's total land is covered by 36,000 farms which generate $3.6 billion for the New York economy annually. Among the 50 states, New York ranks second in apples and maple syrup production, number 3 in dairy, grapes, grape juice and wine, number 4 in pears, 5 in floriculture, and it maintains historically high rankings in several other major agricultural categories. Sprawl puts all of this at risk as farmers, facing particularly tough financial times, consider the development opportunities that come their way with increasing regularity these days.

There is no question that the state is facing enormous economic challenges, and there will be pressure to encourage new development wherever anyone is willing to put a shovel in the ground. But this would only squander increasingly scarce resources while setting the stage for continued underperformance by the state's economy. Rather, the message needs to be that smart land use policy and economic revitalization are one and the same.

Public attitudes about land use issues have changed dramatically over the past few decades in New York State. The question now is how much more time will pass before "officialdom" really takes notice, and focuses on the subject as an integral part of the solution to the Empire State's economic revitalization.

Until a much greater number of citizens and government officials begin to fully appreciate the pronounced connection between land use decisions and the future economic strength of the state, we will continue to labor under the crushing and unsustainable cost of added public infrastructure every time a new development breaks ground. It's not just jobs we need - we need an enlightened way to manage the future.