Big Places, Big Plans

Mark B. Lapping

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351162500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

With origins in the late 1960s, a 'quiet revolution' in land use planning and control has taken hold across North America. First seen as a manifestation of the environmental movement, the revolution prompted governments at several levels to attempt to protect critical areas and vulnerable natural resources. Many of the most dramatic and far-reaching shifts in planning regimes have occurred in large-scale, environmentally unique or sensitive regions. It is these big places, looming large in the American and Canadian psyches, that are the focus of this edited volume. Each of the chapters reflects on the contemporary challenge of environmental and land use planning. Ten leading distinguished scholars here provide thoughtful analyses and critical insights into the processes and contexts shaping the innovative planning and policy schemes in seven regional landscapes.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Mark B. Lapping and Owen J. Furuseth

With origins m the late 1960s, a quiet revolution in land use planning and control has taken hold across North America for better than four decades. At least that is how it looks to numerous commentators and most especially to Fred Bosselman and David Callies who, in a report they authored for the President’s Council on Environmental Quality published in 1961, actually coined the phrase the ‘quiet revolution in land use control’. Some, like Frank Popper, saw the ‘quiet revolution’ as a manifestation of the ‘arrival’ of the environmental movement as a distinct and powerful force in national and local political life. Responding to numerous examples of environmental despoliation and on-going threats to large-scale ecosystems, the revolution prompted governments at several levels to attempt to protect critical areas and vulnerable environmental resources. Popper’s view was largely coincident with that of Robert Healy as outlined in his 1976 classic, Land Use and the States. More recently Jerry Weitz has argued that the quiet revolution has matured into something more akin to a permanent revolution in that it has now been transformed into the ‘Smart Growth’ movement. But a few others, like Michael Heiman, have seen events differently. He maintained that the development of land use policy in the latter part of the twentieth century has been little more than the inevitable consequence of class conflict in which state authority was manipulated to protect elite patterns of land use and resource consumption.

No matter their views on the nature of the ‘revolution’, or the lack thereof, analysts and planners tend to agree that a certain amount of continuity exists between initial attempts at large-scale regional land use planning to protect endangered areas and ecosystems and the more contemporary impetus to reign-in sprawl across the landscape, the ‘Smart Growth’, movement. Aspects of continuity include the promotion of strategies to manage growth, recognition that projects of regional scale and impact can too rarely be effectively addressed by traditional local planning regimes, and that areas of critical concern-places of unique and complex environmental characteristics-often require the establishment of new planning systems and jurisdictions which superseded local planning prerogatives in the name of ‘the public interest’. Not surprisingly, rural areas of significant natural and aesthetic character, and rural areas under substantial urban development pressure, have been and remain the focus of many of the revolution’s planning schemes. Invariably these are large areas, big places if you will, which have become subject to big and complex plans.

Many of the big plans for these big places arouse out of their designation as ‘critical areas’. They were defined that way not only by governments but also by interest groups, many with a considerable history of involvement in the regions and areas in question. Here the threat to environmental quality has been seen as severe and on-going, with environmental resilience decreased or compromised. More often than not, it was deemed insufficient merely to adopt a new attitude toward such places. Instead, it was necessary to develop entirely new planning and management systems and paradigms for such big places. This rarely happened without sustained controversy, contest, and even resistance on the part of local people and governments. Revolutions are, after all, messy, rarely smooth and almost never without conflict.

In each of the case studies contained in this volume, conflict and contest remains a sustained theme and ‘part and parcel’ of the planning process. This is a reflection of the different needs and aspirations of those most central to and involved in rural regional planning. It is also the consequence of long-standing class antagonisms and the shifting priorities of resource-based firms as the very notion of resource utilization changes from traditional uses and patterns, like forestry, small-scale agriculture and mining, to tourism, corporate farming, and real estate development. The backdrop and subtext remains that of environmental protection and how decisions will be made about the control and use of land.

Some tend to see all such big plans for big places as fundamentally anti-democratic in character and largely dismissive of indigenous knowledge and understanding. They argue that local planning is the most representative and the most responsible. This is certainly the view of James Scott (1998) in his wonderfully incisive See Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yet such a view can overlook the fact that in many cases ‘local’ often means that only certain long-entrenched and traditional elites will determine what happens in a place. Equity and distributional justice problems persist in both local planning regimes and in the extra-territorial governance patterns which have emerged to deal with the problems of these large rural regions.

The latter tendency in planning regimes, certainly a core artifact of the ‘quiet revolution’, has been justified by the insights of Gunderson, Holling and Light (1995) amongst others, who have argued that contemporary environmental problems require new institutional frameworks for planning, management and governance because those in existence are fundamentally incapable of dealing with emerging crises, ‘surprises’, and new patterns of resource use. In other words, existing resource planning systems are reluctant to change and adapt and too rarely can see change within the planning environment.

Much of the new thinking about planning governance often reflects a more robust, nuanced and sophisticated understanding of ecology and ecosystem resilience. This can be seen in the types of approaches to and strategies for regional planning reflected in the plans created for big rural places. Some were state or provincial level programs. Others reflected a more intrusive federal role than was traditionally the case. And still others attempt to strike a balance between local and extra-territorial and private and public interests. In only the rarest of these cases has the planning regime settled into a routine status. Conflict and challenge often over the very legitimacy of planning and state intervention continues and remains the norm.

Each of the chapters herein contained reflects the contemporary challenge of environmental and land use planning in large and substantial rural regions where changes in resource use, ownership and tenure patterns, and the restructuring of economies and societies has been taking place for several decades. In a few cases, such as those of the Adirondacks and northern Maine, decline is nearly a century old as the major contour of life. In some regions, like the Niagara Fruit Belt, the Everglades, and Vermont, the changing nature of agriculture and urbanization have come to mold much of the debate. The impact of recreation and tourism, second-home development, and severe stress upon the environment, most especially water use and quality, flavor all of these case studies to a great degree, but most especially in the Everglades, the Pinelands of New Jersey, the Adirondacks, and the Lake Tahoe basin. What remains common to all of these case studies is the fact that each region in question is a big rural area which is managed by a big and complex planning system. Descriptive and analytical studies such as these define much of the nature of contemporary planning in large rural regions across the North American continent.

References

Bosselman, Fred and Callies, David (1973), The Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control, US Government Pinting Office, Washington, D.C.

Gunderson, L.H., Holling, H.C., and Light, S.S. (1995), Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions, Columbia University Press, New York.

Healy, Robert (1976), Land Use and the States, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Heiman, Michael K. (1988), The Quiet Evolution: Power, Planning and Profits in New York State, Praeger, New York.

Popper, Frank (1981), The Politics of Land-Use Reform, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.

Scott, James C. (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Weitz, Jerry (1999), ‘From Quiet Revolution to Smart Growth: State Growth Management Programs, 1960 - 1999,’ Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 14, pp. 268-337.

Chapter 2
The Beckoning Country: Act 200, Act 250 and Regional Planning in Vermont

Robert M. Sanford and Mark B. Lapping

Introduction

Known for its green image, picturesque villages, rolling farmland, maple sugar, Fall foliage, and Winter snow, Vermont is also recognized for its robust and muscular environmental regulations. The attention to environmental quality is immediately apparent by the absence of billboards along its highways. This small, rural state of 9,609 square miles has a total population of approximately 600,000. Its largest city, Burlington, has around 40,000 people and only 66 towns have populations that exceed 2,500. Despite, or perhaps because of its small size, Vermont has progressively experimented with land use regulation and planning. Like many states that experiencedrapid growth and developmentin the post-World War II era, Vermont gained valuable planning experience in the war effort. This experience, although primarily in the allocation of resources and the managed production of goods, indicated the role planning could play in guiding growth and land use. But state and regional planning didn’t happen overnight. It took several decades for the state and local communities to implement comprehensive plans. Regional planning commissions did not become effectiveuntil the mid-1970s. The State Planning Office remains a small department with links to economic development. Historically, there had been little incentive for regional or statewide planning.

Vermont’s relatively small population had been expanding at an average of only 2 per cent a year from 1860 to 1960. This slow growth rate was easily accommodated and the state’s official policy continued to encourage growth, notably second-home conversion of abandoned farms (Albers, 2000). State planners actively encouraged winter sport development and sought expansion of the state’s infrastructure and services to encourage growth (Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 1999). By 1960, Vermont lost its ability to boast of having more cows than people, reflecting both population growth and a decline in the relative importance of the dairy industry (Byers and Wilson, 1983). Vermont’s population growth was 12 per cent during the 1960s and 13 per cent in the 1970s. The growth in these two decades equaled the growth over the previous 135 years. Between 1980 and 1990, the state’s total population increased to 563,000, a climb of 10.2 per cent. The 2000 census showed a decrease in the rate of growth; Vermont’s population was at 608,827 (8.03 per cent growth from 1990).

The impressive growth of Vermont’spermanent population has corresponded with increases in seasonal and transient population in association with a recreation and tourism boom that began during the affluent 1960s. The completion of the interstate highway system made Vermont much more accessible to the millions of urban dwellers of the metropolitan regions of New York, Boston, Hartford, and Montreal. Greater affluence, more leisure time and the ever-increasing popularity of skiing were contributing factors to the recreation-oriented boom that Vermont was experiencing. The state sought such growth, portraying Vermont as the ‘Beckoning Country’ in its marketing campaigns.

Growth and development in Vermont, as elsewhere, had some profound consequences. One was the increased demand for land. The heightened demand drove the price of land upward, particularly in fast-growing vacation resort areas where land was being converted to non-agricultural uses at a rapid pace.¹ Rapid development also created greater public service costs which precipitated an increase in tax rates. Higher taxes sometimes resulted in forced sales of land. Other problems occurred when land was hastily developed. Basic improvements, such as sewer and water systems, were often totally inadequate and barely addressed in local development review. The soils and topography of much of Vermont are not suitable for development and require meticulous planning if they are to be developed at all. Rapid and unplanned development of the 1960s was particularly troublesome and created substantial environmental harm at a time when there was an emerging environmental consciousness throughout the United States. The beautiful mountainous landscapes and clear, swift-flowingstreams, which served as an important amenity attraction were being degraded and abused by inappropriate development.

In the early 1960s, a number of prominent Vermonters, most notably Governor Hoff became concerned. In 1963, when Hoff took office, planning in Vermont was handled by several employees in a single state office and a scattering of local planners among some of the larger towns (Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 1999, p.4). Early in his first year of administration Hoff established the Central Planning Office, which was to coordinate state agency policies and the various planning activities at state, regional, and local levels. By 1965, regional planning commissions were authorized, with eight in existence in 1968 (Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 1999). County government had never been strong in Vermont and the regional commissions were seen by some as a way of gaining influence over state and federal agencies. Others, seeing dark clouds, were concerned about increasing government regulation and what they perceived to be a weakening of the commitment to private property rights and laissez-faire attitudes (McClaughry, 1975).

Land-use control mechanisms were unpopular and viewed as complex and timeconsuming by many town and state officials as well as by a significant portion of the population. Hoff remarked, ‘the word planning was anathema to most Vermonters’, but also noted ‘if I could have taken the legislature to New Jersey for a weekend, I could have come back and gotten all of my legislation through’ (Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 1999, p. 5). Comprehensive land use regulation was an alien concept to many local governments in spite of the town and regional planning authority that had been provided by the state. Unlike most states, every square inch of land in Vermont has been divided into townships that serve as important administrative units. However, a few ‘gores’ still exist as unintended remnants of this task where surveyed boundaries failed to match geography, leaving tiny unassigned areas. Towns function in a way similar to counties in many other states. County government is still almost nonexistent in Vermont. Local government resources were minimal; towns did not generally have civil engineers, sanitarians, planners, or other land use professionals. Consequently, much of Vermont’s rural landscape remained vulnerable to the whims of the developer even during the decade of the 1960s when Vermont first began to experience tremendous development pressure from the recreation and tourism industry (Schmidt, 1995).

There was particular concern about the course development of the state would take as a result of completion of the interstate highway link to Vermont. In 1968 the General Assembly acted to protect ‘scenic values’ by banning billboards and other offpremise signs and to control the location and operation of junkyards (Byers and Wilson, 1983)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Beckoning Country: Act 200, Act 250 and Regional Planning in Vermont
• 3 The Pinelands
• 4 The Niagara Fruit Belt: Planning Conflicts in the Preservation of a National Resource
• 5 Planning and Land Regulation at Lake Tahoe: Five Decades of Experience
• 6 The Everglades: Where Will All the Water Go?
• 7 Unorganized Maine: Regional Planning Without Local Government Andrew Fisk
• 8 The History of Planning in the Adirondack Park: The Enduring Conflict
• 9 Lessons for the Future
• Index