The Summer 2012 issue of Chamber Executive Magazine features an article outlining the business benefits of smart growth from Parris Glendening, president of Smart Growth America’s Leadership Institute.
The former governor of Maryland, Glendening spoke at the American Chamber of Commerce Executive’s annual convention last year in Los Angeles, where his ideas about the impact of future gas prices, real estate values and demographic changes were met with interest and enthusiasm.
In Lodi, Calif., a town of 60,000, a $4.5 million project to make its sidewalks and streets more walkable attracted 60 new businesses, reduced storefront vacancies by 12 percent and increased downtown sales tax revenue 30 percent.
Silver Spring, Md., revitalized its central business district over a five year period. A $360 million public-private investment in a mixed-use town center served as the initial catalyst. Annual property tax revenue eventually increased by 30 percent, nearly $1 million greater than pre-project levels.
Were those outcomes coincidental? Hardly.During my eight years as Governor of Maryland, we focused extensively on the issues of managing sprawl, adding transit-oriented development and increasing sustainability. Collectively, these focus areas formed a basis for the nation’s first modern “smart growth” policies.
The reason then and now for my interest in smart growth is its potential for far-ranging positive impacts, from adding jobs, to stimulating business growth, to improving air quality, to keeping farmland farmable. At the end of the day, just taking the time to think about how we’re building our great country is hugely beneficial.
As Glendening notes throughout the Chamber Executive article, economic growth and better neighborhoods are possible if communities and their residents come together to make policy and planning decisions with an eye to the future. He urges Chamber of Commerce leaders, who have long recognized the business benefits of more thoughtful planning and who are eager to take advantage of changing real estate trends, to play a role in influencing decisions about land use, transportation and economic development:
My recommendations, then, are straightforward:
• Rather than being fearful or confused about the term, find out about smart growth and make your members aware of the real meaning. Great resources and background materials are available for you and your team.
• Understand that smart growth does not mean more regulation; it actually tends to be about fewer or more flexible regulations.
• Support development projects in your cities and towns that focus on more than automobile factors. How could public transportation being included in the development and if you have transit, bus or other alternatives, support development that connects to those lines. Support the policies that make it easier to build them.
• Help make the link in the public consciousness between walkability, quality of place, job creation and business growth. It isn’t always intuitive, but it is a fact.
• If it’s more palatable in your community to push the individual components of smart growth without ever using the term, we won’t be offended!
• No matter what you call it, these are simple steps today that will pay big dividends tomorrow. Smart growth is just smart business.
To read Glendening’s full article, subscribe to Chamber Executive magazine. The current issue is available here.