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A Letter to the Editors Concerning the Land Use Article in Last Month’s Issue
Dear Editors:
The Charles Nelson tourism based land use article (in the September 5 issue of Michigan Tourism Business) talked briefly about cures for the sprawl issues in Michigan. This is a complicated subject but there will be no modest cures, only palliatives, for land use problems until Michigan reorganizes the way local governments manage land use planning, zoning and infrastructure for capital improvements investments. To this day land use is a government competition for tax paying development to supplement local government coffers (without the corresponding service improvements). To this day local government autonomy on land use is spurred to prevent the seedier side of municipalities spreading into their areas. To this day sprawl is reluctantly subsidized by county government, adjoining municipalities, and state government to provide more services to townships (rural) areas that have not risen to a full service government stature (with the appropriate millage increases). Cost allocations are not assumed by the "sprawler" at the time the costs are assessed to the public. Impact fees in other states have had some success with imposing second thoughts on sprawl-like developments.
There is only one form of government in Michigan that is organized to deal with sprawl—home rule cities. Cities have every public service to deal with development—sanitary and storm sewers, streets, street lighting, sidewalks (a rare occurrence elsewhere), road service, parks and open space, police, ambulance and fire. The ancillary services may include recycling programs, day care, public transit, solid waste, and municipal parking, to name a few. Cities are the only entity designed to service (and manage) growth and development. In contrast they don't have the territorial oversight with the landscape that concerns all of us. Changes in legislation to manage land use radically or by sectors adjacent to developed areas have failed miserably through development lobby interests and the Michigan Township Association when it appears that the city attributes would be strengthened to outlying areas. Meanwhile too many cities (despite bad management in some instances) are failing because they are not financially tied to new development. The cycle only worsens.
To add to the maelstrom, the traditional notion of the American community is very diluted and is better defined by the places you drive to each day or the church one attends. The public comfort zone, once a gregarious cosmopolitan place of a compact settlement, is altered by complex societal settings and the freedom of movement provided by the automobile. I don't see much dissatisfaction with the present land use way-of-life. Every survey that I have read shows public support for land use improvement but not when it applies to oneself. So we have only the remnant community setting at the workplace where diversity exists. After hours the community is individually designed into divergent physical and social settings under one's own terms. Pundits will explain that this is a temporary luxury when land becomes too expensive or unavailable. I haven't seen significant symptoms that we have arrived to this state.
Michigan needs better-educated leadership on this issue. The problem has been that the cures for sprawl have unpopular solutions. As a political machine, this state, except for an academic and urban minority, really does not want to resolve the sprawl problem. In lieu of that cities receive special nominations as failing places with attendant grants in aid. These redistributed tax dollars are simply overwhelmed by the private "land use" dollars—as they should be. Although remotely possible, the redirection of the private land use dollars is within the grasp of a better-organized government base for land use management. Political will must be nurtured. The change agent is unrelenting education and hopefully a paradigm shift from an unexpected source such as a high court case dealing with equity issues. Recently the notion of unbridled prosperity is being challenged and will play a role. The concept of home rule must be updated. I believe it can be demonstrated that home rule without regional land use cooperation and tax base sharing is a fallacy.
Also today's leadership cannot grasp in one sitting or with a few statements the many influences that drive the sprawl phenomenon. Witness the length of this short note I intended when I began. Michigan State University has the personnel who could provide this insight. The Extension Service once had a public policy division that placed land use, principally farmland preservation, as a high priority of its out-state programming effort. I have seen its resurgence and hope it continues to flourish.
Thank you for addressing the issue of sprawl in the context of tourism. It is one more aspect that will continue to add fuel to the changed political environment we need to tamp the issue into a more manageable problem. I am not a no-growth advocate and I do not believe there are only a few formats
for an unsprawled place. Sprawl as a satirist recently stated is the awkward spreading out of limbs of either a man or a community. Land use as a process to deal with awkwardness is what we should be addressing.
Sorry for the length of this letter but this is its abbreviated form.
Regards,
Phil Hathaway
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