Against "Sprawl?" First Get the Facts!
Are you in favor of sprawl? Are you in favor of polluting water? Are you in favor of adding to traffic congestion? No? Of course not. But opponents of some specific developments around the region would have you believe that if you are against sprawl, you should automatically be against their targeted projects. They turn what should be a public debate about complex issues into a fight between us and them, right and wrong, smart growth and sprawl. I object to such non-analysis.
But even I slipped into this rhetoric when I joined other supporters of urban revitalization and open space preservation recently to object to a recent State decision to move 850+ jobs in the Department of Treasury out of Trenton and onto a cornfield. In the face of the uproar we caused, the Governor announced last week that she has reversed that decision. We claimed victory!
But who among us really knew the facts? We booed and cheered the decisions not because we had facts, but because we saw them as a symbol for the years of bleeding Trenton's economy onto open fields in the suburbs. But, as the facts are now becoming known, I am sharply reminded that real life decisions are not symbols, and, in this case, the Governor's decision to keep these Treasury jobs in Trenton may not really be smart.
I have just learned that in order to conform to the Governor's new directive, the Treasury Department may plop the pre-fab big box that it bought for its suburban highway site onto one of Trenton's plumb Route 1 sites. The site is inside Trenton's borders but is not downtown. From Trenton's point of view, this site may be better used by a rate-paying commercial user.
Did anyone ask Trenton officials about the decision? Did anyone tell the Governor that her decision, to be considered a "smart"one, should be based on working with the communities involved to achieve a number of public objectives? Has anyone added up how much more costly it is to achieve a number of public objectives instead of just one? Did anyone raise the ratables issue, the traffic issues, the urban design issue, the economic stimulus issue? Symbolic gestures based on rhetoric rarely achieve that level of analysis. But the real world demands it.
The need to satisfy more than one public objective is why most public issues are too complex for rhetoric and why I normally try to steer clear of it. Recent criticism of a number of new development proposals because of their impact on the environment is a good example. New development is a good target for environmental rhetoric, because, by definition, it always impacts the environment. It's an easy case to make.
The real public issue -- the more complex one -- is what is the best way
to protect the environment, while we get on with the real life business
of providing food, jobs, housing, mobility, goods and services to the whole
region.
For example, environmental rhetoric would have us support "no new
highways." What troglodyte would support a new highway, sprawl opponents
ask? But the facts tell us that even if we were to do everything right
-- we reverse suburban sprawl, increase transit services, apply demand
management strategies and so forth -- our traffic volume in our region
will still grow by at the very least 40% in the next 20 years. RPP knows
this, because we researched the facts. If we don't want more congestion,
some improvements to highways in some locations must be made.
The trick is really determining which are "good" improvements and which "bad"? There are no easy answers, but we are certainly not going to find out which projects to oppose by speaking in slogans like "no new highways." That language is fine for rallies, but it is of little help in making particular decisions in particular circumstances. I believe that the public is capable of, and deserves, a higher form of dialogue.
Such simple-minded rhetoric has been at work in the controversy over a construction project on Route 1. New opponents have recently jumped on the environment bandwagon to use this project as a symbol of the many years of bad highway decisions. I have been able to resist the attraction of this symbolism and support the project because I have been involved with it for almost 15 years and know the facts.
Labeled by opponents as a "new highway project", the so-called Millstone Bypass is really designed to take out three stop lights on Route 1. Statistics on accidents and congestion show that these intersections are the second worst in the corridor, after Routes 1/130 in North Brunswick. There is little disagreement that, as the economic engine of the region, Route 1 must function properly to keep the region healthy. The controversy has arisen over NJDOT's attempts to reconnect the east/west local road network after removing the lights on Route 1.
NJDOT's proposal has been winding its way through the lengthy permitting, engineering, and financing process since it was finally agreed after a lengthy public process in the 1980s. It was designed to improve traffic flow and safety on Route 1, protect the historic resources and neighborhood of Penn's Neck, regulate the flow of traffic between the Princetons and West Windsor, protect the nearby D&R Canal and the Millstone River, and accommodate the property owners on whose land the By-pass is to be built. All this within a reasonable budget.
But if environmental rhetoric seduces us into worrying only about what's best for the "environment", what happens to what's best for the community? If it leads us to the conclusion that we must "never" put traffic on open space, then should we "always" put it in people's neighborhoods? When is the fight for one goal won at the expense of others?
My organization, The Regional Planning Partnership, supports the construction of the Millstone Bypass. We have a 32-year track record opposing suburban sprawl, protecting our water quality and reducing traffic congestion. Why then would we support a project which has been painted by others as the poster child for sprawl? Because we know the facts, the context, and the project's constraints. Like moving the Treasury Department jobs from Trenton, the Millstone By-pass is not a symbol, but a real project, involving real problems on Route 1, requiring real facts and analysis.
Since 1968, The Regional Planning Partnership has been an advocate for the public interest: we advocate environmental protection and affordable housing and urban revitalization and traffic reduction and advocated the kind of land use patterns and regional growth management that can help provide all of these things. Because the public interest is made up of multiple goals, we are for optimizing all these goals, not maximizing any one.
Of course, single issue organizations are important, too: they tell us what maximizing one goal looks like, so that we can get as close to it as possible without jeopardizing our ability to optimize other goals. The Regional Planning Partnership provides one forum for bringing together these various single-issue stakeholders. The media provides another.
But in the process of seeking better win/win solutions, we cannot overly drag out the process because that leads to its own costs. Issues must be presented in all of their complexity and then decisions must be made and judged on how well they address that complexity. The win/win solutions sought by The Regional Planning Partnership are not idealistic and they are not about the lowest common denominator. Win/win solutions are essential to our quality of life.
Dianne Brake, is the President of the Regional Planning Partnership, Inc., Plainsboro