The Environmental Consequences of Planning To Fail

The City of Bellingham as it has to look in just ten more years based on current planning documents.  The Yellow building just visible in the upper right is currently Bellingham's tallest building; a building constructed about 3/4 of a century ago.

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“Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought”.

Bernard Baruch, Wall Street mogul and economic advisor to presidents Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman 

“We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.”

- Reubin Askew, former Governor of Florida

Almost nothing we do as a society has more impact on the earth’s environment than our efforts to accomplish land use planning. 

Almost nothing we do as a society is more susceptible to the unintended consequences of introducing politics and the emotion based approaches typical of the pop-environmental movement than our efforts to accomplish land use planning. 

Nearly 100 years ago, in the wake of the First World War, three young musicians penned a tune including the words, “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”

The song reflected the fact that, in a modern economy, most people prefer life in the city to life in the country. 

In terms of avoiding environmental degradation and of creating opportunities for environmental enhancements, that preference for city life is a positive thing.  A well planned cityscape with opportunities for citizens to “live the American (or European, or Asian or, whatever) dream” is filled with opportunity to protect and improve the overall environment.

 The problem with most land use planning approaches stems from the fact the approaches are designed and implemented by governments; they are highly susceptible to being interest group driven both during the planning effort and, after.

While Bellingham planned for unprecedented growth in its downtown core the City did not follow its own planning initiatives in the buildings it constructed.  "We couldn't afford to do it," one decision maker told me, demonstrating the perils of unrealistic planning in terms of achieving environmental goals.

An old proverb with some version in most societies has to do with how a donkey can be induced to pull a wagon.  The two choices are the carrot, or the stick.  A carrot hung on a string in front of the donkey will induce the animal to strain forward in an attempt to eat the carrot and, in the process, the cart is pulled forward. 

Alternatively, whipping the donkey with the stick will irritate the animal enough to induce it to attempt to avoid the irritation by moving forward and pulling the cart.

In planning, an equivalent process plays out in most jurisdictions.

At its bottom, at least in most North American areas, the goal of land use planning is to induce as many people as possible to live in and near cities.  More people living in cities means fewer people choosing the rural experience.  The choice to live in a city environment rather than rural is generally seen as a good thing in environmental terms.

A second consideration is that, especially regarding the pop-environmental movement, a strong undercurrent in the discussion is a desire to restrict all growth in a jurisdiction; “If you must go somewhere, go somewhere else!”

Enter the carrot or the stick question. 

As the issue plays out in Whatcom County, the place where I live, and especially in Bellingham, the county seat, the pop-environmental movement not only wants most growth, if it must occur, to take place in the city, the movement wants that growth to be confined to the urban core.

As a consequence, County and City planning approaches rely heavily on the stick; “You will all live in high rise buildings in and near the downtown core or you will not live here at all.” 

The problem the planning approach does not address is that few Americans lie awake at night dreaming about raising their children on the eighteenth floor of a high rise.  In fact, most Americans, of all ages, reject the option. 

What actually occurs on most sites in the downtown core

Faced with a planning approach designed to make city life as miserable and as expensive as possible (and successful in doing that), many Whatcom County residents who would prefer life in the city, find themselves forced to choose a rural lifestyle.

What about the carrot?

Some years ago Whatcom County inadvertently tried the carrot approach to planning as the result of a State law called the Growth Management Act (GMA).

The result of meeting the requirements of the Act was that for a period of about seven years Bellingham had adequate land supplies to support a broad variety of housing choice.  For those seven years, 62% of all the growth in the county came to Bellingham.

But the new people weren’t living in tall buildings.  They were choosing to live in single family homes, albeit on much smaller lots than had been the tradition in the city and in ground saving housing styles (row houses, etc.) also not traditional in the city; exactly the result hoped for when the GMA was passed.

What was actually built on a site assumed to contain two eighteen story towers in City Planning documents.  The towers were actually counted as being completed in the existing plan but market realities created by the lack of desire most have to live in structures like those the city plan envisions required a downsizing.

At the end of seven years, miffed by the fact that people still chose to live and raise their families in Whatcom County a new approach to growth was implemented; the stick.  The ability to capture growth in the single family areas was eliminated.

The result? 

Today only about 20% of the population growth in the County takes place in its chief city.  A plan that relied on the building of dozens of 20 story plus skyscrapers to house residents of the city has not produced even one such building, or anything half as tall.  And people choose the rural lifestyle as a result.

Rather than look at what has happened and once again make the cities places people want to choose, the reaction by the pop enviro movement has been to begin an attempt to eliminate growth in the rural areas as well as in the cities.

The result?

Whatcom County sports the worst economy in Western Washington among the county’s peer counties.  Growth continues but, at the cost of continued “flight to the fields” as citizens run from draconian interference in their lives inside the cities.  Most importantly, all the environmental impacts coming as the result of forcing people who would otherwise choose life in the cities to choose a rural life instead continue to mount up.