When I launched this blog three weeks ago, I shared the first
post on Facebook thusly: “A blog. A more quiet place to write. Maybe a flight
of fancy, maybe something more.”
With time, it’s looking like the former.
Something that seems characteristic of blogging is the peek
behind the curtain; the personal details/excuses about why the blogger hasn’t
written enough or whatever. I’m trying to avoid doing that here, even while I’m
clearly hinting at it.
To the extent I’ll get into more personal or the
intersection of personal and professional stuff, I hope to do it in the context
of issues and not as tortured rationalizations or idle naval gazing. I should
stop doing both.
I expect much of whatever writing I do will deal with growth
in our community, how we talk about it, and how we can embrace the
opportunities it presents. It’s a complicated and charged subject—especially
now—and I hope to be able to add some context and perspective to the
discussion. I’ve spent most of my adult life in the thick of community
development matters, and while I clearly have opinions and biases, my bigger
aim is to help find ways to have better conversations about it.
Because right now, the way we talk about development and growth is… not good. Not that it ever is, but the confluence of a new wave of activism, acute crowding in some of our schools, and the upcoming elections has pushed nuance out in favor of sloganeering and motivated reasoning, with a side of Dunning-Kruger.
I appreciate that Julia at Village Green/Town²
stepped into the breach yesterday with her post “The Sweet Spot”, which
wrestles with the seeming intractability of this conversation:
“On the one hand, I know what communities look like when businesses feels that they are no longer commercially viable. Developers are no longer motivated to engage. It can be a vicious cycle. A lack of willingness to invest can be the kiss of death. And I know that we need a push for affordable housing and decent “starter” housing. We need to make that a priority.
On the other hand, I do see quite clearly the overcrowding in schools that continued development has brought to our area. It seems logical to suggest that the pace of new housing should be slowed while new school construction is sped up. There are legitimate environmental concerns. And do developers pay an amount that is a meaningful contribution?
...
My conversation about development the other evening made me realize how much I want to find common ground between these two sides. What is the sweet spot between continued investment in Howard County and protecting and supporting infrastructure, services, amenities, schools, etc? It simply can’t be an either/or proposition.”
It seems to me that we’ll only find that common ground when
we can collectively share a common set of facts and a baseline understanding of
the complexity of growth, development, and all of the intended and unintended
consequences of the laws, regulations, programs, and actions we take as
consumers in the real estate market and as advocates in the public sphere
(collectively, “the system”).
Which brings me to something I’ve wanted to share for weeks:
an article in Urban Land about Downtown Columbia called “Urbanizing the Town Center of Columbia,Maryland”
As you can tell, this is written from the perspective that
development is, in general, good, but if you can look past that, you’ll see
that the planning and re-development of Downtown Columbia was not a hasty
developer giveaway at the expense of the community. It was, and is, a process
that spanned more than a decade and three Howard County Executives, involving
an ongoing approval process that is lengthy, deliberate, and includes numerous
opportunities for public participation.
And it is also a reflection of the tension between public
values and private enterprise, a tension that rests at the heart of our growth
conversations. The Downtown Columbia Master Plan balances this tension with
entitlements and obligations, processes and policies, give and take. Whether it struck the right balance is, of course, debatable.
If you have not done so, I urge you to read the piece. It is
comprehensive and fair, even if slanted in favor of development. Moreover, it provides
insight into what it takes for a developer to take an approved plan and
translate it into actual projects. Development finance and the process it takes
to get a shovel in the ground is, I suspect, something that few of us fully understand.
Julia’s post yesterday ended with a quote from a mutual friend of ours about the “tyranny of the OR” and the pervasive scarcity
mindset. Look around and you see this everywhere in our society today. I, too,
support the idea of the “genius of the AND,” and I think what we’ve done in
Columbia over the last 50 years and Downtown Columbia over the last 15 reflects
that.
I don’t, however, feel that this view is shared very widely.
But I’m not here to convince you to think like me, but I do hope that through
better conversations and some mutual curiosity, we can start looking at the challenges
posed by “or” as opportunities for an “and".
