'Smart Growth' Gains Governors--But Not A Clear Track Neal Peirce WASHINGTON--If anyone thought the states' emerging smart-growth agendas would be blown away by recession, budget emergencies, war talk and a round of gubernatorial elections, they had better look again. It's true that in tough economic times, the allure of jobs, no matter where or how, has historically trumped environmental land-use controls. Still, as the National Governors Association assembled here last weekend, several state chief executives--among them a bipartisan collection of the newly elected--were talking about ways that smarter growth strategies can serve every purpose from budget paring to community schools to better public health. A leader of the band is Jennifer Granholm, the new governor of Michigan, where land use consumption has been outpacing population growth eight times over. A Democrat, Granholm has collaborated with Republican legislative leaders to create a 26-member Land Use Leadership Council charged with "identifying the trends, causes, and consequences of urban sprawl." Co-chairs of the panel, due to report back by Aug. 15, are two respected senior Michigan statesmen--former Gov. William Milliken, a Republican, and former Attorney General Frank Kelly, a Democrat. The Michiganders, faced with a $1.7 billion state deficit, are focused on economy--finding ways to save expensive outlays for new roads, schools and water systems by curbing sprawl onto greenfields and encouraging redevelopment of existing cities and suburbs. Smart growth advocates in Massachusetts were elated when the new governor, Republican Mitt Romney, appointed Douglas Foy, environmentalist and veteran leader of the state's Conservation Law Foundation, to be director of commonwealth development. Foy coordinates the state's environmental, housing, transportation and community development efforts. Again, potential economies to combat massive deficits are a key issue. South Carolina's new Republican governor, Mark Sanford, used his State of the State address to take up the cause of neighborhood schools, taking aim at "construction of massive, isolated schools" that make it impossible for children to walk or bike to neighborhood schools. Not only are mega-schools bad for education, argues Sanford, they "also accelerate developmental sprawl into our rural areas--and what comes with it--increased car trips, lengthened bus routes and a disappearing countryside." Elected in 2001, Democratic Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey--the state with the most cars per square mile--is crusading to "stop subsidizing sprawl." McGreevey is especially concerned about policies that extend roads and highways instead of "making our urban centers, older suburbs and rural towns more viable and attractive by redeveloping brownfields and steering infrastructure spending to these areas." Parallel efforts are being reported from Utah, Illinois, Maine, Delaware, New Mexico and Tennessee. Pennsylvania's new governor, Democrat Ed Rendell, is championing smart growth principles and has given major posts to such top environmentalists as Joanne Denworth, former president of 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, and Roy Kienitz, former planning director under Maryland's acclaimed smart growth governor, Parris Glendening. All this represents an immense sea change from the early 1990s, when land conservation and building up troubled older cities and suburbs rarely surfaced on state agendas--and the term "smart growth" itself was barely known. Glendening, the governor who first popularized the concept through his 1997 smart growth law, has just left office. His successor, Republican Robert Ehrlich, shows little interest in smart growth--a political peril that gubernatorial initiatives invariably face. But Glendening is hardly leaving the arena. He's agreed to head a new Smart Growth Leadership Institute, attached to the Smart Growth America advocacy group in Washington. The goal is to assist and train state and local elected officials as they grapple with the politics and laws of smart growth. Harriet Tregoning, Glendening's former cabinet secretary for smart growth, will direct the new institute. Smart growth, claims Glendening, is poised "to have phenomenal impact on the country's future"--not just staving off sprawl, but saving huge social costs of urban disinvestment, unnecessary outlays for water systems, roads, and exurban schools, and the rising public health costs of today's auto-oriented sedentary lifestyles. Indeed, these efforts have turned into "the new century's most influential civic movement," asserts Keith Schneider of the Michigan-based Elm Street Writers Group, a strong booster of the concept. By a long shot, however, not everyone agrees. Even as the governors met in Washington, a conference entitled "Preserving the American Dream of Mobility and Homeownership" was gathering across town. Its goal: to help attendees "effectively oppose rail transit boondoggles, high-density urban zoning, restrictions on rural property rights, and other so-called `smart-growth' policies." My column next week will turn to the colorful clash coming from the right, and projections on how effective it is likely to be. Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com. More Neal Peirce columns