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SIX GROUPS JOIN FORCES FOR A WAR ON SPRAWL:
ALLIANCE VOWS TO PRESS ROMNEY TO GUIDE GROWTH
Author: By Anthony Flint, GLOBE STAFF
Date: 06/11/2003
Page: B1
Section: Metro/Region
Housing advocates and environmentalists have banded together to form a sweeping new political alliance to pressure the Romney administration to do something about sprawl in Massachusetts, promising to hold the governor's "feet to the fire" on his campaign promises to change the rules on development.
The Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance is made up of six separate advocacy groups that have agreed to work together on the sprawl issue. Similar alliances have organized in states that have overhauled development rules, including Oregon, Maryland, and New Jersey.
The "smart growth" movement has gathered momentum around the country over the past 10 years, promoting the redevelopment of existing urban areas and transit-oriented planning to avoid the urban sprawl that comes from building on undeveloped land in suburban and rural areas accessible only by car.
Governor Mitt Romney made sprawl a campaign issue and put Douglas Foy, former president of the Conservation Law Foundation, in charge of the new Office of Commonwealth Development, which oversees housing, the environment, transportation, and energy. The Legislature has not approved that restructuring, but the office is working on an anti sprawl agenda, and has circulated a set of draft principles that would guide development in the future.
Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, one of the six organizations in the new alliance, said one task will be to "hold the governor's feet to the fire" and speak out on specific projects. "If they are inconsistent with smart growth, we're going to have to say they should not be built," he said.
"I think it's great," said Foy, referring to the alliance. "We need a lot of voices to push this agenda along.
Members of the new group, which also includes the Citizens Housing and Planning Association, the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, the Boston Society of Architects, the Environmental League of Massachusetts, and the Conservation Law Foundation, say the alliance will support policies to create more affordable housing while working within the state's tradition of home rule, under which cities and towns control development within their borders.
Most cities and towns in Massachusetts are struggling to cope with parts of the current development framework, such as zoning rules that favor spread-out subdivisions and a tax system that leads to extensive commercial development to bolster a tax base that can pay for services, said Larissa V. Brown, program director for the Boston Society of Architects' Civic Initiative, a two-year-old anti sprawl campaign.
"The state needs to have a position here - to say that it's not OK to drain water supplies, gobble up open space, or shut out people of modest means," said James R. Gomes, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
The group's first initiatives will be to create a "white paper" to present to the Romney administration, suggesting steps such as those recently adopted in Pennsylvania, which push cities and towns to plan together and share tax revenue across municipal borders. The alliance also wants affordable housing projects to be compact and near transit, and will press the Romney administration to overhaul Chapter 40A, the statewide zoning law.
The group also seeks to build a constituency for smart growth by sponsoring educational events, to get citizens to think beyond the local level, said David Harris, executive director of the Fair Housing Center.
In addition, another new group, which includes many members in the Smart Growth Alliance, has formed separately to focus on how new development policies will affect low-income families. The Greater Boston Action Committee will promote affordable housing and greater access to transit for low- and moderate-income workers, said Anthony Davis, a spokesman or PolicyLink, the national group that helped the committee form.
Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.