Do you have to get into your car to run practically every errand? If you answered yes to that question, it is possible your community was poorly planned. Or, it was planned when the concept homes set away in groups was considered an innovative idea.
That concept was born largely due to the post World War II expansion of the interstate system. However, for many developers, it’s time to go back to get to the future. City planners are now harkening back to the good old days and contemplating the wisdom of more compact communities.
Denny Johnson is the Public Affairs Coordinator at the American Planning Association in Washington DC. He told The Bay Net that much of a planner’s job is a balancing act.
Planners have to ride the line between what the citizens want, the business communities want and the leadership of the city or county is striving towards. If a town leader wants to allow a bevy of retail developers to put up shop in a town without considering the impact on the resources of the town, or what the citizens and the business community would like to see the town become.
“One of the challenges of being a planner, big or small, involves development consensus; an agreement on how we want it to grow and how to manage growth. It’s important to get an agreement between planners and the business community and citizens, the leadership and the planners.,” Johnson said. “If you don’t have agreement on the plan, it’s not going to go anywhere.”
More than just figuring out the best place zone particular industries and developments on a large scale, planners also consider the day to day lives of those within a community. Planners are concerned with the accessibility of life’s little necessities. They are as concerned with the beauty and convenience, as well as the happiness and health of the citizens in the communities they are planning. Those concerns even include parks and recreation, the economy, consideration for the aging population and the environment. All of these factors must be weighed by the planner.
Emissions are a particular concern in planning these days. Johnson said, “It’s very much a consideration especially in light of the global climate change and the carbon emissions we are releasing. We can’t address the emissions without being more compact.”
The post WWII suburbs expansion created outer rings, and even rings outside of those rings. Waldorf is an example of one such an expansion. Waldorf and much of Charles County could be considered an exurb of DC. An exurb is an area outside of the suburbs of a city, but has a large working population that commutes to the urban area.
Being set far apart from the more compact community means use of more fuel and more land. In fact, more resources in general are gobbled up by suburbs and exurbs than in a main street or urban style community. Communities that are spread out also tend to isolate the residents from each other more than within a compact community. In 2006 the movie Radiant City highlights the way long stretches of road, commuting and something as seemingly insignificant as garages jutting out from the fronts of homes, has a tendency to isolate community members.
According to Johnson, the community has to ask itself where it wants to be in 30, 40 or 50 years. Figure out what kind of community you wa
