National Center for Smart Growth
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21472
The National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) works to advance the notion that research, collaboration, engagement and thoughtful policy development hold the key to a smarter and more sustainable approach to urban and regional development. NCSG is based at the University of Maryland, College Park, housed under the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, with support from the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, the A. James Clark School of Engineering, the School of Public Policy, and the Office of the Provost.
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Item Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances in Maryland: Inappropriate Use, Inconsistent Standards, and Unintended Consequences(2006) The National Center for Smart GrowthThe purpose of this study is to examine the implementation and effects of APFOs and the relationship between APFOs and Maryland’s Smart Growth policy. Thirteen counties and 12 incorporated municipalities in Maryland have enacted ordinances designed to assure that infrastructure necessary to support proposed new development is built concurrently with, or prior to, that new development. These Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances, or APFOs as they are commonly called, are designed to assure that public schools, roads, sewers, water for fire fighting, police and rescue response times and/or other infrastructure or services are “adequate” to support proposed new development. APFOs are timing devices that can be a useful tool for managing urban growth. When properly used, they can help ensure that needed facilities and services are available for new development and can signal to planners and elected officials what types of infrastructure, in which particular growth areas, are in need of additional capital improvement spending. They are intended to provide the rationale for prioritizing infrastructure investment decisions. As of April 2005, 13 counties and 12 municipalities had implemented APFO ordinances. In terms of categories of services included in the 12 county APFOs, all cover schools and roads. While two counties limit their APFOs to those two service categories, nine others include water and sewage capacity; three include water for fire suppression in rural areas, two include police/fire/rescue services; and one includes recreation. Not only do categories of services included in the APFOs vary, but so do a) the standards used to gauge adequacy, and b) the approaches taken by the counties when a development proposal is judged as leading to service or facility inadequacy. Moreover, APFO standards in a given jurisdiction can and do change over time as local elected officials respond to the concerns of constituents, other stakeholders and changing public policy objectives. This study finds that APFOs in Maryland are often poorly linked to capital improvement plans, and moratoria can last for indefinite periods of time. Further, the consequences of APFOs in Maryland are often unintended and their effects frequently contrary to the broader land use policies of the state. In many counties that employ APFOs, they have become the dominant planning tool rather than just one of many tools a county might use to manage its growth. When roads, schools or other infrastructure are judged to be insufficient to meet the standards established within APFOs, the result is often a moratorium on building until the infrastructure is ready to come on line. Often, the only way these moratoria can only be lifted is through the payment of impact fees by developers. These fees are, in turn, passed through to new home buyers. While this practice is justified by some observers as being consistent with the “benefit standard” (i.e., those who benefit from a particular service or facility should be the ones to pay for it), it ignores the benefits that accrue to the community from new development. Another perspective is that it places a disproportionate burden for the cost of new infrastructure on new home buyers. Under the latter perspective, if new development is consistent with a jurisdiction’s comprehensive plan, then it is appropriate for the funding for needed services and services be borne by the jurisdiction as a whole. The study also finds that APFOs are applied in ways that often deflect development away from the very areas designated for growth in county comprehensive plans to rural areas never intended for growth, to neighboring counties, or even to adjacent states. An analysis of the effects of APFOs on housing in Harford, Howard, and Montgomery counties found that over a three-year period, APFOs deflected as much as 10 percent of the new home development that otherwise would have been built within the PFAs of those counties. It is likely that the cumulative effect is that the amount of housing available in those counties is reduced, housing prices are inflated, and the growth simply moves elsewhere. APFO consistency with a local comprehensive plan is possible only if adequate funding is allocated to provide necessary infrastructure in the plan’s designated areas. That, however, is often not the case. In short, APFOs appear to be fueling the same pattern of development the state’s Smart Growth policy is intended to curtail. This result appears to be at odds with both the intent underlying the enactment of local Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances and the land use goals of the state.Item Montgomery Parks Outreach Strategy and Implementation Plan(Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), 2017) The National Center for Smart GrowthCJRT is developing a long-term minority outreach engagement strategy and implementation plan for Montgomery Parks, an agency within the Maryland-National Capital Planning Park Commission (M-NCPPC). Montgomery Parks is a bi-county governmental agency serving over one million Montgomery County, Maryland residents as well as residents from the larger Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. metro area. Over one third of Montgomery County’s residents are foreign-born and approximately 14 percent have limited English proficiency according to Montgomery County’s Limited English Proficiency Annual Report (2011). M-NCPPC’s mission is to: “Protect and interpret our valuable natural and cultural resources; balance demand for recreation with the need for conservation; offer various enjoyable recreational activities that encourage healthy lifestyles; and provide clean, safe, and accessible places.” As in many communities, Montgomery Parks faces challenges attracting and developing long-term engagement with specific underrepresented groups, which is a direct threat to their ability to provide accessible parks and facilities. This outreach and engagement issue, while pervasive among many state-run and national agencies, stems from a complex array of barriers including: language, culture, geographic location, economic status, values and perceptions. Alongside the social and economic barriers, improving long-term engagement with these underrepresented groups will have to address and ameliorate beliefs that agencies do not care about them, do not listen or are irrelevant to them. Overall, the goals of this effort are to provide our client with a cost-efficient, effective, and sustainable communication strategy, and to provide an implementation strategy to achieve improved outreach, engaging non-typical park users. The report provides the following recommendations: Increase and expand translation, focusing first on “high-touch” resources; Increase targeted advertising to populations (we focused on three large populations, American born African-Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, and Chinese): African-Americans: through schools, churches, and national Pan-Hellenic council, Latinos/Hispanics: churches and public schools, Chinese: ethnic grocery stores/markets, language schools, public schools, and community centers; Hire full-time staff with expertise in minority outreach, preferably bilingual, to help Montgomery Parks navigate and oversee community outreach to minorities; Hire “hubs” (community brokers) or community residents to act as ambassadors and help create pilot outreach programs; Require cultural competency training for Montgomery Parks staff. Additionally, to ease implementation, we recommend a phased implementation of the above initiatives with the associated baseline costs: Phase 1: includes hiring new personnel, requiring cultural competency, starting translation of key documents in key languages ($77,090); Phase 2: includes hiring the hubs and beginning pilot outreach programs, as well as expanding translation services ($99,650); Phase 3: expansion of previous outreach programs, development of the Community Engagement Office ($92,850).Item NCSG Policy Brief: A Review of GSA Leasing in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region(2007) The National Center for Smart Growth; Sartori, JasonAt the request of the Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and the University of Maryland's Real Estate Development Program have undertaken an analysis of the federal government's leasing presence in the greater Washington metropolitan region. The analysis finds that Prince George's County, when compared with the other jurisdictions in the region, does not receive its proportionate share of GSA real property leasing.Item GSA Leasing in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region(2007) The National Center for Smart Growth; Sartori, JasonAt the request of the Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and the University of Maryland's Real Estate Development Program have undertaken an analysis of the federal government's leasing presence in the greater Washington metropolitan region. The analysis finds that Prince George's County, when compared with the other jurisdictions in the region, does not receive its proportionate share of GSA real property leasing.