Planning and Density: Who’s Forcing Whom?

By Sarah Goodyear
Sep 18, 2009

Today we’re talking development and density. Greater Greater Washington has a post about zoning policies and traffic congestion in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a debate over growth policy that would encourage in-fill development near existing transit is getting heated.

David Alpert’s post asks why planning for "low-traffic growth" is so often seen as coercive, whereas policies that encourage sprawl and car dependency are not:

Photo by Dean Terry.

Somehow…the way elected officials, reporters, and
others discuss development has become turned around. Instead of
worrying about policies that force people to live far away, they worry
that accommodating more people near their jobs will worsen congestion.
And when anyone dares to suggest that that ought not be the overriding
public policy consideration, they’re accused of trying to "force people
out of their cars."

If an airline sells more seats on a flight so you can’t get an empty
seat next to you, should we ban that because it’ll "force people out of
their extra elbow room"? When stores have special Thanksgiving sales
that bring a lot of people to the store, do we decide to ban them
because it would "force people out of the aisles"? Do we outlaw special
events like inaugurations because the extra people drinking will "force
people out of their bars?"

Where did we get the idea that people in a neighborhood have
an inalienable right not to share their roads with anyone new, but new
people don’t have a right to live where they want to? Well, we got that
idea because the existing residents vote and the new ones don’t. But
the whole idea is fallacious. The new residents are going to clog up
the roads just the same. Instead of driving from a house near Rockville
to a job in Bethesda, they’ll drive from a house in Clarksburg to a job
in Bethesda, which is worse. Plus, they really have no choice but to
drive, unlike the person living in infill development.