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PAVING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Southern Cities, Shores & Sprawl Ê

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• I. Introduction
• II. Historical Perspective
• III. Inland Cities and Towns From Maryland to Florida
• IV. Coastal Cities and Towns From Maryland to Florida
• V. Smart Growth as a Solution
• VI. Conclusion

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I. INTRODUCTION

The following is a production of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and UNC Television. Major funding provided by: Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation, proud to be a leader in forest management, resource conservation and recycling — Weyerhaeuser — the future is growing; Sprint PCS, committed to smart solutions in our community; and Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort at Wrightsville Beach, working in partnership with the local community as a smart growth sponsor.

DR. JAMES LEUTZE, Chancellor, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC

JAMES R. LEUTZE: When we saw the earth for the first time from outer space we saw how fragile it was. To many, that fragile earth is threatened by over-development. These satellite pictures of nighttime lights taken from 500 miles away show the magnitude of development worldwide. And these photos show development in the Southeastern United States. The black was taken in 1990. The red shows the growth by 1998. These images look almost malignant, and unfortunately, the Southeast is one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the country.

Hi. I'm Jim Leutze, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. We're a coastal community and for the past year we've been examining the growth that's occurring in the states around us from Maryland to Florida.

This program focuses on what we've found: explosive growth is causing traffic congestion, pollution and what many see as a diminished quality of life. Fueled by the economic boom of the 1990s, our cities are exploding and our coast is being overwhelmed by second homes, strip malls, roads, golf courses and marinas.

The result? From the Chesapeake Bay to Charleston to Miami, sprawl and pollution are following people fleeing the cities in search of serenity.

This has frightened some and inspired others to rethink how we're growing. Sometimes — though not always — the solutions are called smart growth or sustainable development. As you will see, neighbors, scholars, corporations and politicians are trying to figure out a way to keep growing without hurting the economy or despoiling the land, waters and air.

Smart growth means many things, but it usually includes green space, downtown redevelopment, mixed-use zoning and controlling sprawl by planning where city services will be provided. But there are those who think solutions such as smart growth are not the answer. Advocacy groups have sprung up all over America, including the South, to defend property rights. Their common message? No zoning, no wetlands confiscation, no bureaucrats telling landowners what they can or cannot do with what they own.

In this program we examine the crisis over growth from Maryland to Florida. While we think there is a way to develop without hurting the economy or the environment, we don't think there is much time left.

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II. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Our story is rooted in history: in an idea, an invention, and two government programs.

First the idea: In 1776, the year America declared its independence, Adam Smith wrote about an “invisible hand” being at work in the capitalist economy. Simply put, he believed that if everyone pursued their individual self-interest the general welfare would benefit.

This is the idea behind free market capitalism and individual rights. Those who challenge those rights are seen as deluded or even un-American. Since the turn of the century, several American presidents have acted to protect public lands. Theodore Roosevelt was the father of our national parks, with Franklin Roosevelt following in his footsteps. And Bill Clinton set aside 60 million acres of national forest by executive order at the end of his administration

The clash between government intervention in the public interest and private property rights is at the heart of the current crisis over growth. What are the pros and cons?

DR. COURTNEY HACKNEY, Professor, Biological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC

COURTNEY HACKNEY: Well, the issue of private property rights and the public's need to maintain an active and functioning environment are essentially in conflict in all levels of government. Our constitution guarantees us the right to use our own property, but everything we know as scientists basically says that the free, unrestricted use of property is going to lead to the degradation of the environment in a far more rapid rate than it should have.

RANDALL HOLCOMBE: One of the fundamental principles this country was founded on was the idea of protecting individual rights. You know, the constitution was written supporting that principle, and for 200 years the prosperity of this country has been built on the idea of a market economy with private property rights.

LEUTZE: The automobile had a tremendous impact on the current crisis over growth. Henry Ford's mass production techniques made widespread ownership possible, and the American passion for independence turned car buying almost into a necessity. You could go anywhere you wanted, anytime you wanted, down the street or across the country. After World War II, easy credit terms made car sales soar. The American love affair with the automobile was in full swing.

Another factor contributing to our current crisis over growth was passage of the GI Bill. It was a way of saying thank you to the 16 million returning service men and women. The bill guaranteed low interest loans to veterans to purchase homes of their own. What had been just a dream before W.W.II, was now within reach.

Finally, there was the Interstate and Defense Highways Act, one of history's great public works projects. President Eisenhower thought American roads were inadequate in case a nuclear attack made evacuation necessary. There was no public objection to these initiatives.

These three factors — the automobile, the GI Bill and the interstate highway system — combined to pick up and move Americans out of the cities. The automobile made commuting easier. The GI Bill encouraged new housing outside the central city. And the highway system provided the pathways to get there. Suburbia was born, but few imagined how enthusiastically suburbia would be embraced. Americans came to see a home in the suburbs as the realization of the American dream — and there were many good things about it: peace, quiet and elbow room.

But the dark side of suburbia is sprawl, long commutes, auto emissions, the gobbling up of open space and social isolation. Polls continually show that the majority of Americans believe sprawl and its derivatives have a negative effect on their lives and the environment. Ironically, city planners and architects had once encouraged suburban living as an escape.

The South was particularly vulnerable to the rise of suburbia and sprawl because through much of the 20th century growth and industrial development had largely bypassed the region. All that was to change.

As early as 1972, Professor Joel Fleishman of Duke University was warning Southern audiences that they were about to repeat the mistakes that led to urban decay in the North. Unfortunately, he was ignored.

Swept along by the same historical forces that led to suburban sprawl, the Southeastern United States grew almost 50 percent faster than the rest of the nation. But growth along the coast was even more rapid. Numbering only 8 million people in 1960, by 2015 it's estimated that 23 million will live along the coast. In the last decade, Maryland grew by 11 percent, Virginia by 14 percent, North Carolina by 21 percent, South Carolina 15 percent, Georgia 26 percent and Florida 23 percent.

Such growth requires land for development. Georgia converts 210,000 acres annually to development — third highest in the nation. Florida ranked fourth and North Carolina fifth.

As the major cities grew along the interstates so too did coastal destinations. A growing economy caused a rapid rise in the construction of seasonal second homes. National data indicates that second homes are being built two-and-a-half times faster than regular homes.

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III. INLAND CITIES AND TOWNS FROM MARYLAND TO FLORIDA

We've seen how the invention of the automobile — along with the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway Act — led to sprawl and suburbia. We've also seen how fast the Southeastern states are growing — and losing land to development. But how are cities and towns being affected by this growth? First we'll look inland, and then we'll see what's happening along the coast.

Most of these states are studying smart growth and are considering solutions like green space. Despite this, cities and towns face enormous challenges. Northern Virginia is being pressured by growth from the nation's capital.

SCOTT YORK, Chairman-Board of Supervisors, Loudoun County, Virginia Leesburg, VA

SCOTT YORK: The issue in Loudoun County over the last two years has been growth. Loudoun County is the fastest growing jurisdiction within the state of Virginia, also the third fastest growing within the United States. Part of our economic goal is to enhance or sustain and enhance what we call the rural economy: the equine industry, agriculture, horticulture and tourism. We have a lot of bed and breakfasts out in the western end of the community. People seek solace from Washington, DC, just to get away ... they spend a weekend at many of these places.

LEUTZE: Historic Virginia is also in danger of being paved over. There was a major fight fairly recently over building a theme park on a Virginia battlefield. Jim Lighthizer heads up the Civil War Preservation Trust, which is trying to save land having historical significance.

JAMES O. LIGHTHIZER, President, Civil War Preservation Trust, Arlington, VA

JIM LIGHTHIZER: It's a reminder of the defining moment in our country's history, when we went from an amalgamation of states to a united country — now the mightiest country in the world — and that war defined that. It defined us as a people. And part and parcel of that war was the ground it was fought on and over. And as we get more and more remote in time from the people who fought there, the land is really the only tangible connection between what they did there and what we are today.

I care deeply about preservation and particularly preserving Civil War battlefields and when I see development pave it over, destroy it as they have too many times, it tears me up. It really does bother me because I know a piece of our history is now gone forever.

LEUTZE: Raleigh, NC, the state capital. A vibrant city — home to the arts and culture.

Raleigh's Research Triangle Park was designed to lure businesses and it has — an average of 74 new residents arrive each day. A recent publication called the growth “too much of a good thing.” Roads in the Triangle Park area were made to handle 60,000 vehicles per day. Instead, they're accommodating more than 120,000. Once proud of its blue skies, North Carolina is now one of the leaders in air pollution.

We often think in terms of movements and statistics, but there are people behind those numbers. Rich Bell of Raleigh heads up the Smart Growth Alliance of North Carolina.

RICH BELL, Executive Director, Smart Growth Alliance, Raleigh, NC

RICH BELL: The Smart Growth Alliance was founded to bring North Carolinians together to inspire, promote, create a shared vision of growth which sustains and enhances the character of our communities, the health of our environment and the strength of our economy. The primary role the alliance will play is public education, communication between organizations and individuals hoping to promote smarter growth management in the state and hopefully consensus building and inclusion of new constituencies and people who have not yet been part of the conversation.

Sure we need to reevaluate our dreams often, but we need to leave room for everybody's dreams to the greatest extent possible, and for me that is what smart growth is trying to do is to enhance choice and to enhance the power of any person or household to pursue what they consider to be their American dream.

LEUTZE: Housing developments, strip malls and the roads necessary to get to them in North Carolina alone forced the disappearance of more than 40,000 farms in the past 20 years. An expanding suburb on one side and the construction of a mega-mall on another is squeezing out Nannie Mae Herndon's Durham County farm. She has lived there all of her 84 years.

Have you seen what they're doing up there in terms of the mall?

NANNIE MAE HERNDON, Homeowner, Cary, NC

NANNIE MAE HERNDON: I have seen all the excavations. What's that make you feel like when you see that?

HERNDON: Wasting God's beautiful Earth. There's just history in this land. And I don't want it destroyed. We don't want the money. We want the land. We want the heritage. We want the memories.

LEUTZE: Towns are losing what makes them home. Lucy Allen's family has been in Louisburg for generations. President of the North Carolina League of Municipalities, which includes 520 cities and towns, she's also the Louisburg mayor. Allen is a member of the North Carolina Smart Growth Task Force.

LUCY ALLEN, Mayor of Louisburg, North Carolina, President, NC League of Municipalities, Louisburg, NC

LUCY ALLEN: There are people who are coming from upstate New York or California or Canada, and they quickly sense that Louisburg, like many small towns in North Carolina, is not so extraordinary so much as it is the real dream that people have of an American home town.

Whether I'm mayor or not, we have decided that there are things worth preserving and there are new frontiers to open up. We want to be part of whatever's going on throughout the nation, but we do want to keep our character. We do want to keep our identity, and I think there's a real community dedication to that philosophy.

LEUTZE: From 1982 to 1997 North Carolina suffered a net loss of 1,157,000 acres of forest land. Some companies are trying to replenish the trees lost elsewhere to development and to ensure green space for the future. Located in New Bern, NC, and bordering the “often-troubled” Neuse River, Weyerhaeuser is a forestry products giant with a different approach to its work.

BOB EMORY: We're foresters because that's what we wanted to be. So we want to do the right thing in the forest, but in addition to that, we know that we have to prove to the public that we're doing the right thing. That's why, or that's partially why we have entered into this Memorandum of Understanding.

MARY BETH NICKOLICH, Forester, Weyerhaeuser Company, New Bern, North Carolina

MARY BETH NICKOLICH: It was a Memorandum of Understanding, an MOU, between the State of North Carolina, actually their Natural Heritage Department, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy and Weyerhaeuser are the four partners in that agreement.

It had come to our attention about five years ago that we had some critical natural heritage areas on our ownership, and they totaled about 7,800 acres. And the MOU just provided a means of protecting those 7,800 acres.

LEUTZE: And when the company learned that the site of the civil war battle was deep within its land, Weyerhaeuser donated it all to the local historical society.

The rush to the suburbs can leave central cities in peril. Charlotte, NC — the largest city in all the Carolinas has suffered from poor air quality. Last year the city had a total of 27 ozone alert days. Charlotte is the second most important financial center in America. It's home to national sports teams such as the Carolina Panthers. And it's also home to Bank of America, nationally recognized for its strong family programs, support of minority and women-owned businesses and city planning — all under former bank chairman and CEO Hugh L. McColl.

Hugh, how do you define smart growth?

HUGH L. MCCOLL, Former President and CEO, Bank of America, Charlotte, NC

HUGH McCOLL: Well, smart growth to me really means thinking ahead, planning ahead and planning your growth, and I don't see why that's a problem. To the contrary, one would look at the city of Charlotte and say you've done a pretty good job in the inner city. And that's because we've had a plan in place since the 1960s. So first, I think it's thoughtful, planned and then you could argue, directed growth.

LEUTZE: Well to be blunt about it, you're in the business of making money. You owe something to your stockholders. What about when community rights come in conflict with the opportunity to make a profit?

McCOLL: I believe that you're only, the businesses are only as healthy as the cities they operate in. And if you have constant out-migration of people from the center, the center collapses or rots, and then you have a lot of poverty and crime, you eventually destroy the city. I don't have to pick out any city to tell you about that, but we all know where they are and what's happened. And so, its I think its enlightened self-interest for the bank and its shareholders to want to have healthy cities.

LEUTZE: What advice would you give people about investing in their future?

McCOLL: What I think we should all be doing together is planning the future so that we don't shock each other with something happening and somebody says how could that happen? So if I was giving one piece of advice, it's plan, plan, plan because whether it's a business plan or whether it's a city plan, everything works better with a plan.

LEUTZE: Atlanta, GA — the economic and cultural hub of the South. It is home and final resting place to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's world headquarters to CNN and Coca-Cola, and it's home to the Atlanta Braves.

Atlanta is also home to sprawl, traffic congestion and some of the worst air pollution in the country. Heat from development has been so severe that it has altered the city's weather patterns. John Shelton Reed, one of the South's wittiest observers said, “Every time I look at Atlanta, I see what a quarter million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.”

Not only does Atlanta suffer from severe traffic congestion, but in January 1998 they temporarily lost federal funding for new highway construction for failing to meet air quality standards. To deal with the traffic and pollution problems, Georgia governor Roy Barnes has successfully implemented many smart growth programs such as giving incentives to people for car pooling or for utilizing Georgia's mass transit system which consists of city buses and the Marta.

We interviewed Governor Barnes in the Capital Building in Atlanta. He's been called a general in the war against sprawl.

Atlanta has the reputation of being the poster child of sprawl. How do you respond to that?

ROY BARNES, Governor of Georgia, Atlanta, GA

ROY BARNES: Well, it's, it's well earned. And the reason that it was, Atlanta has no natural barriers, it has neither the sea nor mountains to hem it in. And we just pushed further and further out until it reached a critical mass. The average Atlantan commutes over 35 miles a day, which is the longest commute in the United States.

LEUTZE: Now some people say that the automobile and suburbia and the shopping mall are the American passion. Why are you standing between Americans ...

LEUTZE and BARNES (simultaneously): And their passions?

BARNES: Well, I think Americans understand that change is their passion. That's what made this nation great — that we have adapted to changing conditions. We've come to the realization, for example, that we can't commute an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half in the afternoon, sit in an automobile and have any quality family time when we get home or participate in the community.

So, what this is about is providing choices. Yes, you can still sit in the car if you want to but if you want to ride mass transit, if you want to be closer to work, we're going to give you incentives to do so and we're going to provide these incentives so that you have a broader range of choices. And we believe people will follow those choices if given them.

LEUTZE: At Clark Atlanta University, Dr. Robert Bullard is at the cutting edge of anew academic discipline called environmental justice which is the study of how poor and minority communities often receive a disproportionate share of landfills, incinerators and other pollutants. While many see the growth crisis as a white, middle-class concern, Dr. Bullard clearly disagrees.

Let's talk a little bit about that pollution. I know that there were problems with the EPA as far as Atlanta was concerned, a little about that, but also about the health concerns caused by a this pollution.

DR. ROBERT D. BULLARD, Director and Professor, Clark Atlanta University, Environmental Justice Resource Center, Atlanta, GA

ROBERT BULLARD: The Atlanta metro area is a non-attainment area for ground level ozone.

LEUTZE: Tell me what that means.

BULLARD: It means that this region is out of compliance when it comes to ambient air quality. On any given day you can look out in Atlanta and see it's very hazy. This is not L.A. but it looks a lot like LA It is very hazy, and it's smog. And most of the smog is created because of automobiles, and in the summer time it is really a problem. Right now it's really a problem in terms of air quality and health effects. Asthma and respiratory problems are really a major epidemic in this region, and the population that is most vulnerable are children and elderly.

LEUTZE: Is there a racial component to that? In other words, is it more concentrated in the African-American population?

BULLARD: If you talk about the link between ozone and air pollution and health affects and ethnicity, as a matter of fact, there is a direct correlation between air quality and health. The group that's most impacted by air quality are African Americans. For example, African-American children in this region are three to four times more likely to suffer from asthma than are white children, even when you control for income. It's not a poverty thing. Asthma is the number one reason why most children in Atlanta are sent to the hospital in the emergency room, not gunshot wounds, not drive-by shootings, but asthma.

LEUTZE: In the last decade, the inland city of Tallahassee, Fla., grew by 23 percent. Tallahassee is home of Florida State University and of a professor who is a critic of many of the assumptions behind smart growth.

RANDALL HOLCOMBE: Start with the farmland issue. It's true that the number of acres devoted to farmland in the United States is declining, but the reason for that is farm productivity is way up. If you go back, over the last 30 or 40 years, for many staple crops like wheat and corn, the output per acre has doubled or more than doubled. So as a result, you can grow twice as much on the same amount of land. We need less farmland. So farmland is decreasing. That's true, farm acreage is decreasing. But the reason it's decreasing is because of increased agricultural productivity.

There is the fear that building more roads adds to pollution because more roads mean more cars. But actually, in most areas, the opposite is true. The big contributor to air pollution is cars that are idling stuck in traffic. So if we build more roads and we get the traffic moving, we have less traffic idling and we have less air pollution.

LEUTZE: Southern cities have also grown as vacation destinations. Orlando, Fla., is the nation's number one destination for tourist. Metro Orlando anticipates 42 million visitors each year.

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IV. COASTAL CITIES AND TOWNS FROM MARYLAND TO FLORIDA

We've looked at inland growth in the Southeastern United States, and what's being said and done about it. But what about the coast along those areas? The problems are very much the same. But there should be a greater concern because of the ecologically sensitive nature of these areas.

Baltimore — a major port and the economic and educational center of Maryland, is working hard to revitalize its urban core. While the Inner Harbor has become a showplace for tourists and trade, much still needs to be done to regain the city's former vitality.

Ironically, some of American's oldest cities are now feeling the brunt of rapid growth. Annapolis, Md., founded in 1649 is gateway to the sailing, fishing and recreational mecca, the Chesapeake Bay. Lee Epstein gave up a law partnership to work for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, formed in 1967 to save the bay. The Chesapeake is being ravaged by large quantities of polluted run-off and large deposits of airborne pollution from cars. In a landmark effort, the states surrounding the bay banded together in 1983 to save this, the largest estuary in the United States.

LEE EPSTEIN, Director of the Lands Program, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Chesapeake, MD

LEE EPSTEIN: Well, the bay's watershed is 64,000 square miles. It runs from Cooper's Town, NY, down to Norfolk, Va. So, it's a huge watershed. And really, what happens on that land, in that watershed is enormously important to the bay.

The land, as a ratio of land area to water area, is something like 15 to 1. The bay is very shallow, on order of six meters on average, which is 21 or 22 feet, so all of that land draining to that little bit of water has a huge impact.

LEUTZE: Current patterns of development continue to make the bay a system dangerously out of balance.

Virginia Beach is a tourist magnet for both the North and the South. It occupies 240 square miles of land and it boasts the largest population in all of Virginia, with 1,714 people per square mile.

Wilmington, NC, was a sleepy coastal town until 1990, when Interstate 40 opened. In the years since, Wilmington has become the second fastest growing area in North Carolina. As a reaction to such growth, some of Wilmington's leaders, such as City Council member Laura Padgett, are proponents of smart growth.

Are you here in Wilmington suffering from the issues that are related to smart growth?

LAURA PADGETT, Council Member, Wilmington, NC

LAURA PADGETT: We definitely are, in that there are some areas of town that have had poor planning where traffic is a major problem. We don't have the ability to get around through mass transit that many of the larger cities have. So being a medium-sized city, we're still suffering from the high rate of growth and fairly dense population. But we don't have the infrastructure to handle that growth, and we have the delicate environment that is being stressed by the fast growth and lack of planning.

LEUTZE: Shortly after this interview, Laura Padgett joined the majority of the town council and voted for mixed use zoning. Mixed use is really an old concept. It means having shops and businesses within walking distance of people's homes.

Development has a negative effect on waterways and oceans. Wrightsville Beach, NC, adjacent to Wilmington, is feeling those effects. Dr. Courtney Hackney of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington studies these matters.

Courtney, what is the focus of your research and teaching?

COURTNEY HACKNEY: Most of my research relates to how people interact with the natural systems and how they interfere or augment the natural systems and the long term goal is, of course, to understand what people do.

LEUTZE: And to possibly modify what they do?

HACKNEY: Especially to modify what they do, to come up with mechanisms that will limit the impact of development on nature.

LEUTZE: Now, returning to specifics... what effect does development have on estuaries for instance?

HACKNEY: Well, it has very direct effects, particularly when it's along the margins of estuaries. We've seen in this state the reduction of shell fishing areas to some dramatic effect. There are very, very few areas that sustain shellfish - open to shellfish. Now that doesn't mean we've killed the shellfish, we simply cannot harvest them and eat them.

LEUTZE: We can't eat them?

HACKNEY: And that's the most dramatic effect, simply because all it takes is a little bit of human waste in the water and we have to close those areas. That's probably the canary and the mine for us. We have more dramatic effects in that we have sedimentation. That's a problem in our main estuaries. We have nutrients that are problems. Algae blooms and as you know, phisteria, which is a toxic algae form, is a real problem in the Neuse River, the Pamlico River and some sounds. And may become a problem for us. Fishing — we're catching too many fish, we're restricting the movements of fish and so our fish stocks have gone down. In our estuaries we can simply find about every problem that you can imagine.

LEUTZE: There have been some environmentally sensitive developments along the coast such as Bald Head Island, NC, and Kiawah Island, SC There and elsewhere individuals and businesses are taking into consideration special coastal needs.

Damaged by flooding caused by Hurricanes Bertha and Fran, the Holiday Inn SunSpree on Wrightsville Beach chose to build further back from the waterline and build higher, leaving the ground floor for parking. The hotel is also shaped in a “V” to accommodate the fierce winds that sometimes blow. For their efforts, the hotel received an award from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Between 1990 and 2000, the metropolitan area of Myrtle Beach, SC, grew by 36 percent. Thirteen million tourists visit the area each year, spending almost five billion dollars. But continuing development is causing pollution. One resident said: “If the pollution continues, the goose that laid the golden egg of development is going to die.”

Beaufort, SC, was founded in 1711. 270 years later it had grown to 8,700 people.

Next door, Sun City has 1,600 new homes. The project was unveiled in 1994, and 50 more homes are added each year. When the 5,600-acre project is finished, Sun City will have 16,000 year-round residents. It took Beaufort almost three centuries to reach half that size.

Dana Beach was a Time Magazine for Kids “Hero of the Planet.” A Harvard graduate, he works to protect the environment in Charleston, the oldest city in South Carolina.

It has been described to me that if smart growth or some of these policies are going to work there has to be an environmental and an economic incentive, not just an environmental incentive. How would you respond to that?

DANA BEACH, Executive Director, SC Coastal Conservation League, Time Magazine for Kids 1999 Hero for the Planet Man of the Year, Charleston, SC

DANA BEACH: Well, I think that's exactly true and so many of these things are convertible into economic terms without really pressing the issue. They include such issues as tourism which is the major, the largest economic sector in this region. And so much of that is dependent to maintaining the history integrity of Charleston.

That was all the land that had been occupied for urban purposes over three centuries, since 1670. Twenty years later that land had increased by 250 percent. Now we're using a 160,000 acres of land but we only grew by 40 percent. And so we're using much more land to accommodate a somewhat modest increase in population.

LEUTZE: Charleston Mayor, Joe Riley, said that the nation needs new solutions — not to guide us out of the wilderness, but to make sure that there are some left for future generations.

Savannah is Georgia's oldest city, founded in 1733. Over the last 18 years, Savannah has grown by more than 3,000 people per year. Savannah developed on a logical plan of connecting squares, called a grid. Ironically, today many city planners are going back to building on grids because it make it easier to reach destinations by walking, bicycling or driving. Grids also allow for public transportation, unlike cul-de-sac neighborhoods which force buses to turn around. More importantly, though, the interconnectedness of grids promote a feeling of community.

In Savannah, we talked with Ann Roise, the director of economic development. Ms. Roise, who was born in the Caribbean and raised in Canada, is trying to encourage this sense of community.

ANNE ROISE, Economic Development Department, Savannah, GA

ANN ROISE: I think what you lose is, you lose the stories that go with the neighborhoods. You don't have the neighbors next door to pass those stories on and to instill in the younger generation that sense of place. They need to know why they should not paint graffiti on the side of the building. If they understood who lived in that house, who lived in that building, what that building was used for. I think all of those things help to cement their identity.

LEUTZE: Why is sense of place important?

ROISE: Well, to me sense of place means a connectedness, feeling a connection. Even if you don't live in the community, that you can walk through it and feel that you belong. That there's something familiar there. It may be the architecture. It may be the green space. It simply might be the culture or the people. And I think that sense of place is very important because that is what provides sort of a blueprint for what we should be doing for the future, what we should be doing presently.

LEUTZE: Florida and Miami are the best illustrations of growth in vacation land Four thousand new people move to Florida every week. And Miami didn't even exist before the 20th century. But highways and air conditioning gave it a boost in the '50s and '60s. In response, the Florida legislature recently adopted a smart growth initiative.

A port city, today Miami is a major trade gateway to Central and South America and the Caribbean. It's a banking center and a blend of cultures. But it's also a postcard for sprawl.

Inspired in part by what they saw happening around them, Elizabeth Playter-Zyberk and her husband Andres Duany are at the forefront of designing and developing new towns, pedestrian-friendly places such as the one in Seaside, Fla.

You're primarily known for developing new communities, are you not?

ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK, New Urbanism Expert, Miami, FL

ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK: Well, the new urbanism is often, because of the word new, construed to mean only new building. But, in fact, there is a tremendous amount of reconstruction of existing neighborhoods, urban downtowns, small town centers, even rural towns that's going on as a part of this movement.

LEUTZE: Tell me about Seaside — That's the place your name is closely associated with. Where did you come up with the idea? And how did that happen?

PLATER-ZYBERK: Seaside is a new town on the panhandle in Florida. It began, and continues to be, a resort village. But along the way, because of its physical form, its economic success, its popularity among people living and visiting there, it's become a model for smart growth, for the new urbanism. It's a walkable neighborhood that has a central square, many different kinds of housing, shops, places to work. The beach is open to the public. All sorts of things which certainly make a lot of sense but actually fly in the face of conventional development in the second half of the 20th century.

LEUTZE: An issue that is important to me, I wonder what you have thought about this — it seems to me that in part of this loss of a sense of place, everything looks alike, with all the signs and gas stations, parking lots and used car lots and everything else. Whether you're driving into Miami or Wilmington or Atlanta or San Diego, it all looks alike. All the trees are gone; instead we've got all these man-made products hanging around in the air. Could you tell me what you think about that?

PLATER-ZYBERK: Much of the concern for the environment today, for the natural environment even, is aesthetic. Many people will admit they're concerned for the loss of natural space or even the farmland preservation groups. Much of that public interest is driven by the regret of losing the beautiful places and that goes for preservation of buildings. Regretting losing the old buildings. And so much of the movement to reform the suburban picture has to do with the fact that people don't want to be living in this characterless place that doesn't give them any particular sense of identity.

LEUTZE: Because of its aboveground and undersea beauty, visitors to the Florida Keys number near three million per year — spending almost $1.4 billion dollars.

STEVEN MILLER: There's been a lot of change in the last 10 or 20 years. Mostly more people, more houses, and in Florida it's a real problem. Especially in the Keys, with the way people dispose of sewage. We're on coral rock here, and septic systems and cesspits are the method of choice, really the only choice people have for dealing with sewage, and that means it ends up in the water real fast. We have water quality problems here.

One of the things that the center does here in Florida is operate the Aquarius underwater lab. That's something that doesn't exist anywhere else on the planet. It's a place where scientists can go to live and work underwater for what we call 10-day missions. That is, they use conventional scuba diving but they go down and they don't come back up for 10 days. This allows them to conduct studies that couldn't be accomplished any other way. They spend up to nine hours a day on the bottom to depths of 120 feet, studying the coral reefs and our ocean.

The fate of our oceans is not clear. We used to think that the oceans were endless, and that whatever we put in was really not going to be a problem. We know, however, that because we've changed the chemistry of our oceans, because we've overfished our oceans, because we've polluted them so badly, that in effect our quality of life is going to change dramatically.

LEUTZE: The problem of growth along the coast is compounded by the fact that nature itself has changed.

The ocean rose nearly six to eight inches in the last 100 years. While some scientists disagree, the majority believe that this is due, in part, to global warming. Some forecasters predict that number will double this century. It could mean a loss of 200 feet or more of beachfront property.

We've also entered a new era of greater storm frequency and intensity. There were only five major storms in our region for the first half of the 1990s. But in the second half, there have been 20 such storms. Hurricane Floyd, which hit North Carolina in 1999, is blamed for at least 51 deaths.

Rising sea levels and greater storm frequency is occurring at the same time the coast is experiencing its greatest growth. More and more people and property are at risk. In some places, evacuation may one day become impossible.

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V. SMART GROWTH AS A SOLUTION

We've heard from citizens, scholars, scientists, environmental advocates, corporations and those in government. In the course of our conversations, some people have referred to smart growth as a solution to the problem. Smart growth initiatives are having a profound impact on all levels of government from city hall to the statehouse and even the White House. When a recent bipartisan study asked voters to name the most important problem in their community, sprawl and traffic tied for first with crime and violence.

And all across the country, cities, states and communities are implementing smart growth initiatives. Cities such as Wilmington and Chapel Hill, NC, along with Boca Raton and West Palm Beach, Fla., have passed mixed use zoning ordinances. While places like Charlotte, NC, have major green space initiatives. There are cities which are developing better public transportation programs, and others like Savannah, Ga., are creating public parks where there once were brown fields.

Developers are also applying smart growth principles. The Ion Developers in Mt. Pleasant, SC, build homes that maintain the historic character of nearby Charleston. They've also constructed wetlands, so vital to flood prevention and filtering pollutants. Most impressively, Ion Developers are committed to saving the old trees.

The underlying purposes of smart growth are a prosperous economy and satisfying quality of life and a healthy environment. But the proponents of smart growth say that we must have new ideas if we are to meet these objectives.

BARNES: Our nation is now being populated by smart people and the new economy. Smart people are in such great demand, they can go anywhere in the nation or anywhere in the world really, if they want to. If we don't provide them a quality of life to come to our states, to locate in our states, to raise children there and to pay taxes there, then we're going to get left behind on economic development. So this is not about private against public, or us against them, this is about a concerted effort, an overall planning effort, that makes money for everyone and preserves the quality of life.

LEUTZE: Almost everyone we talked to said the crisis was real and that we are running out of time.

LIGHTHIZER: I personally believe that we've got a window of somewhere between five and 10 years that's going to close when we can save these battlefields. I think after 10 years the opportunities will be essentially lost, gone. This is particularly true in what we call the eastern theater, which is really the East Coast — Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. If we don't get the job done in the next five to 10 years, we won't have to worry about it because it'll be paved over.

LEUTZE: As we have seen, many people are working hard to solve the problems of growth — so there is hope.

EPSTEIN: Actually, in part it's because of those two kids that I got into this work. I wanted to be able to come home and tell my kids that I was really trying to do something good. And it sounds corny, but I really wanted to be able to tell my older son, when he got old enough to understand, and when he asked me, “What do you do for a living?” that I could say I'm helping to save the bay.

BELL: I want her to say I was a good dad and a good husband, but I think I would also like to say that if she says that her dad with his public life was committed to public well-being and to all the highest values that we hold as a family and showed it in his work life as well as at home, I'll be satisfied.

HERNDON: It doesn't worry me. I'll end up out in the cemetery. And Sunday when I teach the story of the resurrection, I'm gonna end with a little boy in Sunday school. The teacher had them to sing, “Trust and obey, for there's no other way.” And when he got home that day he told his mother, “I learned a song today. It's ÔTrust, it's okay. Trust, it's OK.'” So that's all I can do, is just trust it's gonna work out.

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VI. CONCLUSION

LEUTZE: So, what have we learned? Adam Smith was wrong — unrelenting pursuit of individual interests does not inevitably advance the public good. We've also learned that government intervention, at least in terms of the GI Bill and the Interstate Highway Act, though great for one generation, had unintended consequences for another.

The fact is, both sides in the current debate want government intervention. The smart growth people want the government to direct growth by zoning, planning and providing or withholding services. Opponents say they want government out of their lives, yet at the same time insist government ought to be providing roads, schools and sewers to facilitate new development.

It is urgent that we find a new place between unrestricted growth and the kind of place we want our children, and their children, to inherit. This certainly is true in the South where strip malls, auto lots, fast food restaurants and housing developments not only threaten the quality of life, but the heritage of our finest old cities. An author recently wrote that we use to think of the South as epitomizing what America was. Today it shocks us into realizing what America may become.

Together, we must redefine the American dream lest we wake up some day and find that we've paved it over. We need to find ways to protect the public interest while showing private property owners and businesses, that they can do well while doing good. It can be done — it is being done throughout the nation.

But time is of the essence. If the American dream is still to be America the beautiful we must find solutions and we must find them now.

END

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