Catchy title for yesterday's editorial, reminded me of Heroes, "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World." On-line the Herald changed it to the less dramatic: "Seize the sunshine, save the environment." They should have kept the paper version.
Too bad the editorial will fall on deaf ears because it was good. The Herald Editorial Board knows that their message won't resonate, saying: "The Miami-Dade County Commission, however, stubbornly insists on encouraging proponents of UDB expansion to try yet again." The Herald smartly suggests:
While new development is stalled, the Miami-Dade Commission -- and other local governments -- should stop bemoaning the drop in revenue and think more creatively. They can begin with a reexamination of their land use plans -- the blueprints for future growth. They should consider changes to the plans to promote sustainable development -- by conserving water, building up -- instead of out -- where practical, rewarding green projects and encouraging high-density redevelopment along transit corridors.
Four gold stars for the Miami Herald!
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From the St Petersburg Times:
"A lesson in how not to manage growth"
A Times Editorial
Monday, January 4, 2010
Florida voters will decide this year whether to move local land use decisions to the ballot box, and St. Pete Beach's three-year experiment along a similar path offers a good lesson on the downside of letting voters manage planning by election.
There are indeed some important differences between what has happened in St. Pete Beach and Hometown Democracy, the constitutional amendment expected to appear on the statewide November ballot. But the concept of giving residents a "yes" or "no" vote over land use decisions that were previously decided by elected officials is being thoroughly tested in St. Pete Beach. And its version of "hometown democracy" has proven to be divisive, expensive and an impediment to much-needed redevelopment.
St. Pete Beach became ground zero for the hometown democracy movement in 2006 after city officials amended the comprehensive plan to increase height and density allowances. Residents who feared the changes would lead to rows of 15-story hotels along the barrier island organized a citizens petition to undo the changes. Voters approved the measure, repealing the changes in height and density allowances and amending the city charter to require all comprehensive plan amendments to pass voter approval -- the first city in Florida where the public had such sweeping authority.
It didn't take long for the growth advocates to get in the game. In June 2008, a different citizens group proposed a comprehensive plan more friendly to developers that won voter approval. Critics filed lawsuits against the city and the citizens group. Settlement negotiations have collapsed, the city's legal bills have exceeded $300,000, there are serious questions about whether the city violated the Sunshine law and development has ground to a halt.
In the November city election, St. Pete Beach voters decided they didn't need to vote on all comprehensive plan changes but just those affecting height, density, intensity of use, or land use categories. They also voted to retain control over any height-related changes to another city document, a set of laws known as the Land Development Code, unless those height changes had been approved in a previous referendum.
Defenders of the statewide efforts are technically correct when they say their measure isn't as sweeping as what happened in St. Pete Beach. Yet the potential for dysfunctional government is the same. Comprehensive plans are thick, technical documents usually written by professional planners. Elected officials are best situated to shape those plans to match a community's long-term vision for its future. Putting that control under direct democracy, as happened in St. Pete Beach, invites short-term thinking and frequent referendums that are even more susceptible to well-financed campaigns by powerful interests. It also invites lawsuits and retards economic development. Florida has serious growth management issues, but Hometown Democracy is not the solution.
The problem with the Herald article is that they are pushing that same density routine. Anyone who is remotely knowledgeable knows that too much density leads to problems with light and air, park space, stress on traffic and local services, destruction of historic edifices, destruction of urban canopy, and all sorts of other problems with pollution, etc.
High density also leads to urban blight because it is not balanced, leaving too many residents without access to jobs, services, businesses, green space, schools, etc. Over time the spanking new high rises become shabby and they cannot find reuse, be rehabbed by individuals or be adapted to new technology.
It is also a plain fact that not everyone wants to live in a high rise building or in a neighborhood dominated by such buildings.
Mixed used high density and office space at transit hubs are great. But you don't want to line every avenue with high rises.
There is no such thing as a housing shortage. Miami doesn't have one now and it never will. When the county reaches what should be immovable boundaries (sorry politically connected speculators) it will then cause all the urban infill needed. When that runs into height and density limits property values will go up, development will move up the coast to adjacent areas (Broward broke the pattern because of H. Andrew) and the county will be a more viable hub in region of coastal growth, hopefully tied into each other with regional transit and yes, highways and parking. The problem today is that the metropolis and the "edge city" is often designed without regional integration. Miami-Dade was created because wise citizens and civic leaders saw that planning and services had to planned for the region. Now county leaders or the state needs to step in and give power to metropolitan authorities in the proper areas.
Is the Herald simply positioning themselves to take credit for the current review of the County's UDB policies being conducted by the EPA? The results of this assessment should be public sometime soon. This initiative by the County should have been noted.
The EPA "review" of the UDB was a straw man to have something to point to while the unreformable majority voted to move the line anyway. The argument was that we need to "study" the policy because there was "conflicting" policies? Didn't VNS write an op-ed to that effect?
There aren't conflicting policies, just policies the majority don't agree with but aren't brave enough to openly shred.
It wouldn't be beyond them to take credit for a stall tactic.
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