Density and Incentive Planning, Part One

It wasn’t that long ago that we talked frequently about the Population Explosion. We referred to overcrowding, mega cities and 2.5 children per couple as being the wave of the future. We lamented the loss of our beloved countryside. I remember a surrealistic poster depicting a world literally covered with humans. There was a city reaching to the sky in the background and “humanoids?” were spawling on a rocky shore and even spilling into the ocean in the foreground. The population explosion was the crisis we were facing as a species. The future image to fear, was that of us crawling over each as we struggle for survival.

Recently the discussion has shifted to sustainability. Are we no longer concerned about the population explosion, or are we beginning to be more focused on how we are responding to it? The attention we put to sustainability is positive energy. Looking for ways to manage our behavior so that we have a future, is a much more powerful conversation than simply naming a crisis.

In recent posts I have described how municipalities implement Zoning Regulations to organize growth in a manner consistent with the Town Plan. Town Plans have been developed by elected officials and hired professionals to improve the quality of life for the residents and businesses within a municipality. Two of the key elements to well managed growth, our response to the population explosion as we know it, are organization and efficiency.

Living in towns and developing communities has long been a natural response to our needs and desires as human beings to be more comfortable in our process of survival. We have all heard and should well know by now, how important being more efficient is, in order to achieve sustainability. We expect our organization people, our select boards and Town Managers to guide this process, or we (should) choose to live outside of that support system.

To accomplish efficiency in the process of Town Management, it is logical for planning to organize how infrastructure and maintenance are developed. Municipal services, such as roadway maintenance, waste water disposal, electricity, gas and potable water distribution are highly desirable because they are significantly more efficient when provided to multiple users than on an individual basis. They are also very intensive. (That can be read, expensive.) To maximize the “bang for the buck” of municipal services and infrastructure, they need to be well planned and constructed. Furthermore and most importantly they need to be concentrated, in order to maximize the number of users per unit of infrastructure. What these comments boil down to is that it is for the common good, that towns intensify their village centers.

What does Town Planning have to do with density? Density is the term we use to describe the intensity of land use. It commonly refers to the quantity of human occupation in a given area. Manhattan’s urban environment has a very high density. Montana is predominantly a low density rural environment. In a Village District such as that in Jericho, density is described or prescribed in terms of housing units per acre. As posted previously, the density (prescription) for that area, or zone, has recently been increased four fold, from a one acre minimum lot size required for a single family home or unit, to a quarter acre minimum lot size. Not too long before that, accessory apartments became permissible. These changes essentially suggest that where conditions permit, the density has increased by a factor of eight. This is an extremely important step toward sustainability, a very positive response to the population explosion.

I can hear you screaming from here at my laptop. The majority of people who live in these quaint little villages have chosen them for their scale and charm, and are generally prone to quaking in their boots when progress threatens to consume the image they invested in, oh not so many years ago. Well guess what, we’ve got a long way to go before we’re crawling over each other in our daily routines as we struggle to survive, but if we don’t actively pursue creative, smart responses to the threat of the “population explosion”, our species won’t last long enough to see it. As reluctant as one may be to think about increased density in our neighborhoods, when one honestly understands what smart growth means in terms of efficiency for sustainability, how can one resist and be a part of the solution at the same time?