Chairman’s Message: O'Malley's "PlanMaryland" Zoning Proposal – Marylanders Not Ready to Return to Row Houses
Earlier this month Maryland's Department of Planning released the latest version of its "PlanMaryland." The proposal would allow the state to limit local growth by dramatically increasing Annapolis' land use authority in order to impose so-called "smart growth." A draft can be found online at Plan.Maryland.gov.
PlanMaryland has been under attack, especially from local officials. The Maryland Association of Counties warns that it cannot "support a plan that would impose a centralized state-controlled land use model" on member counties. Rural counties are particularly concerned that a one-size-fits-all approach will retard their economic development and shift tax dollars to more densely populated areas of the state.
The initial introduction of land use laws in Maryland is an extraordinarily ugly chapter in our state's history. In 1910 Baltimore's Mayor Barry Mahool, who historians describe as "a nationally recognized member of the 'social justice' wing of the Progressive movement," initiated the nation's first zoning ordinance directly aimed at segregating black and white homeowners. The measure actually divided every street in Baltimore into "white blocks" and "colored blocks." Explicit segregationist zoning laws were struck down by the U.S Supreme Court in 1917.[1]
Planning ideologues have since changed their focus. Now suburban living generates their intense scorn. Usually they try to mask their goals behind the buzz words of 'sustainability,' 'sprawl,' 'reducing automobile dependency' and 'smart growth.' Hidden behind their jargon, their current objective is simple: Concentrate more people living on less space.
For much of the first half of the last century, as much a half of Maryland's entire population was concentrated on less than 1% of its land area, the 80 square miles of Baltimore. In 1920 there were more people in some single square miles of Baltimore as in all of Montgomery County. However since 1950, Baltimore City's population has declined by 35%, and the balance of the state has grown from 1.3 million people to 5 million.
Marylanders voted with their feet (or perhaps more accurately with their cars) to get more space. More space means more than yard space or more distance from neighbors. Today's new homes have several times the floor space of a Baltimore row house. Yet despite these changes, Maryland still has, on average, fewer than one person per acre.
Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to city living. For 14 years my wife and I owned an apartment in a house built in the 1840s in a neighborhood with a density that remains over 50 people per acre, or 35,000 per square mile. However after our children arrived, we chose to move to housing with more space. Ours is an experience shared by millions of American families who also gave up shorter commutes for the suburbs.
Families make individual calculations in choosing where they live. They trade off a variety of considerations, including living space, cost, commute and educational opportunity.
Automobiles have expanded the breadth of those choices with unprecedented individual mobility. Yet that the overwhelming majority of Maryland commuters drive alone irritates planning ideologues no end.
Planning advocates treat transportation tax revenues as an opportunity for income redistribution. Although transportation money is primarily raised from automobile users, it is disproportionately used to subsidize the relatively smaller number of mass transit users. (And that is when transportation funds are actually used for transportation and not diverted, as Governor O'Malley has done, to pay for other programs such as expanded Medicaid eligibility.)
Housing zoning restrictions drive up costs. One recent study estimates that smart growth initiatives have added an extra $75,000 in additional costs for a typical new home in the Baltimore-Washington region. (See NCPA) Housing prices are driven up when regulation reduces the land available for new construction.
For several decades an area nearly twice the land mass of Baltimore City in size within Montgomery County has been set aside as an "Agriculture Reserve." The majority of this land is now being used either as woods or for homes on acreage significantly larger than would occur without the reserve's zoning requirements. Fewer than 200 of the county's farms have as much as even $10,000 in annual sales. One consequence of these policies has been to make Montgomery County's homes less affordable. While this is certainly a benefit for those selling a house, it adds to a home purchaser's cost.
No doubt if Annapolis bureaucrats had had the same goals in 1950 as now and the land use powers that they now seek, instead of today's Maryland suburbs, they would have tried to mandate the construction of more Baltimore-style row houses. After all, there is no probably no better reflection of the most desirable development plan of smart growth ideologues than row-house, street car-era Baltimore.
They might have tried. However they are not likely to have sold as many as they expected. More families would have chosen to live in a state other than Maryland. The would-be central planners pushing PlanMaryland should kept from imposing their personal living preferences on Maryland families.
Mark Uncapher
Montgomery County Republican Chairman
[1] To read more about this disgraceful period in Maryland's history see Garrett Power, "Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913," Maryland Law Review 42 (1983): 289-328 and Silver, Christopher "THE RACIAL ORIGINS OF ZONING IN AMERICAN CITIES," in Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows. Thomas, Manning & Ritzdorf, June and Marsha eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997