Policy Formation and Implementation for Sustainable Urban Form.

        Effective strategies for sustainable growth, transportation and land-use patterns require coordination and implementation at the regional scale. However, regional cohesion and perspective are put under pressure as a result o f competition between localities for the expansion of local tax bases (Boothroyd and Davis, 1991). The competition between localities for tax base is increased by tax breaks and other subsidies offered by local governments to developers whose projects of choice include large, horizontal office parks, and single-use commercial and residential developments located close to highways and on urban fringes where land is comparatively cheaper. Local governments act parochially in defensive ways as well, by guarding against too much (or any) low or moderate-income housing (Beatley and Manning, 1997).

        Defusing competition between localities requires some form of regional governance or framework. There is general consensus that lacking an enforcement mechanism, voluntary regional governance is not generally very successful at reducing competition and the resulting lack of coordination and cohesion between localities. However, there is evidence that competition for local tax base can be significantly reduced through some form of regional tax-base sharing within a voluntary regional governance structure, an example of which is Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota, which dedicates 60 percent of each communities tax base to a regional transportation and planning pool (Beatley and Manning, 1997).

        Other policy strategies for urban sustainability involve various types of demand management; essentially mechanisms for addressing increasing demand for infrastructure facilities required by new developments. Facilities such as roads, storm and sanitary sewers, waterlines, and other infrastructure must be installed at ‘greenfield’ development sites where infrastructure currently does not exist. The cost of infrastructure is a large part of the overall price of residences and other types of development, with roads alone making up half the cost of new development in some rural and suburban areas (Curran and Leung, 2000). Demand for more road space, water, parkland, and sewage treatment results in additional costs for local governments in a region, and to a lesser extent developers, who pass these costs onto the homebuyer and the consumer.
       
        Demand management means reducing the per capita demand for a service or resource, such as for water, roads, sewers, rather than automatically supplying more of the service or resource being sought. Demand management is a policy mechanism with which to coordinate and integrate transportation and land-use planning to foster land use patterns that encourage walking, biking and transit by preventing or discouraging low density and single use growth. It is also a strategy for internalizing the costs associated with a low-density, horizontal, and auto-dependant sprawl, thus providing incentives to build and grow in more compact, transit conducive patterns. The internalization of externalities associated with new, suburban, ‘greenfield’ developments can be accomplished with various forms of impact fees regulated by regional governments. Other policies aimed at integrating public transit with bike and pedestrian networks involve creating financing policy for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Box 1.1 lists  some core policies for implementing sustainable urban form:


BOX 1.1

Establishment of Urban Growth Boundaries and land reserves that clearly establish those areas that are off limits to future new development. Designation of growth concentration areas and regional and local town centres that are focus areas for infill, densification and redevelopment. Reduction and gradual elimination of vehicle subsidy to fund low-cost and no-cost public transit.   Establishing minimum density requirements and maximum lot sizes that all development proposals must fulfill prior to approval. Establishing a minimum percentage of housing units that are affordable and non-market, and minimum mixtures of multi family and attached single family housing, taking into account regional housing needs to accommodate a mix of housing types and thus prohibiting localities from zoning out multi-family or more affordable forms of housing.   Least-cost transportation funding whereby non-motorized programs and projects can compete for resources on an equal basis with roadway improvements; Shifting taxes from infill developments, the users of which will not require any additional infrastructure, to fuel taxes; Charging insurance on the basis of the number of kilometers driven rather than on a flat rate; Establishment of tolls on major roadways and bridges to pay for the cost of roadway maintenance through tolls on major roadways and bridges Reducing parking requirements and the amount of free parking. Transfer of subsidies from suburban Greenfield to infill and densification re-developments. Various Traffic calming measures such as street narrowing, narrowing of entrances to residential streets, and closing off roads to through traffic to increase the convenience and safety for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users while decreasing the convenience of driving. Designating high occupancy vehicle lanes along major arterial routes. Avoid road widening so as to deter car-use in congested areas.

        Seemingly, these implementation strategies necessitate enforcement through intervention at regional and national scales whereby market forces are regulated so as to ensure that objectives consistent with a regional, national, and even global vision of sustainability are kept in focus and are paramount in local decision-making. The shift from a competitive model to one where there is more regional and national cohesion necessarily involves the adoption of implementation tools such as those outlined above, and further, of enforcement mechanisms at regional, national, and, global scales as seen recently in the (approved, but still un-proven) Kyoto accord. However, implementation strategies and enforcement mechanisms, while in the long run will reduce environmental degradation and increase overall equity, can have adverse economic effects over the short term.  
       
        Further, many implementation policies aimed at reducing auto-use and dependency have been criticized for unfairly burdening lower income people, pricing then out of driving altogether and therefore reducing their access to housing, job, recreational, and other opportunities that are available beyond the reach of convenient transit access. Other of these policies and strategies are criticized for having little or no impact, being a diversion from, rather than a strategy for, implementing real urban sustainability policy. Both of these criticisms, particularly the former, represent enormous challenges to the implementation and enforcement of policies that promote sustainability summarized above, and present themselves as barriers to sustainability, a topic I return to later in the paper.

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