June 2003
Cover Story
Is Societys Appetite for Construction Insatiable?
by Warren R. Sheay
Warren R. Sheay, former president of the York Neighborhood Association and a Bellingham resident for nine years, was an organizer of last falls Eben Fodor forum. Hes served on the Transportation Summit Steering Committee, has been a teacher/tutor for over twenty years and was a marketing officer for Chase Manhattan Bank.
At a recent Bellingham City Council meeting a father defended continued growth as necessary to ensure future housing for his daughters. I submit that Dad is an unwitting pawn in the quest for public affirmation conducted by our local growth machine.
In addition to the building industry bunch, growth addicts include realtors, landowners and developers who profit from the ongoing degradation/destruction of our neighborhoods, farms and forests. The benefits derived are short-term and monetary; the environmental desecration is forever.
How does our growth machine convince so many we have no choice but to blacktop? Let’s examine the rhetoric:
“We must grow or die.” Bludgeoned so often and for so long with this platitude, most people have succumbed. But consider: when a procreating couple decides to limit itself to two children (replacement level), does the resulting family die?
On the contrary, it improves its condition through conserving parental resources (attention, time and money), which can be more generously distributed to two (rather than three or more) offspring.
This applies also to our community. If we limit growth, there are more resources/amenities available for all to enjoy: open space, clean air and water, reduced traffic and less crowded schools providing more individual attention. In short, we’ll have a community far healthier than one shouldering the burden of runaway development.
Population Numbers
On the other hand, if our numbers continue to increase at a rate of 50 percent or so every twenty years (our current pattern), eventually we will perish by overwhelming our finite space. If we “must” grow, then it follows that we “must” die.
“There’s nothing we can do about it.” Recently in a local column one developer insisted we must grow “whether we like it or not.” Baloney. Growth is not some mysterious, unstoppable force swooping down upon an unsuspecting town. Our own zoning and planning decisions determine how big we will be, not the gods on Mt. Olympus.
Although overwhelmed with one of the highest growth rates in the country, local officials have never initiated a community discussion of how many people we can reasonably accommodate. Why? Our growth machine, a political powerhouse, would squash any such effort.
Tools for “Growthaholics”
What are some of the other tools “growthaholics” wield to cram ever more people into ever dwindling space?
•In-fill: an insidious real estate ploy. It’s defined as the insertion of housing into existing neighborhoods in order to combat sprawl. It doesn’t. There are no local “quid pro quo” provisions to preserve rural land as a function of in-filling. And, given our “green light” school of development, the bulk of our rural areas and farms are still up for grabs, in-fill or no in-fill.
P.S. Bulldozing homes for apartments is often a death knell for safe, attractive and desirable urban neighborhoods.
•Transfer of development rights: Conceived with good intentions, this device enables property owners to preserve ecologically sensitive land but still cash in by selling development rights elsewhere—in previously under-zoned locales specifically upzoned for that purpose. The problem is that we have very little land in Whatcom County that could accommodate the congestion brought on by an upzone. The upshot: Transfer of development rights might halt the bulldozer in one neighborhood only to unleash overdevelopment in the next.
•Those infernal giveaways: Given that we’re drowning in growth, why on earth must taxpayers continue to feed the development dragon millions in subsidies?
It’s high time builders ante up the true costs of land-gobbling subdivisions.
There are a few rays of light, such as the county’s battle to preserve farmland and Bellingham’s attempts to end the sprawl-breeding practice of servicing land outside city limits. Many more such efforts, and on a far larger scale, are crucial to preserving our endangered landscape.
Parents should lead the charge; the father mentioned in this article’s opening would best protect his daughter’s future by strenuously arguing not for but against the “too much, too soon” growth pattern strangling our community. §
