NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, February 21, 1999

Copyright 1999 Washington Post Writers Group

SMART GROWTH'S JOHNNY APPLESEED
By Neal R. Peirce

WASHINGTON -- In 1996 Earl Blumenauer, a progressive ex-state legislator and city councillor from Portland, Ore., took a seat in Congress nursing an unconventional -- some would say quite outrageous -- idea. Why, he asked, couldn't the federal government reshape its thousands of practices and policies to stop hurting and start helping American communities in search of better quality of life, stronger neighborhoods, attractive downtowns?

Blumenauer wanted to establish a bipartisan congressional "livability caucus." He favored a "Give Fans A Chance Act" to curb sports moguls playing one town and its fans against another. He had a bill to make the Postal Service consult communities before moving any more post offices from town centers to sterile outlying sites.

Blumenauer's livability mission, announced at the peak of the anti-government Gingrich revolution, seemed almost quixotic.

But not today. Last week, on Capitol Hill, I saw an exultant Blumenauer at work. His Livable Communities Task Force has over 50 House members. His Post Office reform bill almost made it through the last Congress and is now co-sponsored by 10 percent of the Members of the House. Another Blumenauer bill is already law -- to make a positive example of Congress by letting House employees claim a subsidy for transit passes in lieu of their free Capitol Hill parking stalls.

What's more, Blumenauer believes momentum is building fast, in communities coast to coast, for a livability agenda that substitutes "smart growth" for destructive sprawl, tames mega-highway building, promotes transit, strengthens town and city centers, protects parks and farmlands.

I discovered Blumenauer rushing to the House floor to make a one-minute statement (and grab some C-Span time) combatting an opinion piece by George Will, just printed in Newsweek magazine.

Will, in the columnist's classic acerbic style, suggested smart growth is largely a creation of Vice President Al Gore, a stew of recooked '50s or '60s Washington-knows-best liberalism that's "evidence of Gore's propensity for muddy, hackneyed and semihysterical thinking."

Families live in low-density suburbs because they like it that way, whether liberals agree or not, Will had written. Anyway, he added, Americans only occupy a tiny percent of the nation's total land surface, so it's unbecoming for Gore and a "fastidious political class" to tell folks to crowd into cities. The Earl Blumenauer response: George Will "simply and totally misses the mark."

And why? "Smart growth didn't start in Washington, it started in states and communities." It was Maryland's Gov. Parris Glendening who gave it a name. Twenty-seven governors -- 19 Republicans, 8 Democrats -- alluded to its positively, in one form or another, in their state-of-the-state speeches last month.

What's more, says Blumenauer, the smart growth movement "isn't about compulsion." It's about how we publicly influence the use of land -- which is nothing new Blumenauer insists, we=ve been doing it since we took it from the lands from the Indians, government approved homesteading, invented zoning, built interstates.

Today Americans are dismayed how the open spaces and fertile farmlands around their cities are being gobbled up by helter-skelter sprawl. Smart growth is the rising demand of the '90s for livable choices -- for neighborhoods with corner stores, parks, better transit, and hopefully a chance to do with fewer family autos and less time stuck in traffic.

Anyway, said Blumenauer, grinning past his trademark bow tie: "When arguments
like Will's arise, we have to push back. The libertarian network and
conservative think tanks can't be allowed to put a negative spin on such a
stunning grassroots movement."

Even national groups of realtors and homebuilders, Blumenauer adds, are now joining in serious smart growth discussions. And across the country there are big regional sustainability concerns -- how long, for example, can Phoenix pave an acre an hour? What can Denver do about its fast-depleting aquifer? How will Atlanta cope with its dilemma of polluted air?

Blumenauer's glad to see Gore take up the livability-smart growth cause. He's gratified that Gore and Clinton have recognized his efforts. But in one sense, he notes, the administration is really "just running to get ahead of the parade."

And that parade, in this particular congressman's view, goes even beyond the tangible issues of town and neighborhood restoration, parks and open spaces and livable suburbs.

What's really exciting, he believes, is how citizens are engaging development and town-building issues, insisting on public debate, refusing any more to leave the critical decisions to bureaucrats or highway engineers or other "experts."

"In this post-impeachment, post-Gingrich world, that growing engagement is critically important. There is a healing power in that engagement. Politicians, journalists, political parties ignore it at their peril."

Blumenauer visited over 30 cities last year to confer with diverse groups on livability and smart growth. The rapid expansion of the issue, he confesses cheerfully, has "taken me from being a wonkish advocate of good planning and turned me into a cross between an evangelist and Johnny Appleseed."