ABSTRACT Title of Document: GROWING EXPECTATIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICS OF SMART GROWTH IN THE AMERICAN STATES. Regina C. Gray, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Directed By: Professor Eric M. Uslaner, Department of Government and Politics When asked what is on the minds of voters during the previous two national election cycles, many citizens responded unfavorably to air pollution, traffic congestion, and inadequate access to public facilities, parks and recreation. They specifically blame the lack of open space as the basis of their discontent. What voters are concerned about is sprawl—a condition in which development is too widely spread throughout a limited geographical area. This kind of random, unplanned development creates negative externalities on the infrastructure of cities, suburbs, and some rural areas, but also leads to environmental hazards like smog and stormwater runoff. Smart Growth initiatives seek to remove the barriers to homeownership, public services, and job opportunities by providing access to valuable land resources in suburban and urban centers. Twenty states have implemented Smart Growth policies. As other states continue to grapple with ways to address sprawl, many of them have begun to experiment with similar strategies, such as urban growth boundaries, limitations on exclusionary zoning, and the imposition of impact or development fees to stave off encroaching development. The interesting question is under what conditions do states consider instituting these innovative approaches to address society’s most pressing problems? And this dissertation specifically asks: Under what conditions will states adopt a Smart Growth strategy to address urban sprawl? Based on my research, I concluded that the political determinants of public policy matter more than economic considerations, such as the health of the state economy. In other words, a state with an influential governor and strong constitutional powers or a professional legislature is more likely to pursue and adopt Smart Growth, even when accounting for economic conditions. More important, Smart Growth appears to have an ideological dimension: politically liberal states were more likely to adopt Smart Growth than conservative ones. And although some in the Smart Growth community are aware of the growing conservative sentiment around the country today, in many instances they were able to convince both Republicans and Democrats to embrace the Smart Growth approach to growth management. GROWING EXPECTATIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICS OF SMART GROWTH IN THE AMERICAN STATES. By Regina Cathlyn Gray Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 Advisory Committee: Professor Eric M. Uslaner, Chair Professor James G. Gimpel Professor J. Gerrit Knaap Associate Professor Karen M. Kaufmann Associate Professor Irwin L. Morris © Copyright by Regina C. Gray 2005 Acknowledgements I am indebted to Eric Uslaner, my advisor and friend, for giving me guidance, counsel, and temerity to complete this dissertation. His patience in reading draft after draft of every chapter and incoherent idea I proposed amazes me. No one should be subjected to the torture of reading my earliest attempts to conjure up a unique and novel idea of a political scientist writing about Smart Growth! I thank him for always being willing to meet me whenever I barged into his office while he ate lunch. Kudos to Debbie and Avery for helping him get through this! I am grateful to my committee members for their comments and suggestions for which have proven most beneficial as I wrote this dissertation. To Karen Kaufmann, Irwin Morris and Jim Gimpel for lending a sympathetic ear and putting my toils in perspective with humor and wit. It has been a pleasure meeting and working with Gerrit Knaap, in particular, who encouraged me to develop my ideas and think more critically about the issue of Smart Growth in new ways. I am deeply grateful to all of them for investing time and energy discussing ideas and tolerating my many opinionated digressions. My work has also benefited from conversations with colleagues, former teachers, and new acquaintances. For their generous help and encouragement, I am grateful to: Linda Williams, Wayne McIntosh, Clarence Stone, Vince Marando, Jeff Henig, Karen O’Connor, Lee Sigelman, Jack Wright, Mike Giles, William Shapiro and Kent Linville. There’s nothing like friends to get you through a grueling dissertation-writing process. The best are these: Jonathan England, Adolphus Belk, Atiya Stokes, Celeste Lay, Lorrie Frasure, Wendy Smooth, Avis Jones-DeWeaver, Erika Gordon, Marie Fritz, Steve Aylward, Pete Burns, Mitchell Brown, John Burns, Karen Krueger, Kevin Smith, Terry Wright, Benita Suitt, Richard Nyankori, Michael Stallings, Cassandra Winstead. Special appreciation to Ann Marie Clark, Cissy Rumman, and Geraldine Foudy whose support and encourage have been invaluable throughout my academic career at the University of Maryland. For my parents, Barbara and Ralph Gray, and brother, “Chuck,” for their unflagging belief that despite their incomprehension about what I do, I must be trying to save the world. I am indebted to them for inspiring me to do the very best that I can. I cannot thank my brother enough for showing me what it means to be a free spirit. I dedicate this work in loving memory of Harold “Mark” Thompson, William Gray, Roger Ford, and the Honorable Howard “Pete” Rawlings. Finally, I am thankful for the many diversions I have enjoyed during my graduate studies at the University of Maryland. My diverse hobbies, love of reading, cooking, running, passion for music, and many personal endeavors made the road to my goals a lot easier. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Table of Contents iii List of Tables vi List of Figures viii Chapter 1: The Politics of Land Use: From the Founding to Smart Growth 1 Section 1.1: History of Land Use in the U.S................................................................. 1 Section 1.2: Historical Origins of Smart Growth as a Political Construct.................... 3 Section 1.3: The Emerging Smart Growth Movement in America .............................. 8 Section 1.4: Overview of Chapters ............................................................................. 15 Appendix..................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 2: Towards a Coherent Theory of Smart Growth Adoption 24 Section 2.1: Sprawl and Smart Growth: Marking the Connection ............................. 24 Section 2.2: Conceptual Framework for Smart Growth in the States......................... 31 Section 2.3: Intellectual Response from the Discipline.............................................. 34 Section 2.4: Research Design ..................................................................................... 38 Research Question .......................................................................................... 38 Hypothesis and Arguments............................................................................. 39 Section 2.5: Data and Methodology................................................................ 43 Governors........................................................................................................ 43 State Legislatures............................................................................................ 43 Interest Groups................................................................................................ 46 The Continuing Effects of Political Ideology ................................................. 48 Testing for Socioeconomic Effects................................................................. 51 Section 2.6: Conclusion .............................................................................................. 53 Chapter 3: Why Smart Growth? 56 Section 3.1: Smart Growth States and the Smart Growth Variables .......................... 58 Section 3.2: Ideology .................................................................................................. 62 Section 3.3: The Governor and State Legislatures...................................................... 64 Section 3.4: Legislative Professionalism in State Assemblies.................................... 67 Section 3.5: Interest Group Influence ......................................................................... 70 Section 3.6: Smart Growth and the Role of Political Parties...................................... 75 iii Section 3.7: Measuring Sprawl & Making the Connection with Smart Growth ........ 77 Section 3.8: The Control Variable .............................................................................. 81 Section 3.9: Descriptive Statistics............................................................................... 82 Section 3.10: Probit Estimates for the Smart Growth Variable.................................. 83 Section 3.11: Discussion of Findings.......................................................................... 85 Political Ideology............................................................................................ 85 Population Density (Sprawl Measure) and Smart Growth ............................ 87 Governor Powers ............................................................................................ 87 Legislative Professionalism and Smart Growth.............................................