Why I hate Sprawl	Real-time traffic info for  Maryland  and the  Washington DC Metro area
Links to Anti-Sprawl Groups	What, if anything, is government doing?
Joe Bachman's Smart-Growth Hydrology Page

 
 
 
 
 
 

Traffic Jams.  Traffic Jams. Traffic Jams.  People are starting to get fed up with being stuck in traffic, and some are starting to realize that Conventional Suburban Development (CSD)  is the number one generator of traffic.  Even if the traffic is moving, the stress of driving around town sharing the road with lots and lots of other vehicles is wearing people down. 

Now that everyone is sick of traffic, they're starting to listen to some of the other arguments against CSD that have been disseminated to little effect for years by various social critics:  CSD is ugly; CSD seperates the classes and races; flight from older cities and suburbs has left them with unmanageable social and economic problems; CSD works against residents developing a sense of community; and CSD is bad for the environment.

Lot's of people now want to get involved, from Vice President Gore to .... me!
 

Once, as a kid, I lived in Suburbia, but not Suburbia as we know it today.  Sure the streets in my development had no sidewalks, but then, there was so little traffic I walked to school (a mere 1/4 mile from my house) by myself from first grade on.  One could walk into town (in this case, Bryn Mawr, in the Philadelphia, Pa.  area.) and take a train into the city, or catch a bus to other suburbs.

But yet.....when I was 13, my folks decided to move into Center City Philadelphia.  My dad's schedule and work location was such that he couldn't take the train to work, and he was getting sick of the traffic jams on I-76, otherwise known as the "Sure-Kill Crawlway" or "The longest parking lot in Pennsylvania." 

Click here and scroll down for a great picture of the expressway in the early 1970's that shows what Dad had to face each morning.

So we moved downtown.  Best thing that could have happened to me, I got my "independence" 3 years before my buddies back in the 'burbs. who had to wait until they could get a driver's license to go places without their parents.

And even after I left home, for many years I was in college towns where my car was a useful accessory for hauling large packages and trips, and I relied on my bicycle and two legs for may major transport needs.  But, all good things have to come to an end, and so I wound up taking a job with the U.S. Geological Survey in the Baltimore suburbs. Well, that was it, no more walking to the office.  I got introduced to the Baltimore Beltway.

Since 1979, I've been burning rubber all across the Baltimore-Washington corridor and beyond, as I've traveled to field sites and meetings.  I've seen the traffic turn from merely bad during rush hour to horrible at all times of day.  I've seen the area reach the point that now Washington's gridlock is surpassed only by Los Angeles. And while I've been stuck in traffic, I've been putting on weight, after all, I'm spending my time on my tuches behind the wheel on the beltway, instead of walking.

So how bad is it? 

Bad. Check out the "Texas Urban Mobility Sudy" 

Washington DC is #2 in the nation when it comes to gridlock, and Baltimore is in the top 20!

Want to see how bad it is right now?...surf on over and look at..

CURRENT TRAFFIC CONDITIONS In the Washington DC Area:	Including links to DR. GRIDLOCK!!
LIVE TRAFFIC CAM in Maryland  (Yessir, watch them suckers jammed up on the Beltway from the comfort of your desk!  )

Bad.  Click here and see how things have changed from the 1850's on.

I my travels across Mid-Atlantic America, I've seen attractive countryside covered with endless wave upon wave of single-family houses, townhouses, apartments, strip malls.  I've noticed how the nieghborhoods that weren't bad in 1979 have started to go downhill.  I've noticed that I'm having to drive farther and farther to to my shopping, as the covenient retail districts I used to no longer carry the quality and selection of goods they once did.  And, finally, In my work, I see the greenish-brown, sediment-laden streams discharging to the coastal waters, once tainted by agricultural runoff, now physically stressed also by the march of low-density development over much of the countryside.

I've had a vague apprehension that things weren't right for many years, but thought I was alone in my views.  Or at least I didn't know that there was organized opposition to CSD, even from within the design and development community itself.  I found out that there were others like me when I read the works of

Kunstler's two books The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere provide very useful historical and social background for the issue. In addition, in Home from Nowhere, he provides some non-technical descriptions of the basic architectural and planning design principles that help distinguish "conventional suburban development" (he uses less polite terminology) from "new urbanism." The guy's opinionated, no question. He was called "the Lenny Bruce of New Urbanism" on a listserver I receive. The best part of this site for budding architectural critics is his "eyesore of the month,"

From reading Kunstler, I learned about

(CNU),  a non-governmental organization that's trying to change the way America builds its cities

http://www.cnu.org

The site gives some of the basics of what CNU believes is good urban design. One issue that they haven't fully addressed (and they admit it) is the environmental issue. They do have an "Environment Task Force," of which more information can be found at

http://www.cnu.org/tfrv2n1.html

There are New Urbanist developers out there, and the following site gives one an idea of the sorts of design these people advocate:

http://www.mountainridge.com/Ten_Principles.htm

The environmental organizations have also joined in this battle, which makes sense, because if people use less land, then fewer natural areas are threatened, and less resources (such as auto fuel) are consumed.

The Sierra Club is making a big push to fight sprawl.
 

The Natural Resources Defense Council has weighed in with a report, "Once there were greenfields." More information about this report is found at

http://www.nrdc.org/nrdcpro/reports/tronce.html

Sprawl has become a big issue (maybe _the_ big issue) for the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort:

http://www.chesapeakebay.net/C2K/listen.htm

MORE SMART-GROWTH SITES:

The Smart Growth Network

Sprawl Resources Guide (from PlannersWeb)

1000 Friends of Maryland

"Growing Smart" from the American Planning Association

SmartGrowth.net   Lot's of background information and links
 

As the interest in curbing sprawl grows, The states and Federal Agencies have been starting to get involved.
 
 

Official state programs in the Mid-Atlantic area can be found at

http://www/op.state.md.us/smartgrowth/

for the Maryland Smart Growth initiatives, and

http://www.state.de.us/planning/shape/shaping.htm

for the "Shaping Delaware's Future" report
These can give you some ideas of official state efforts along this line

The concern crosses party lines.  In Pennsylvania, Republican Governor Tom Ridge was been offering the Growing Greener program and the 21st century Environmental Commission.

http://www.21stcentury.state.pa.us/
 

EPA Region 3 is also interested in this subject:

http://www.epa.gov/region03/sdwork/index.htm