Smart Growth Requires
Smart Regulation
By: Carlos Rodrigues, NJAPA Chapter President

New Jersey is a “smart growth planning” state. The concept is imbedded in the State’s Development and Redevelopment Plan. The state has an Office of Smart Growth, has (or had) a Smart Growth Ombudsman, and several state agencies have (or had) smart growth plans and smart growth units. The state provides various sources of funding for smart growth planning at the local level. And smart growth was reputedly part of the New Jersey’s three previous Administrations, as well as the current Administration.

One important, but often overlooked aspect of smart growth is the ability of public agencies to coordinate, streamline, and expedite development approvals in places where growth is deemed appropriate :“smart growth areas”, where public investments in infrastructure – such as public transportation, water and sewer systems, public facilities and the like – are considered desirable.

It is axiomatic that public policies, regulations, and investments affecting land development in New Jersey are intended to promote stated objectives such as farmland preservation, open space preservation, environmental protection, air quality, water quality, affordable housing, and mass transit. Smart growth considerations support this. However, these worthy public policy objectives are often at odds with each other.

One of the major objectives of New Jersey’s State Plan is to adjudicate between the specialized interests of local governments and of state and regional regulatory agencies and provide an overall framework that mediates between the frequently conflicting specialized interests of different agencies, or of different regulatory programs within the same agency.

But while local governments and state and regional agencies are increasingly referencing the State Plan in their regulations and investment policies, they have by and large used it to pursue their specialized interests and have avoided the mediation and smart growth compromise it calls for.

Indeed, one could say that the State’s smart growth rhetoric is frustrated, nay negated, by a web of state regulations and investment policies that are not smart and do not promote growth. There are two
fundamental problems:
1. Many State regulations and investments undermine other State regulations or investments, such that they cancel each other out; and
2. Many State regulations and investments frustrate the public policy objectives that justified their adoption in the first place.

As a result, local, regional, and state regulations and investments frequently work at cross-purposes to the planning framework and to their own objectives and create an environment of administrative and regulatory chaos.

Let me provide some examples to clarify these points.

• Regional regulatory programs, such as the Pinelands and the Highlands, which override and undermine the State Plan’s framework and policies, openly promote sprawl and prevent redevelopment and reinvestment.

• State regulatory programs, such as water quality protection, which undermine other state regulatory programs, such as brownfields remediation, access to waterfronts and redevelopment in general.

• State regulatory programs – such as freshwater wetlands protection – that frustrate improved outcomes from other state regulatory requirements, such as storm water management.

• State regulatory programs, such as water quality protection and storm water management, which undermine their own objectives and preclude solutions that would better achieve their public policy objectives.

• State regulatory programs, such as COAH’s increasingly Byzantine 3d round rules, which at times actually penalize local efforts to create affordable housing.

• State funding programs, such as open space acquisition, which undermine other state funding and regulatory programs that seek to promote farmland protection, affordable housing, or public transportation.

• State funding programs, such as for economic development, that openly promote sprawl.

• State regulatory funding, such as open space acquisition, and regulatory programs, such as wetlands protection, which undermine other state funding and regulatory programs that seek to promote farmland protection.

• Local regulatory programs, such as zoning, which undermine state infrastructure investments in areas such as public transportation.

The specifics on these examples are too lengthy to list in this column. But trust me, the framework is chock-a-block with frustrating contradictions, and the professionals in these fields are well aware of them. Indeed, there is a whole brand of dark humor associated with these public policy failures.

The unfortunate reality is that State government is on automatic pilot – an orchestra with no conductor, at least with respect to smart growth issues. It responds to daily emergencies, seemingly with no long-term view or plan. The state and local governments are spending billions on open space preservation, with no vision for how the preserved lands should be used. Regulatory programs such as the Freshwater Wetlands Act have “preserved” thousands of acres, again with no vision for how it should be used. We should recognize that placing land off-limits to development– with no further thought to how it should be treated or maintained -- is frankly not a smart idea.

Local governments respond to their own flash points, typically development, school children, traffic, etc. Regional entities are by and large not accountable.

We all know local zoning is largely obsolete with respect to 21st century planning objectives. But until the State gets its own house in order, it has no moral standing to comment on local planning issues.

Of course, all this is big-picture stuff. Why is it relevant to the planning profession?

Because in the mind of the public, planning and regulation are often confused, in the same way that the municipal master plan and municipal zoning provisions are often confused. This is a serious problem for the planning profession, which has typically focused on the planning side, but has had very little to say about specific regulations. While planning professionals will generally support stricter regulations regarding environmental issues, mass transit, affordable housing, and the like, they tend not to pay much attention to the specifics of the regulations that are intended to implement these pubic policy concerns. The result is that many regulations frustrate legitimate planning objectives. And planning comes out a looser, in the end.

If smart growth planning is indeed a public policy objective in New Jersey, one to be taken seriously, then public agencies would do well to develop smart regulations to achieve it.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. Please contact me at pres@njapa.org.

The President’s Corner reflects the President’s opinion and not necessarily that of the NJAPA Executive Committee or NJAPA membership.