In Search of a City: An End to Stupid-Growth Policies
The Ohio Legislature may soon consider some smart-growth (as opposed to stupid-growth) policies, thanks to recommendations by a group called the Ohio Cities Task Force. Currently, tax abatements and infrastructure spending in Ohio encourage sprawl. For example, the State uses public money to build new water and sewer systems in spite of the fact that Ohio cities contain a growing amount of developable land that is fully served by water and sewer systems. Most tax abatements go where they are least needed.
The task force noted that public policy and spending should encourage redevelopment of existing urban areas. It recommends that economically distressed areas get larger tax abatements than affluent, “green field” areas (ironic, since tax abatements were created to benefit distressed areas).
It also recommends that the State spend more than 1% of its transportation budget on public transit. Most encouraging is a recommendation that public resources generally not be used to extend utility lines to “green fields.” In other words, someone who wishes to duplicate infrastructure at low densities in exurban areas would need to pay for it privately.
These recommendations should make any fiscal conservative happy.
Tags: columbus, development, Public Transportation
February 13th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I’d also like to add significantly raising taxes on undeveloped lots Downtown (i.e., parking lots) to discourage use of expensive real estate in the core of our city for the storage of a small number of cars and encourage development for living spaces, new businesses, and parking garages to take the place of several surface lots much like we’ve seen on Gay St and Front St.