Professor G. William Domhoff is a member of the Sociology Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His analysis of the forces that drive local politics in America appears to apply to a number of Northampton issues, such as infill, the landfill, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Village at Hospital Hill, the Smith College Educational Use Overlay District, and city councilors’ (low) pay. Here are some excerpts:
Power at the Local Level: Growth Coalition Theory
April 2005
…local power structures are land-based growth coalitions. They seek to intensify land use. They are opposed by the neighborhoods they invade or pollute, and by environmentalists…
A local power structure is at its core an aggregate of land-based interests that profit from increasingly intensive use of land. It is a set of property owners who see their futures as linked together because of a common desire to increase the value of their individual parcels. Wishing to avoid any land uses on adjacent parcels that might decrease the value of their properties, they come to believe that working together is to the benefit of each and everyone of them. Starting from the level of individual ownership of pieces of land, a “growth coalition” arises that develops a “we” feeling among its members even if they differ on other kinds of political and social issues.
This “we” feeling is reinforced by the fact that the pro-growth landed interests soon attract a set of staunch opponents–if not immediately, then soon after they are successful. These opponents are most often neighborhoods and environmentalists, which are sometimes aided by university students and left activists…
…there is tension between growth coalitions and corporations because corporations have the ability to move if they think that local regulations are becoming too stringent or taxes and wages too high. A move by a major corporation can have a devastating impact on a local growth coalition. Thus, growth coalitions can fail. Cities can die, or even become ghost towns.
Moreover, this ability to move on the part of corporate capital contributes to the constant competition among rival cities for new capital investments, creating tensions among growth coalitions as well as between individual growth coalitions and the corporate community. The net result is often a “race to the bottom” as rival cities offer tax breaks, less environmental regulation, and other benefits to corporations in order to tempt them to relocate…
Although the growth coalition is based in land ownership, it includes all those interests that profit from the intensification of land use. Thus, executives from the local bank, the savings and loan, the telephone company, the gas and electric company, and the local department store are often quite prominent as well…
There is one other important component of the local growth coalition: the daily newspaper. The newspaper is deeply committed to local growth so that its circulation and, even more important, its pages of advertising, will continue to rise. No better expression of this commitment can be found than a statement by the publisher of the San Jose Mercury News in the 1950s. When asked why he had consistently favored development on beautiful orchard lands that turned San Jose into one of the largest cities in California within a period of two decades, he replied, “Trees do not read newspapers” (Downie, 1970, p. 112)…
The growth coalitions also have a well-crafted set of rationales, created over the course of many decades, to justify their actions to the general public…
Local government promotes growth in several ways, the most visible of which are the construction of the necessary streets, sewers, and other public improvements and the provision of the proper municipal services. But zoning, building standards, and many other government regulations also matter greatly in keeping property valuable…the city departments of planning and public works, among several, become allies of the growth coalition with the hope that their departments will grow and prosper (Mollenkopf, 1983).
Since a great many specific government decisions can affect land values and growth potentialities, leaders of the growth coalition are prime participants in local government… It also is well represented on planning commissions, zoning boards, water boards, and parking authorities, which are the decision-making bodies of greatest importance to it…
The growth coalition faces considerable opposition when it impacts neighborhoods or the environment through highrises, new freeways, industrial pollution, noise, dirty air, and many other factors. People in neighborhoods want to preserve the amenities that they have. They do not like the congestion that comes with growth. They often organize to fight new growth or any other intrusions on their way of life…
In the short run, growth coalitions usually win out over people who are protesting intrusions into their neighborhoods or asking that tax monies be used for use values like parks. The residents who can afford to leave grow tired of the battle or are bought off by the developers. They move to land outside the city, and they join with other recent arrivals to the new scene to insure that this living space remains inviolate. They incorporate the area as a new city, a “suburb,” which is primarily focused on neighborhood use values, or was until huge malls and office complexes came along…
The urban policy-planning network began with a meeting in 1894 of local reformers from 21 cities in 13 states…
The reforms were put forth as part of the ideology of “good government,” which meant “efficient,” “businesslike” government by experts and technicians, as opposed to the “corrupt,” “machine-dominated,” and “political” government alleged to exist in a growing number of cities. The new movement claimed to make government more democratic and less boss-dominated, although the actual effect of the reforms was to increase the centralization of decision making, remove more governmental functions from electoral control, and decrease the percentage of workers and socialists elected to city councils.
These reforms and their effects are as follows:
…Off-year elections. It was argued that local elections should not be held in the same year as national elections because city issues are different. What this reform did was to break the many policy connections between local and national levels, while at the same time reducing voter turnout for local elections, thereby favoring conservative candidates……the growth coalitions used the federal urban renewal program to clear downtown land of low-income housing and small buildings so that central business districts and such major institutions as universities, hospitals, museums, theaters, and stadiums could be expanded and enhanced…
Elimination of salaries for city council members. It was argued that serving on a city council should be a civic service done in a volunteer fashion in order to eliminate corruption and self-serving motives for seeking office. The effect of this reform was to make it more difficult for average-income people to serve on city councils because they could not afford to do so…
Local growth coalitions, backed by the major corporations in their respective cities, dominated most American cities with relative ease from the 1920s well into the 1960s. Then they were severely challenged due to a combination of factors (Mollenkopf, 1983)…
What were the factors that led to this potential unraveling for the growth coalitions?
…Up-scale neighborhoods, environmentalists, left-wing activists fresh from Civil Rights and anti-war struggles, and well-educated high-tech workers passed slow-growth legislation or blocked specific projects in some cities.…most growth coalitions now focus on increased hotel and motel space for tourists who come to partake of events that occur in the growth coalitions’ new stadiums and convention centers. They also push for up-scale housing for adults without children, who will frequent the city’s cultural centers and eat in its five-star restaurants. While these goals may seem reasonable, even these narrow and focused development struggles once again involve rousting low-income people out of their homes because the land under them now can be put to “higher and better uses…”
Low-income people in small towns and urban neighborhoods, often led by women and minorities, became part of an environmental justice movement that resisted the creation of chemical dumps and waste treatments plants in their areas (Szasz, 1994)…
See also:
YES! Magazine: “Spokane Considers Community Bill of Rights” (11/4/09)
Although the proposition failed to pass, it garnered approximately 25 percent of the vote—despite the fact that opponents of the proposal (developers, the local Chamber of Commerce, and the Spokane Homebuilders) outspent supporters by more than four to one. In particular, they targeted the Sixth Amendment, which would have given residents the ability, for the very first time, to make legally binding, enforceable decisions about what development would be appropriate for their own neighborhood. If a developer sought to build a big-box store, for example, it would need to conform to the neighborhood’s plans…
Patty Norton, a longtime neighborhood advocate who lives in the Peaceful Valley neighborhood of Spokane, and her neighbors spent years fighting a proposed condominium development that would loom 200 feet high, casting a literal shadow over Peaceful Valley’s historic homes.
Proposition 4 would ensure that “decisions about our neighborhoods are made by the people living there, not big developers,” Patty said.
…in 2007, Patty and several of her neighbors went to a Democracy School in Spokane. Democracy Schools—run by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund—are weekend workshops in which communities examine why the structure of law often gives corporations more power to make decisions than the communities in which they seek to do business. Participants look at why our system of government seems to hamper our efforts to protect the places where we live, rather than to help us protect them…
The Community Bill of Rights proposed nine amendments…
* Fifth. The natural environment has the right to exist and flourish. Under current law, nature has no legal standing—to prove environmental damage, a person has to prove that he or she has been harmed. The Fifth Amendment would have protected the Spokane River, one of the most polluted in the nation following years of mining and toxic dumping, would have been protected under the Bill of Rights.
* Sixth. Residents have the right to determine the future of their neighborhoods. Patty Norton and her neighbors—and other residents of Spokane—would have been able to enforce their decisions about what’s best for them. (The condominium complex hasn’t been built yet, but it is approved. The Sixth Amendment would have done what years of protesting haven’t been able to: allow the residents to say, “No.”)
Nomp-Haho: “City Council – Village Hill Northampton” (9/27/09)
The disparity between the words in our planning documents and the actions of our officials are striking.
Documents produced for the Vision 20/20, the Sustainability Plan, Best Practices and documents from the Citizen Advisory Committee and Planning Board all say the City of Northampton will enter the future with a vision and a plan. Would that it were so.
Long-standing plans for Village Hill Northampton–a public/private development located on former state hospital land– have deviated dramatically from their initial intention in recent years. Changes have been made to the hill’s master plan to such a degree that it now fails to achieve its own stated goals.
The Village Hill master plan originally called for village-scale mixed-use development. On May 22, 2008, The Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), chaired by Mayor Higgins, approved a significant change to this plan to accommodate a monolithic manfacturing plant proposed by Kollmorgen, a military contractor that is one of the city’s largest employers…
Gazette: “Northampton mayoral campaigns list dollars: Higgins outraises, outspends Bardsley” (9/25/09)
Hanging on to Our Families with Young Children – Implications for Urban Design
Our Column in Today’s Gazette: The Hidden Risks of ‘Smart Growth’
…we are concerned that smart growth could gradually transform Northampton into a community that’s inhospitable to families with young children. It’s easy to see how they might pack up for Easthampton, Hadley, or other surrounding towns. Children do cost Northampton money, particularly when it comes to public education, but young families infuse the city with energy and variety, and children with fond memories and deep local roots grow up to be adults who will care for Northampton in the future. That, to us, is true sustainability.
Financial Incentives Distort Smart Growth Debates
New Urbanist supporters include planners, environmentalists, federal bureaucrats, central city officials, downtown businesses, and construction companies. Their motivations range from idealism to economic self-interest, but all have a stake in maintaining or rebuilding tightly packed urban cores. Together, they also have the clout to get things done…
Smart Growth vs. “Smart Growth”
…developers often seize on convenient aspects of Smart Growth that align with their profit goals and disregard others. A common result appears to be overlarge developments, inapt developments, and/or excessive density.
Kohl Files Narrative and Drainage Report with Revised Condo Proposal; Interpreting the Wetlands Ordinance
In the brief above, Attorney Pill leans hard on promotion of infill in justifying his interpretation of the Wetlands Ordinance. Here is how the Notre Dame School of Architecture defines “infill” in Envisioning Sustainable Northampton:
“Infill: noun – new development on land that had been previously developed, including most greyfield and brownfield sites and cleared land within urbanized area. verb- to develop such areas.” (page G3)This definition is not a good fit with most of Kohl’s land off North Street. This land is largely undeveloped and uncleared, and currently contains just one single-family house (8 View Avenue). It also contains one of downtown’s few remaining groves of mature trees and buffers a wetland. Responsible–sustainable–infill should not be interpreted as a license to pave over a city’s green infrastructure.
Video: Conservation Commission Meeting of 8/27/09; Rebutting Gerrit Stover
During the public comment period, Gerrit Stover claimed that approving the [Kohl Construction North Street condo] project would reduce pressures to consume outlying natural areas with homes on five-acre lots (1:31:50-1:33:18 on the video).
The irony is, it’s condo projects just like the one Kohl proposes that have motivated sprawl elsewhere. Before a homebuyer commits to a neighborhood, many like to know that their greenspace, natural resources, privacy, parking and traffic concerns, and neighborhood design integrity will be respected, and that change will occur gradually, in a logical and predictable fashion. When that’s not the case, many a wealthy homebuyer seeks secluded large lots to protect their amenities as best they can.
John K. Carlisle of The National Center for Public Policy Research gives the following example:
In 1998, the Prince William County Supervisors approved the region’s first major slow growth plan. The Prince William plan set aside nearly half of the county land in a “rural crescent” in which future new home construction and other development will only be allowed on ten-acre plots. The result, predictably, is a major increase in land prices… [S]ix-figure income homebuyers – attracted by the large, secluded lots and gated developments – are moving to the county in droves. Many of these affluent new residents first sought assurances from the county that the land-use restrictions would continue to be enforced once they purchased their homes… Prince William newcomer Greg Gorham, a software developer, moved from another Virginia suburb because a builder constructed 20 townhouses on land next to him. “That was the thing I really didn’t want to have happen to me again,” said Gorham…This is not to say there should be zero growth in in-town neighborhoods, but poorly managed growth that’s perceived to harm those neighborhoods seems neither wise, sustainable, or politic. A good start towards reassuring in-town residents would be to implement infill design guidelines before attempting to ratchet up density near downtown.
Condo Monotony: The Future of Ward 3?
To maximize profits, the developers have shoehorned units into their lots with little regard to the preexisting appearance of their neighborhoods. The developments feel inward-facing or ‘withdrawn’, not part of the regular street fabric. These aspects are probably what prompted the “carbuncle” comment from the planning board member.
Downstreet.net: Despite Tree City USA Honor Northampton Planting Lags
…developers, both residential and commercial, often regard landscaping and tree requirements as an unwarranted expense, not as a benefit to the quality of life to the city’s inhabitants…
LA Weekly: “City Hall’s ‘Density Hawks’ Are Changing L.A.’s DNA
The shift is pushing L.A. from its suburban model of single-family homes with gardens or pools — the reason many come here — toward an urban template of shrinking green patches and multistory buildings of mostly renters…
“…The deal [says Yaroslavsky] is that there are a number of developers who see an opportunity here to make a killing.”
LA Weekly: “What’s Smart About Smart Growth?”
Real estate developers have caught on, using the phrase shamelessly to gain public support for enormous developments, from a hillside subdivision near Santa Clarita to the Westside’s Playa Vista, the massive, 5,800-home development near Marina del Rey. In a city where growth was once a dirty word, smart growth is the spoonful of sugar that suddenly makes bigness palatable…
Berkeley, California: Cautions on Infill
As noted recently in the Planet, the Berkeley Planning Department has received an infill development award from the American Planning Association (APA). How can this be? you ask. After all, Berkeley has recently been engulfed in a storm of land use controversy, a stack of lawsuits and appeals, and new Big Ugly Buildings strikingly similar to those that initiated the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance in 1973…
…propelled by their simplistic “smart growth” philosophy, [the Planning Department] encourages developers to build the largest possible projects over neighborhood objections…
Scrape-Off Redevelopments Provoke Backlash in Denver Neighborhoods
Supporters [of lower-density zoning] said the increased density from the multiple-unit structures was ruining the character of the two neighborhoods, which are comprised of predominately single-family detached homes.
The outcropping of multifamily structures has cast shadows on gardens, increased traffic and created parking wars, among other quality of life issues, they said…
Lessons from San Diego: Why We Need Infill Design Guidelines
…the new housing diminished neighborhood character and walkability. Pejoratively known as “Huffman Sixpacks”, the six-unit apartment complexes that invaded older neighborhoods were like windowless boxes with a parking lot in front. Architect Michael Stepner, who served on San Diego’s Planning Commission for nearly three decades, explained that the unfortunate buildings emerged through a combination of factors, including increased parking requirements and a lack of design guidelines. Single-family homes fell quickly because the area was already zoned for multi-family units. “All the builder had to do was buy the house, get over-the-counter permits, demolish the house and build the apartments,” Mr. Stepner said. Communities resisted the loss of historic homes, especially given their unwelcome replacements…
Houston Chronicle: “Density hasn’t been kind to Cottage Grove…”
Density hasn’t been kind to Cottage Grove, a small neighborhood with narrow streets, few sidewalks, poor drainage and scarce parking for the owners of its many new homes and their guests.
Like many neighborhoods inside Loop 610, Cottage Grove in recent years has experienced a flurry of construction of large townhomes that loom over 80-year-old cottages next door. Two or three dwellings crowd sites where one house stood previously. Streets are cluttered with vehicles parked every which way. Water stands in the streets after heavy rains.
“It was shocking to see this jewel of a neighborhood in this condition,” said former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, a senior fellow with the nonprofit Urban Land Institute who toured Cottage Grove two years ago. “It was about the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, to be honest with you.”
Smart Growth Winners (Rich People) and Losers (Other People)
The New Draft Sustainable Northampton Plan: Balancing Compact Growth Against Taxes, Urban Greenspace, Homeowner Preferences
Tax assessments may rise in the more built-up wards
The Plan calls for high and medium density housing in downtown and the “more densely developed areas”, 12-65 units per acre. (p.13) If zoning rules are changed to facilitate this, it could mean that a parcel of land that represented one buildable lot could come to represent two lots or more. When land can be developed more intensely, its assessed value might rise. If you want to sell, you might be thrilled. If you don’t, however, the main impact on you might be a larger real estate tax bill. As the Plan acknowledges, “increased property values are desirable but not the increased property tax and decreased affordability that comes with increased value.” (p.17)
Questions:
What tax impacts are anticipated? How migh
t they be mitigated? Will changes be phased in slowly so people can adjust? How have other cities addressed this problem?