Common and Potentially Divisive Issues between the Constituencies of Community Land Trusts and Smart
Growth Constituencies in Metropolitan Areas
Smart Growth
Constituencies
Common Ground
(Issues w/ Potential for Uniting Smart Growth & CLTs)
• Desire to control sprawl and reinvest in existing
Anti-Sprawl Groups
(i.e. 1000 Friends
communities, improving the infrastructure and quality
groups, sometimes
of life in areas that have experienced disinvestment,
city government, farm
making urban areas a more attractive place to live and
and forest protection
work so people and businesses will choose to locate
groups, etc.)
there.
• Need to increase the number of housing units in
existing communities.
• Interest in jobs-housing balance.
• Interest in removing barriers to efficient use of land,
and to creating efficient, fair and cost-effective
permitting processes.
Contested Ground
(Issues/Values/Blind spots with Potential for
Dividing Smart Growth and CLTs)
• Anti-sprawl groups may have less or no concern
for the involuntary displacement that can be
caused by the gentrification of existing
“distressed” communities.
• CLTs may want to put housing up in newly
developing areas on the edges of the urban or
suburban area where land may be less expensive
or jobs may be closer by.
• Anti-sprawl groups may lack awareness of the
critical issue of housing cost vs. incomes in the
jobs-housing balance equation. Rather than
looking at whether people who work in a
community can afford to live there, they may be
looking only at total number of jobs vs. homes.
• Integration of housing, commercial and retail (bringing
jobs back into existing communities that have
experienced disinvestment, making neighborhoods
more complete).
From Integrating Social Equity and Growth Management: Linking Community Land Trusts and Smart Growth, written by Tasha Harmon,
published by the Institute for Community Economics, 2003
2
Smart Growth
Constituencies
Environmentalists
(Sierra Club, local
Audubon chapters,
local stream
protection groups,
conservation land
trusts, etc.)
Common Ground
(Issues with Potential for Uniting Smart Growth and CLTs)
• Anti-sprawl agenda (see above).
• Preserving existing open space and natural resources near urban
areas requires that people find urban areas attractive places to live
and work rather than places they want to escape from.
• There can be a lot of common ground here if the groups can come
together in a discussion about WHERE development is most
appropriate, and how it can be designed to meet common goals.
(cluster developments that integrate open space in less dense areas,
high-density development in developed areas to limit sprawl)
Contested Ground
(Issues/Values/Blind spots with Potential
for Dividing Smart Growth and CLTs)
• Same as Anti-sprawl above.
• Conflicts are likely over the protection
or development of particular pieces of
land (which can happen in existing
neighborhoods – housing vs. parks and
community gardens – as well as in
newly developing areas).
• There are generally major class
differences between the constituencies
of CLTs and the membership of most
• The common desire to have existing urban areas include
environmental groups. The language
greenspaces (watershed and habitat protection goals for
and communication strategies used by
environmentalists can overlap with recreation, livability and
environmental groups, and the lack of
environmental justice issues for CLTs)
focus on the environmental issues that
matter most immediately to lower
• Remediation of brownfield sites with soil and water contamination.
income people demonstrated by many
environmental groups, leads to little if
• Land speculation/rapid land price increases are the enemy of both
any relationship, and lots of distrust,
affordable housing providers and people who desire to protect
between these groups. (The relatively
open space and farm and forest uses. Removing land from the
new environmental justice movement is
speculative market is a tool used by CLTs and by conservation
starting to bridge this gap.)
land trust to meet their goals. Other tools – transfer of
development rights, current-use based taxation, etc. – can be
helpful to both constituencies.
From Integrating Social Equity and Growth Management: Linking Community Land Trusts and Smart Growth, written by Tasha Harmon,
published by the Institute for Community Economics, 2003
3
Smart Growth
Constituencies
Transportation
Alternatives
Advocates
(i.e. mass transit,
bicycle, pedestrian
advocates)
Common Ground
(Issues w/ Potential for Uniting Smart Growth & CLTs)
• Creating compact, higher density communities that
integrate housing, jobs, retail, services, etc. so people
can walk, bike, or take public transportation (the cost
of owning a car is a major problem for many of the
low-income people served by CLTs, as is the lack of
jobs in their communities).
• Commitment to anti-sprawl agenda (see above)
Advocates for less
fragmented gov’t, tax• Commitment to redistribution of resources between
base sharing and
jurisdictions. This creates additional funds for
other strategies for
jurisdictions with more low-income people.
reducing economic
disparities between
• Openness to “fair share” strategies for affordable
jurisdictions
(local governments
housing – opening up traditionally wealthier
that are currently
communities to a broader range of incomes.
losers, tax-reform
groups, etc.)
Contested Ground
(Issues/Values/Blind spots with Potential for
Dividing Smart Growth and CLTs)
• Transportation groups may be less concerned, at
least initially, with the transportation needs of
people who do not own cars than they are with
people who need to be “lured out of their cars”
for some trips. Often the transportation
strategies required to meet these two sets of
needs are slightly different.
• CLTs may have constituencies that want badly
to live in single family homes with yards – to
get their piece of the “American Dream” – and
who will hence resist the densities needed to
support mass transit and more walkable, mixeduse communities.
• These groups are often at least initially, largely
middle-class people and gov’t representatives
(sometimes church groups and economic justice
groups are also involved early on). This can
create problems with coalition building.
• CLTs sometimes have trouble seeing or
convincing the people that are their primary
constituencies (mostly lower-income people and
people concerned with neighborhood-level
development issues) that these big-picture
issues will really affect their lives.
From Integrating Social Equity and Growth Management: Linking Community Land Trusts and Smart Growth, written by Tasha Harmon,
published by the Institute for Community Economics, 2003