Traffic-clogged expressways, polluted air, and the relentless march of new homes across the landscape are forcing officials in booming regions across the nation, including those in the Chicago area, to ponder new policy approaches-some of which were once considered unthinkable.
The proposals range from the imposition of property taxes in northwest suburban Schaumburg, where such taxes have not existed for at least 20 years, to a goal that all automobiles be switched to electric power or other
”clean” fuels in southern California, where smog and freeways have long been inseparable.
Several of the proposals have brought cries of outrage from citizens and businesses. But experts say the negative reaction-and the ineffectiveness of some new approaches-should not be surprising, given the awkward transformation of once-placid suburbs into major office and retail centers.
”We are in the middle of a very upsetting, painful transformation of our metropolitan areas,” said Christopher Leinberger, managing partner of a Los Angeles-based urban development consulting firm and an expert on the rise of suburban centers such as Schaumburg and west suburban Oak Brook.
According to Leinberger, the rise of such centers represents a new stage in suburban growth-a step beyond sprawl characterized by a concentration of office buildings, shopping malls, restaurants and theaters in areas far outside the boundaries of traditional downtowns.
Planners acknowledge that the centers have broken the hold of Chicago`s Loop as the sole focus of the six-county metropolitan area, shattering the region`s spoke-like commuting pattern and replacing it with myriad routes that resemble a fractured jigsaw puzzle.
”There`s no pattern,” said John Paige, director of planning services for the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC), a state-chartered regional planning body for the Chicago area. ”It`s our job in the regional planning agencies to put the pattern together again.”
As planners attempt that task, officials throughout the region are weighing new policies designed to let them get a grip on growth. Some of the policies are unlikely to have much effect, at least in the short term. But the fact they are being considered illustrates the extent to which growth-related problems have forced officials to consider new approaches:
– Facing a 1989-90 budget deficit of more than $5 million-and the reality that revenue from commercial development isn`t keeping pace with the need to provide services required by new housing-Schaumburg trustees last week recommended adoption of a village property tax. It would be the first such tax since the suburb was incorporated in 1956, officials said.
The action by an outgoing Village Board prompted Village President Al Larson to vow that he would veto any ordinance imposing the tax. But Larson acknowledged that the suburb might have to use a $12 million surplus in its general fund to meet future deficits.
– Confronted with traffic congestion that threatens to drive businesses-and tax revenue-away, suburban officials who belong to NIPC voted late last year to urge the construction of more affordable housing in their communities, many of which contain affluent homes.
The measure, which was passed on an interim basis and is not binding, was designed to appeal to the self-interest, not the social conscience, of the officials. It held out the possibility that affordable housing would reduce the number of people commuting to low-wage jobs in fast-growing suburbs.
– After Wisconsin filed suit charging that polluted air from Illinois was drifting across state lines, officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are deciding whether to impose measures that would alter driving habits in the Chicago area.
The measures could include restrictions on automobile use or gasoline rationing. They are being considered because of a January court decision that took control of ozone planning for the metropolitan region away from Illinois, following years of inconclusive state efforts. The EPA plan is due next March. Despite these steps, skeptics question whether revenue-hungry municipalities are about to pull in the reins on economic growth-and pay more attention to the quality of life of suburban homeowners.
Consider Schaumburg homeowners Steve and Janis Schroeder, and their children, 2-year-old Bradley and 3-year-old Christine. Their modest, split-level home is across the street from 21- and 13-story office towers near the busy corner of Martingale Drive and Higgins Road.
A 260-foot-long, 6-foot high earthen berm, which was donated by the developer of a nearby property, shields the Schroeders` grassy back yard, with its swing set, from the whoosh of nearby traffic.
But the Schroeders learned last week that they might need more noise barriers. Village officials approved plans for a 25-story office building, a 20-story hotel, a shopping center, and a 10-screen cinema complex. The structures would be across the intersection from the Schroeders` home.
”They have impact fees for roads, but they don`t have impact fees for the neighborhoods,” said Steve Schroeder, a sales manager for a metal stamping company. Added his wife, ”They want single-family homes in Schaumburg, but they don`t do anything to protect them.”
In California, residents have taken such matters into their own hands, passing no-growth and slow-growth measures that restrict the construction of structures such as office buildings to mini-malls in their communities.
But smog and traffic do not respect city boundaries, according to slow-growth advocates such as Larry Orman, executive director of the San Francisco-based Greenbelt Alliance.
Orman cited the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, where voters approved an anti-growth measure in 1985. As a result, about 20 million square feet of office projects simply moved south down Int. Hwy. 680 and poppped up in places like San Ramon and Pleasanton. Those developments led to further traffic congestion in Walnut Creek.
”We have 96 cities across 9 counties, and it`s very hard for communities to work together,” Orman said. ”This very balkanized situation ignores the fact that the things we want are achievable only by having many cities get in line on land-use decisions.”
The same problem affects Chicago`s booming suburban growth centers, as developers construct new office buildings in one town-and traffic spills over to another.
Officials in west suburban Oak Brook, for example, were furious when their neighbors in Oakbrook Terrace approved constuction of a 31-story office building that is nearly twice as tall as anything around it.
Although it has not yet led to traffic congestion, in part because it is not fully leased, Du Page County Board Chairman Jack Knuepfer has repeatedly cited the tower, which is located near Ill. Hwy. 83 and Roosevelt Road, when he discusses why county oversight authority is necessary for major development projects.
Spurred by federal regulations and a mounting outcry over the health effects of smog, officials in southern California are advocating an even stronger regional role. Last month, they approved a comprehensive-and highly controversial-approach to growth-related problems that affect a region of some 12 million people.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regional agency empowered to improve air quality, approved a series of policy goals, including one that would convert all cars to electric power or other ”clean” fuels by the year 2007. Other goals include the elimination of gasoline-driven lawnmowers and almost all free parking provided by employers.
The proposals brought a firestorm of criticism from businesses and citizens, who charged that air quality officials were intruding into decisions better left to private citizens and the free market. In addition, questions have arisen about whether the officials have the power to enforce some of their goals.
Whatever the outcome, the actions of the air quality district are at the cutting edge of a nationwide debate over growth-related problems that is almost certain to affect the Chicago area. The debate pits those who favor government-sponsored planning solutions against those who believe that market- oriented solutions are more appropriate.
Like NIPC officials in Chicago, for example, air quality officials in southern California want to reduce traffic congestion by bringing jobs and housing closer together. As a result, part of the air quality district`s plan would encourage companies to move closer to where their workers live, in an attempt to cut down on commuting distances and air pollution.
But market-oriented advocates suggest that other means-new, or higher, tolls, for example-would drive down demand for highways, offering a more realistic, less disruptive way to deal with growth-related problems.
Robert Poole Jr., president of the Reason Foundation, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank, spoke on behalf of tolls at a recent conference on growth-related issues.
Entitled ”Cities in Crisis: Economic Growth and the Quality of Life,”
the conference was sponsored by the Foundation for American Communications and the Gannett Foundation and was held in the Monterey Peninsula community of Pacific Grove, Calif.
It is time to do away with freeways-even though some Californians have long considered them an inalienable right-Poole told journalists who attended the conference.
Journalists, many of them from California newspapers, howled that the toll proposal would create a two-tier transportation system: one for affluent car drivers, the other for poor people who would be forced to take mass transit.
Poole was unmoved. Controlling growth is ultimately a matter of economics, he said.
