National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

Maryland laws on Smart Growth and growth management are recognized as national models.  Yet despite this positive image, more than ten years after the laws were enacted there has been no substantive evaluation of the program’s accomplishments.  The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education received seed funding of $52,000 from The Abell Foundation to research and document changes in Maryland land use.  The research will enable policymakers to assess how Smart Growth laws and other land use programs are working.

Smart Growth was created by the Maryland legislature as a package of laws in 1997.  A key provision of the legislation directs state infrastructure funding to already developed areas, and areas designated for growth.  One of the laws protects rural land outside growth areas by expanding funding for acquisitions of and easements on open space and farmland; other laws encourage job creation and redevelopment of polluted sites through the use of incentives.

In 1999, the Abell Report, “Will ‘Smart Growth’ Produce Smart Growth?” identified weaknesses with the newly enacted legislation, including the lack of clear goals and the absence of benchmarks toward achieving goals.  The report states, “Focusing state capital investments on agreed-upon growth areas is a helpful step, but its impact, even if vigorously implemented, may still have only a marginal impact on land development.”  Without specific goals or regular measurements to determine the effects of the state’s land use policies, it is difficult to determine their effectiveness.

Responding to this need, the center is developing indicators to establish a baseline for land use and development patterns in Maryland, and to measure changes over time. The data will be developed and mapped in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Planning.  A reader-friendly report on Maryland land-use indicators will be published to inform the public and policy-makers on the state of development in Maryland.  Along with the report, the center will unveil an interactive website with mapped data that can be queried.  Following the publication of the decennial census, the center will revisit the data and supplement with the 2010 census data to evaluate changes over the five-year period and to map growth and development trends.  The research is intended to spotlight Maryland’s efforts to better manage land use and growth, and to help the state and counties determine which policies should be continued, expanded, modified, or eliminated.

The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, conducts interdisciplinary research, outreach, and education on issues of land development and resource protection.  Gerrit Knapp, the Executive Director, is a recognized expert on land use policy and planning.  The center’s offerings include the well-known report by Professor Reid Ewing on the connections between sprawl and obesity and the correlation of development patterns and climate change.