Failed policies create sprawl

Officials neglect to preserve land in rapid growth era

By John Bebow / The Detroit News

    Michael Craine still keeps dusty reports from the 1970s when he was head planner for Livingston County, back when it was an area of farming and few people, beyond suburbia’s reach.

    “I shake them in people’s faces all the time and tell them, ‘You could have had the same number of households we have now with half the cost in services, if you’d just configured things differently,’ ” said Craine, who now manages the Livingston County Road Commission.

    Across the region, veteran local leaders look back on the growth boom of the last generation and see missed chances for more parks and open space, less traffic and cheaper roads, and better vision and cooperation among competing communities.

    “What we really lacked were county and state master plans on land preservation,” said Don Fracassi, who lost re-election as Southfield mayor last fall after 29 years. “We just keep building and spending, building and spending. Everybody wants to compete.”

    Competition is one reason subdivisions in Livingston continue to reach westward toward Lansing, Craine said. One 1970s vision would have kept the western half of Livingston as working farmland with concentrated neighborhoods, roads and sewers in the eastern half.

    “You’re talking about eight different governing units and private property owners all trying to agree on a strategy,” Craine said. “We just couldn’t get everyone to agree. We opted for opening up big, broad areas all at the same time for development.”

    Macomb County did the same thing and neglected to set aside land for parks along the way, said Pat Johnson, who was on the county commission for 26 years before retiring in 1992.

    “We should have developed a parks system like Oakland County when land was still available and affordable,” he said.

    Several retired leaders say they wished they would have done a better job of widening country roads to anticipate growth, instead of adding expensive expansions long after traffic jams began.

    “Infrastructure just didn’t keep up with development,” said Al Kukuk, a former state representative and longtime Macomb official.

    One part of the public network — a true mass transit system — never got built despite decades of discussion.

    “Detroit would have stayed a lot more vital had we constructed one,” said Pecky Lewis, Royal Oak mayor from 1975-81.

    While neglecting public transportation and sometimes building roads too narrowly, communities demanded big, half-empty parking lots for retail stores, Commerce Township Supervisor Tom Zoner said. Now, some governments are better matching parking capacity to store traffic to keep storm water runoff to a minimum, he said.

    John Amberger, retired executive director of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, said he should have hired a staff in Lansing to lobby, educate legislators and show other states’ success in regional planning. It’s something local planning officials are just starting to do. For years, planners had two separate professional organizations and no clear voice in state politics. Now, the Michigan Society of Planning is developing a legislative agenda to push for better land-use decisions.

    Part of any smart growth agenda should include learning from history, Southfield’s Fracassi said.

    “I look at the Brightons and Howells and think someone should be asking me how the one-time place to be, Northland Mall, could die in such a short period of time. I don’t think elected officials like to learn from experience. There’s nothing wrong with a town being a little bit backwards. But it seems like the quiet towns all want to be hustle and bustle, too.”

You can reach John Bebow at (313) 222-2548 or jbebow@detnews.com.