As a Republican I’m often frustrated with the notion that one party owns “smart growth”.

Republicans fall into certain traps regarding “smart growth” and the big picture behind it. The big picture in my opinion can be boiled down to one sentence. Smart Growth is about making growth pay it’s own way. It’s about rolling back gov’t subsidies for suburban sprawl and leveling the playing field. Charles Marohn and the strongtowns organization is dedicated to raising awareness of the fiscal issues with sprawl. Sprawl is a by-product of decades of gov’t meddling with the market.

It all comes down to the “growth ponzi scheme“.
The ponzi scheme is:

When a local unit of government benefits from the enhanced revenues associated with new growth, it also assumes the long-term liability for maintaining the new infrastructure. This exchange — a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation — is one element of a Ponzi scheme. – Strongtowns.org

There is a problem out there among certain conservative circles because there is a total misunderstanding of what smart growth is and means. Again for me it’s based on the paragraph above. And I can’t think of anything more conservative. Think about it, I want growth to pay it’s own way. I want to eliminate the subsidies so the playing field is even. I want to save taxpayers the burdens of the 2nd and 3rd lifecycle of greenfield development so we can keep tax rates predictable, stable and low.

So why don’t conservatives flock to “smart growth”?

I think you can chock some of it to blatant mis-information. Misinformation that is perpetuated by the extreme right wing crowd. I’m talking about the kind of folks that carry around ridiculous “agenda 21” pamphlets to public meetings. Smart growth is an easy target because as Bacon points out in the interview linked to below “planners use terms with political baggage meaning half of America tunes it out as white noise“. When you use terms that only other planners understand it becomes easy to mislabel a movement. This is a problem with the planning community and their refusal to be “jargon conscious”.

Nobody makes the case that conservatives should be smart growth champions better then James Bacon:

Political conservatives should be smart growth champions, with James Bacon

If you walk into a Republican-sponsored function and boast about supporting “smart growth” people will assume you hate liberty, you promote centralized planning, you oppose family values, and you think trees are more important than humans.

Smart Growth for Conservatives

Smart growth is too important to leave to liberals. Conservatives must articulate their own vision for creating prosperous, livable and fiscally sustainable communities.

The most important historical aspect one must understand to “get” why a conservative would be so passionate about smart growth is the fact that throughout the last 30 or so years gov’t entities including local, state and federal have been in the business of subsidizing sprawl.

Here is a post full of examples:

Conservative pols hate gov’t subsidies, unless they subsidize sprawl.

How do conservative voters and politicians square their hatred for government subsidies with their city-shunning sprawl patterns that suck the lifeblood out of local governments – and taxpayers? Outward sprawl forces jurisdictions to keep building new roads and schools and to extend emergency services farther and farther afield. Sprawl induces driving and leads to more public pressure to expand roads — a vicious circle of new development and new roads. Even in rural areas, one lane mile of new road can cost up to $9 million