Winter 2008
Issue

Click here for PDF
 

 

<— Back to Table of Contents

Archive

"Guiding Growth, Protecting Open Space"

By Mike Garfield
October/November Issue, 2003

Over the last 35 years, Detroit has lost more than half its population to suburban sprawl. While not as badly distressed, virtually every other Michigan city has also suffered a loss of people, tax revenues, public services, economic investment, and vitality during that period. With one exception, every Michigan city has lost large numbers of young professional people, what demographers refer to as America’s “creative class.”

The only exception is Ann Arbor, which has experienced an influx of life science, high-tech, and pharmaceutical businesses and workers. During this period, Ann Arbor’s population has increased modestly, and its number of young professional people has actually increased as part of that growth.

According to SEMCOG, during the same 35-year period, the overall population in southeast Michigan has scarcely changed (increasing by less than 10%), but the amount of developed land has gone up by more than 100%. This has destroyed tens of thousands of acres of prime farmland, critical wetlands, beautiful open spaces, and natural areas. It has led to serious air and water pollution problems throughout the region. Metro Detroit’s sprawl has paved over most every nook and cranny in Wayne County, south Oakland and south Macomb Counties, and now large tracts of Livingston and Washtenaw Counties.

The one significant holdout in this onslaught of development has been the Ann Arbor area, which has struggled to preserve the best open space in and around the city. Its limited success, so far, deservedly wins credit for some of the city’s economic success and quality of life.

Ann Arbor residents will cast their most decisive votes yet on the question of sprawl.

In two separate votes, City of Ann Arbor voters and Ann Arbor Township voters will decide if they’re willing to spend their tax dollars to purchase development rights from farmers to preserve the area’s rural beauty. City voters will decide the fate of a 0.5-mill Parks and Greenbelt proposal, funds from which would be divided between city parkland acquisitions and rural farmland preservation. Township voters will consider a 0.7-mill farmland preservation question to save the best remaining farmland there. If approved, the two programs would save over 8,000 acres of farmland and open space combined.

Michigan land use experts consider the purchase of development rights (PDR) approach to be the most cost-effective and practical method for preserving farmland. It is therefore a cornerstone recommendation of Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Land Use Leadership Council.

While PDR has been used with great success in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and a dozen other states, only one Michigan township – Peninsula Township, near Traverse City – has created its own local program. So if the two Ann Arbor programs are approved, they would create the largest farmland preservation program in the state.

As a result, the city and township proposals are endorsed by all of the region’s environmental organizations, all of its farming organizations, virtually all of its political leadership, and large numbers of prominent business leaders.

Also as a consequence, the county’s Home Builders Association is fighting the plan with an unprecedented amount of money and with Michigan’s most prominent conservative political consultants, advisors to the tobacco and waste industries and to the state’s biggest polluters.

This issue of From the Ground Up pays special attention to state land-use issues, with features on Ann Arbor’s David vs. Goliath open space battle, and Governor Granholm’s Land Use Leadership Council report. The two cases give hope that Michigan will soon get a handle on one of its most intractable environmental problems. You’ll also find articles on getting lead out of cars, getting toxic chemicals out of breast milk, getting polluting incinerators out of Wayne County communities, and on other Ecology Center priorities.

I think you’ll enjoy this issue, and we’d like to hear from you about it. Please contact me or editor Ted Sylvester (at news@ecocenter.org or 734-761-3186) about anything you read here. And, if you live in the City of Ann Arbor or in Ann Arbor Township, please remember to vote YES on November 4.

-- Mike Garfield, Ecology Center Director

BACK TO TOP