Fair Growth: Connecting Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Social Equity
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Session:Fair Growth: Connecting Sprawl, Smart Growth, and Social Equity (March 13, 2:30pm)

Introduction

Smart growth and sprawl are the hot topics in the field of urban and regional planning today. Most discussions of curbing sprawl and implementing smart growth focus on protecting open space, improving regional transportation systems, and redirecting growth to limit expenditures on infrastructure.

But the crucial question of how to develop and implement smart growth measures without detriment to low-income and minority households has been missing from the conversation. Issues such as housing affordability, access to jobs, and neighborhood gentrification must be central to the discussion. In other words, how can we make smart growth fair for everyone?

The Fannie Mae Foundation Fair Growth Symposium seeks to make a meaningful connection between sprawl, smart growth, and social equity by addressing the following questions.

  • First, why should we care about social equity? What is the relationship between social equity concerns and urban planning?
  • Second, recent research shows that sprawl varies from region to region. How should those differences inform individual cities’ fair growth strategies?
  • Third, how does one actually go about implementing fair growth strategies?
  • And last, what does fair growth mean for the planning profession?

Greetings and Opening Remarks

Presentations

    Implications for the Planning Profession

Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2001 by Authors

Biographies of Speakers and Panelists, Fair Growth Session

Angela Glover Blackwell

    Angela Glover Blackwell is founder and president of PolicyLink, a national nonprofit organization devoted to advancing policies that achieve social and economic equity and build strong, organized communities. Previously, Ms. Blackwell was senior vice president for the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s domestic and cultural divisions. She also gained national recognition as founder of Oakland, California’s Urban Strategies Council, where she led a pioneering approach to community revitalization based on a thorough understanding of local conditions, commitment to broad inclusion, community-driven systems reform, and insistence on accountability. Earlier, Ms. Blackwell was a partner with Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm dedicated to representing the underrepresented, where she became known for developing innovative nonlitigation strategies. Ms. Blackwell has served on many boards, including Children Now, The Urban Institute, The James Irvine Foundation, Public/Private Ventures, The Foundation for Child Development, and Common Cause. She is currently on the boards of Levi Strauss and Co. and the Children’s Defense Fund. Ms. Blackwell received her undergraduate degree from Howard University and her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall.

Caren Dewar

    Caren Dewar is director of the Community Development division of the Metropolitan Council in St. Paul, Minnesota, having been appointed in October 2000. Prior to that time she served as a Metropolitan Council member for District 6 (Gold Valley, St. Louis Park, southwestern Minneapolis), and as chair of the Livable Communities Committee and Housing and Land Use Advisory Committee, and as a member of the Transportation and Rail Transit Committees. She has been leading and implementing comprehensive urban planning and development initiatives for 20 years. She founded Dewar and Associates, of which she was president, to focus on public/private ventures that attract significant private sector participation. Previous employment includes vice president of the Ackerberg Group (investment and development); executive director, Seward Redesign, Inc.; and associate director of Powderhorn Residents Group. Civic and community involvement includes: development coordinator, YWCA Community and Urban Sports Center; lead consultant for public/private partnership to redevelop Lake St./Midtown Greenway corridor; Minneapolis Design Roundtable; and Congress for the New Urbanism.

Tasha Harmon

    Tasha Harmon is the executive director of the Community Development Network—the
    association of nonprofit housing developers in Multnomah County (the county that includes Portland, Oregon). She spent five years as the executive director of the Center for Popular Economics, and worked on affordable housing issues in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Texas before relocating to Portland, Oregon six years ago. Ms. Harmon has a Master’s in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is on the Board of the Coalition for a Livable Future, a six–year-old association of 55 nonprofit organizations promoting a compact, equitable, and sustainable future for the Portland metropolitan region. She also serves on the board of the Portland Community Land Trust. She is the author of "Who Pays the Price for Regional Planning? How to Link Growth Management and Affordable Housing," which appeared in the newsletter of the Planners Network, March/April 1998.

Stephanie A. Jennings

    Stephanie A. Jennings is a research fellow in the Innovations, Research, and Technology division at the Fannie Mae Foundation, and works primarily with the University-Community Partnership Initiative. Prior to joining the foundation, Ms. Jennings served as a consultant to the Corporation for Enterprise Development and as a project manager at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There she co-authored a study of individual development accounts, and worked with distinguished researchers, including Michael Stegman, William Rohe, and Roberto Quercia on several housing and community development research projects. Ms. Jennings also co-authored the Corporation for Enterprise Development’s Individual Development Account Program Design Handbook, and conducted research in the area of employer-assisted housing. Ms. Jennings received a Master’s of Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina in 1999, and a Master’s of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina in 1998.

Norman Krumholz, AICP

    Norman Krumholz is a professor in the Levin College of Urban Affairs who earned his planning degree at Cornell. Before that, he served as a planning practitioner in Ithaca, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. He was planning director of the City of Cleveland from 1969-1979 under Mayors Carl B. Stokes, Ralph J. Perk, and Dennis Kucinich. Professor Krumholz has published in many professional journals, including the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and the Journal of Urban Affairs. In addition, he has written chapters for many books. His book (with John Forester) Making Equity Planning Work won the Paul Davidoff Book of the Year Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. His most recent book, Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods (with Dennis Keating), was published by Sage in 1999. His research has been supported by the Cleveland Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. He served as the president of the American Planning Association (1986-1987), received the APA Award for Distinguished Leadership in 1990, and in 1999 was the president of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He was awarded the Prize of Rome in 1987 by the American Academy in Rome.

Arthur C. Nelson, FAICP

    Arthur C. Nelson is a professor of City Planning and Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a nationally known expert in growth management, urban containment, resource land preservation, infrastructure finance, and urban development policy. Dr. Nelson is currently serving as an expert consultant to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on smart growth policy. His books on growth management and impact fees are standard texts. Recent sponsors of his research include the Fannie Mae Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, National Science Foundation, HUD, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the American Planning Association. His awards include election to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, teacher of the year, researcher of the year, professional educator of the year, and advisor to students winning the national AICP student project award. Dr. Nelson’s current research interests include methods to measure exclusionary zoning, rethinking the composition of land uses within neighborhoods and communities, evaluating alternative urban containment institutional structures, and measuring the effect of different growth management regimes on regional development patterns.

Rolf Pendall

    Rolf Pendall is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in land use planning, growth management, environmental planning, affordable housing, infrastructure planning, and quantitative methods. Dr. Pendall’s research on land use controls studies why communities adopt them, how they vary across the United States, whether they work as advertised, and whether they have desirable or undesirable consequences for affordable housing, ethnic and racial diversity, and the environment. In particular, he is interested in the prevalence and patterns of exclusionary zoning in U.S. cities. In the early 1990s, Dr. Pendall headed housing and land-use advocacy and research efforts at the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based organization with interests in affordable housing and regional growth management. Dr. Pendall holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.S. in Community and Regional Planning and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Frank S. So, FAICP

    Following a distinguished, 34-year career of service to the profession, Frank S. So will step down as executive director of the American Planning Association at the end of March, 2001. Having received his master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from Ohio State University, Mr. So served as director of Planning and Development in Harvey, Illinois, from 1964-1967, then joined the staff of the Chicago-based American Society of Planning Officials. In 1979, ASPO merged with the American Institute of Planners to form the American Planning Association. Among his many contributions over the years, Mr. So authored over 20 Planning Advisory Service Reports, directed the national conference, and developed the Planners Press, for which he supervised the publication of 60 books on comprehensive planning, growth management, and other topics. Prior to his appointment as executive director in 1996, Mr. So served for many years as APA’s deputy executive director. Under his leadership, APA has greatly expanded its research program, strengthened its public policy efforts, and created new education programs to serve members of the profession and citizens appointed to local planning commissions. Throughout his career, Mr. So has also written, lectured, and taught extensively on the practice of planning, most notably serving as editor-in-chief of two widely-used and influential texts: The Practice of Local Government Planning and The Practice of State and Regional Planning. In 1999, he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Rebecca R. Sohmer

    Rebecca R. Sohmer is a research fellow in the Urban and Metropolitan Research Unit of the Fannie Mae Foundation. She is also an associate editor of the foundation’s journal, Housing Policy Debate. Her research interests include smart growth, downtown housing, historic preservation, and neighborhood dynamics, and she has published on these topics. Most recently, Ms. Sohmer co-authored an article analyzing the use of New Urbanism in redeveloping distressed inner-city neighborhoods. Currently, she is overseeing the Fannie Mae Foundation’s work in fair growth, including conferences, publications, and research. Previously, Ms. Sohmer worked in downtown development in Fort Worth, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She received her B.A. from Macalester College in 1994 and a master’s degree in urban geography from Syracuse University in 1997. She also attended Louisiana State University in the Geography and Anthropology Department. She is currently enrolled in George Washington University’s graduate program in historic preservation.

Betty R. Weiss

    Betty R. Weiss is executive director of the National Neighborhood Coalition (NNC), a membership organization that promotes socially and economically vibrant neighborhoods and a strong role for community-based organizations in revitalization of lower-income neighborhoods. Ms. Weiss oversees NNC’s Neighborhoods, Regions, and Smart Growth project and represents NNC and its members on various boards and steering committees, including the steering committee for Smart Growth America and the leadership committee of the Smart Growth Network. Ms. Weiss has more than 13 years of experience working on behalf of community-based nonprofit organizations, including serving as director of communications and research for the National Community Action Foundation. There, she was instrumental in the organization’s successful advocacy efforts on behalf of a nationwide network of more than 1,000 community action agencies. Her background in nonprofit communications, administration, and government relations has also included positions at the National Association of Independent Schools and at Bahnsen Communications, a public relations firm specializing in communications and government and media relations for education institutions and nonprofit organizations. Ms. Weiss has a master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Iowa.

Mtamanika Youngblood

    Mtamanika Youngblood is a 2000 James A. Johnson fellow with the Fannie Mae Foundation and is the executive director of the Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC) in Atlanta, a leading nonprofit, community-based builder of affordable homes in the central city. HDDC is committed to neighborhood revitalization based on historic preservation and economic diversity. In the six years under her leadership, HDDC has become one of the most prolific and admired producers of affordable, single-family homes in neighborhoods surrounding downtown Atlanta. In addition, Ms. Youngblood has guided HDDC into larger economic development projects, such as the $18.3 million Studioplex On Auburn, a mixed-use arts facility, and the $8 million Herndon Plaza Expansion Project.