NAIOP Principles for Growth
“Smart growth” is a planning approach which can integrate the sometimes conflicting demands of economic vitality, natural resource management, and population growth. Smart growth can promote economic prosperity and enhance the quality of life through measures that respect the importance of freedom of choice, flexible land uses, and the environment. Smart Growth should incorporate the following principles:
§ Business growth is essential to economic vitality, expanded employment opportunities, and funding for municipal and state services and improvements. If businesses cannot expand in Massachusetts, they will move out of state. An economy which is not creating new jobs deprives residents of the opportunity for advancement, economic mobility and economic security.
§ Growth policies should encourage and support the revitalization of inner cities and older suburbs. The infrastructure of these areas should be strengthened and expanded to support denser development. Such support includes better and more frequent mass transit and upgrades to sewer and water systems. If locational decisions affecting inner cities and older suburbs are made more attractive, there should be lesser development pressure on so-called greenfields areas.
§ Policies designed to control sprawl should not infringe on the freedom to choose where to live and work. Residential locational decisions and employment decisions should not be dictated by governmental fiat. Individuals, families and businesses should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each location, including pricing aspects, but still retain the ability to make the ultimate final decision.
§ Providing for an adequate supply of housing for a broad range of incomes is a social, economic and moral imperative. As a society, we need to provide an adequate supply of housing for all income levels and in locations which afford residents reasonable access to employment, shopping, and other services.
§ Smart Growth should provide a means for anticipating and accommodating development in response to market demand and provide the necessary infrastructure to support it. Most development responds to market demand. There is relatively little development which creates the demand itself. Governmental policy needs to anticipate and to accommodate inevitable growth in certain areas and to provide necessary roads, utilities and other infrastructure to meet those needs.
§ Regional planning should be encouraged, where appropriate, by offering municipalities incentives to join together to resolve common concerns with mutually beneficial solutions without creating additional layers of government. With our longstanding tradition of home rule, it is unlikely that the federal or state governments will force local municipalities to make particular land use decisions. Instead, governmental policy should create economic incentives for municipalities to work together to address common concerns such as traffic management, sewer and water capacity, etc.
§ Growth policies cannot be crafted without also addressing underlying municipal challenges, such as schools, housing, infrastructure, safety and public finances. Locational decisions, especially residential decisions, are often based upon the quality of local schools, level of real estate taxes and public safety. These matters must be addressed by government in order to influence individual locational decisions.
§ Predictability, fairness and timeliness are key standards that must be built into the permitting process. If owners and investors (public, private, non-profit as well as for-profit) are to invest significant capital in development projects of all types, rules and outcomes must be reasonably predictable, fair and timely. Regulators cannot ignore legal constraints and established rules.
§ Adequate funding of professional support staff and training of local decision makers should be priorities. With increasingly sophisticated and complex zoning ordinances and by-laws and other regulations, municipalities need professional planning staff to process and to analyze information as part of an intelligent permitting and decision-making process. Volunteer members of municipal boards also need training in legal procedures and key decisional law and precedent.
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