The Importance of Planning and Politics

This book concludes with a discussion of Montgomery County's contribution to understanding planning politics. Montgomery's experience highlights the complementary roles and reasoning processes of planners and politicians as they sought to act in the public interest. One of the most valuable lessons planners and political leaders can take from Montgomery's cases is the importance of persistence in land use policy. This is evident in the General Plan, the Agricultural Reserve, and Silver Spring. Furthermore, Montgomery shows that planning matters even if planning politics is hard. This conclusion argues that planning for the next half-century will require a fusion of traditional land use planning with a broader capacity for rethinking Montgomery's role in the metropolitan, state, national, and world political economies. It ends by speculating on the county's future.

Trials in Corridor City Planning

This chapter examines the problems that arose during the planning and development of three corridor cities in Montgomery County: Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Germantown. The idea of corridor cities melded the interests of Montgomery's miniature and commercial republics—a rare consensus in land use policy. According to the General Plan, Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Germantown would each be developed as a complete, compact “new town.” The chapter considers the opposition of the municipalities of Rockville and Gaithersburg to the idea of becoming corridor cities and how the problem of many governments obstructed development in accord with the General Plan (although Rockville eventually evolved in a way close to the vision). Germantown presented a different problem, that of many builders without a coordinating master developer. Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Germantown offer lessons on the effectiveness and limitations of using infrastructure extension and regulations to manage the pace and character of development.

The End of Suburbia?

This chapter focuses on White Flint, a 400-acre obsolete commercial strip on Montgomery County's most congested roadway, and some of the important lessons it offers with respect to successful planning politics. The most recent of Montgomery's efforts in planning for mixed-use, transit-oriented activity centers, White Flint was envisioned as the best place to create a model for a new generation of land use policy. The chapter discusses the plan for White Flint, the key issues that needed to be resolved before it could move forward, and the project planners' new approach to zoning. White Flint illustrates the value of careful economic analysis; engagement of major property owners and community groups in making plans; and willingness to abandon old ideas in favor of new ones that fit the circumstances at hand. The case of White Flint also highlights the problems of bureaucratic and political resistance to new ways of financing infrastructure.

Learning from a Century of Planning Politics

This book examines the impact of planning politics on the public interest by focusing on the case of Montgomery County and its land use policy. In particular, it considers Montgomery's pioneering approach to inclusionary zoning, the Moderate-Priced Dwelling Unit Ordinance, in terms of its effect on development patterns and the character and cost of housing. Montgomery was among the earliest fast-growing suburbs to stage development concurrently with the provision of public facilities. Its land use policies were efforts by the county's planners and politicians to solve practical problems in the public interest. The book analyzes the chain of strategic decisions that transformed Montgomery County from a rural hinterland of Washington, D.C. into a socially diverse urbanizing county of a million people in Maryland. This introduction provides an overview of the growth of suburbs and its implications for neighborhoods and residents, Montgomery County's suburbanization, and the organization of the book.

Growth Pains and Policy

This chapter examines the evolution and efficacy of Montgomery County's growth policy as a technique for staging growth in concert with the expansion of public facilities and in light of concerns for environmental, social, and economic sustainability. It first provides a background on the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO), adopted with the aim of preventing “premature” development anywhere, before discussing the Montgomery County Planning Board's three reports that developed a conceptual model for growth management and perfected an approach to using growth forecasts to assess risks of alternative levels of public investment aimed at sustaining acceptable levels of service. It also discusses the Board's next two reports, which laid the foundation of the growth management system that endured for the next thirty years. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the the link between Montgomery's planning politics and growth policy.

Retrofitting Suburbia

This chapter focuses on the trials, tribulations, and results of planning and managing redevelopment of two activity centers in Montgomery County: Friendship Heights and the Hills and Bethesda. It first considers the decision of the Committee on the Planning, Zoning and Development of Central Business Districts and Transit Station Areas to rethink its development strategy for the twelve Metro station areas under county jurisdiction. It then describes the committee's proposal for three Central Business District zones, called CBD-1, CBD-2, and CBD-3, which secured the approval of the Montgomery County Council. It also discusses the planning politics of Friendship Heights and Bethesda and shows how the two projects provided tests of the legal theories underlying new hybrid zones and for balancing land use with the capacity of public facilities, especially transportation.

On Wedges and Corridors

This chapter examines the decade-long political struggle for regime change that resulted in the adoption of Montgomery County's General Plan, On Wedges and Corridors: A General Plan for the Maryland-Washington Regional District, in 1964. As important as it is in planning literature, what makes the Wedges and Corridors General Plan a model is less its particular provisions or basic form than how it evolved from a static document into an organic “constitution” for land use policy with enough flexibility to adapt to new conditions in suburban life, the development industry, and the planning profession. The chapter first considers the Year 2000 Plan, first released on May 8, 1961, before discussing the planning politics underlying the Wedges and Corridors General Plan. It also provides an overview of broader lessons that can be learned from Montgomery's experience in approving Wedges and Corridors.

Planning Politics

This chapter examines how planning politics produced a distinctive pattern of development in Montgomery County over a century of land use decisions. It introduces a conceptual framework to help make sense of how and why that particular development pattern emerged. It also considers the respective and complementary roles played by planners and politicians by focusing on the distinctive ways they think; the ideas and values that guide the principal interests that influence land use policy; and innovation, inertia, and transition in land use policy and the interests or values those policies reflected. The chapter shows that land use decisions reflected the “balance” struck between the reasoning of planners and politicians and the interests and values of the two virtual republics represented in the four governing regimes of different eras of county development. These two republics are rooted in Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals and contest different notions of property rights, democracy, community welfare, efficiency, fairness, governance, and the public interest.

The Agricultural Reserve

This chapter examines the strategy and tactics of planning politics in the creation of Montgomery County's Agricultural Reserve and in protecting it from fragmentation by exurban subdivisions and other incompatible uses. It begins with an overview of the General Plan's recommendation to organize development in corridors separated by wedges of rural landscape, open spaces, and low-density suburbs. This is followed by a discussion of the proposed Dickerson wastewater treatment plant and force main that were rejected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1977. The chapter also considers the Functional Master Plan for the preservation of farmland, along with the successes and problems of the Agricultural Reserve. Finally, it highlights lessons that can be drawn from the Agricultural Reserve project.

The Death and Life of Silver Spring

This chapter examines the decline and revival of Silver Spring, the oldest commercial center in Montgomery County, and the important lessons it offers. The growth of Silver Spring followed a trajectory common in Montgomery. Large tracts were subdivided for homes, followed by commercial development along highways and at major intersections. Landowners and developers led the first fifty years of Silver Spring's development. By the mid-1970s, Silver Spring still generated a high level of retail sales, but the first signs of collapse were becoming evident at this time. A 1975 sector plan and the imminent arrival of Metro failed to revitalize the district. This chapter discusses the planning politics and redevelopment strategy that led to the transformation and eventual revival of Silver Spring. It describes the Silver Spring case as a testament to the importance of effective political leadership in ultimately resolving what had seemed an intractable problem.