Puget Sound region's Cascade Agenda is a national model for managing growth

Does it always take adversity to get an American region to "get its act together" in planning future growth? According to columnist Neal Peirce, the Puget Sound area anchored by Seattle suggests "no."

July 18, 2010

Neal Peirce

The Puget Sound area anchored by Seattle suggests "no." Geology and modern economics have blessed the region in astounding ways. There's the natural legacy of glistening snow-capped mountain peaks and lush Douglas fir forests beside sparkling watersides. Economically, the region has had such world-renowned economic treasures as Amazon.com, Boeing and Microsoft, excellent ports and vibrant international trade.

Yet there's been a dark underside to the region's exuberant growth — to 4.7 million people — over the last decades. I vividly recall a 1989 helicopter ride marked by spectacular views of Mount Rainier, a rainbow at Snoqualmie Falls and picturesque villages. But I could also see bulldozed "progress" — a plethora of scarred hilltops, deep cuts into the magnificent evergreen tapestry.

Over the past 30 years, more than 2 million acres of Cascade-range forest and farmland have given way to sprawling development. In 1990, the state of Washington did pass a growth-management act that restrained some helter-skelter expansion. But development has fragmented open spaces, including wildlife habitat and corridors. With rapid expansion of the urban footprint, added paving has intensified flooding and erosion. There's concern that climate change will bring warmer winters with less snowpack, leading to summertime drought, water shortages and increased forest fire danger.

Responding to the dangers, a "Cascade Agenda" was launched in 2005 — a 100-year conservation and preservation plan for 1.3 million acres of the Puget Sound region's most prized waters, mountains and communities. About 225,000 private acres have already been conserved under the plan, which is rooted in an imaginative transfer of development rights.

But there's concern that 700,000 acres of working farmland is being converted to 10- and even 80-acre residential lots, translating to about 18,000 housing units over time. So there's a new community discussion with city managers, focused on where new development should be channeled, says Gene Duvernoy, Cascade Land Conservancy president. Draft legislation would give the Puget Sound Regional Council authority to apportion the 18,000 housing units across the cities, granting them tax increment authority so that new development goes "up" in existing towns rather than "spread" across the landscape.

But the process isn't "anti-development," Duvernoy insists, because developers can still have a "product" — just producing it in towns and cities rather than in the form of outward sprawl. "Great communities, great landscape, a sustainable environment — they can only work in tandem," he insists. "Built right, attractive, affordable city neighborhoods will be our best hope."

Regional leaders are now using the language of "ecodistricts" — chains of communities that feature not just low-impact development techniques and a range of housing types and costs but also frequent public transit, high-efficiency district energy systems, and community space. The initiatives are all part of a package it's hoped will show distinctive regionwide collaboration and innovation, qualifying the area for support under the federal government's new Sustainable Communities grant program.

It seems the Cascade Land Conservancy's agenda is never complete. A top example — restoring neglected parks to their former glory. Seattle and four neighboring communities have joined a "Green Cities" program for massive, citywide park and open-space restoration. More than 10,000 volunteers are involved. "It may be decades before we are all done. But it's a far better investment in a city's quality of life to restore a weed-choked park than purchase new land," notes Duvernoy.

And now, to match the Cascade Agenda, the Conservancy has organized an Olympic Agenda to cover the Puget Sound's western neighbor — the entire Olympic Peninsula, which offers some of North America's most dramatic scenery, ranging from glacier-rich Mount Olympus to thick canopies of rain forest. Yet the collapse of the timber industry has hit hard, while farming and fishing aren't providing the jobs they once did. Unemployment is high.

Meanwhile, the peninsula is under economic pressure to fragment and convert private lands for private real-estate development, raising dangers for both its rough-and-ready rural character and its pristine shorelines and estuaries. Proposed remedies have emerged in county-by-county dialogues that the Conservancy has organized. They range from rounding up capital to replace worn-out bridges and water systems to "green" infrastructure in the form of community-based forests and well-maintained trails to undergird both community life and tourism.

The extension of regional dialogue from the Everett-Seattle/Bellevue-Tacoma axis to the neighboring Olympic Peninsula, from urban to rural, from income-rich to economically struggling territory, isn't totally unique. But it represents the kind of imaginative citistate-wide approaches that the times demand. Hard to quantify in the short term, the benefits of thinking, planning and strategizing together — jointly exploring innovations and promising steps for the future — could in time be dramatic. More American regions should be emulating the model.

Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com