Stupid Growth in Maryland

James A. Bacon

15 years ago

I had the pleasure of visiting Annapolis, Md., a couple of weekends ago, a city I had not seen in maybe 20 years. After watching Navy trounce Wake Forest in football, my family and I spent the night at the Governor Calvert House across the street from the state capitol (see pic) and spent several hours the next morning wandering the streets of the historic district.

Historic Annapolis is a place that “works.” The historic houses are beautiful. The streetscapes are eminently walkable and visually appealing: At the terminus of many streets there are grand structures such as churches or government buildings like the magnificent capitol building. The street layout, arrayed around two main circles, are narrow but not excessively congested. The zoning code evidently permits the construction of new buildings, easily spotted by their drab, utilitarian architecture, but they are are built to scale with the surrounding buildings so they do not offend. And, then, of course, there is the waterfront with its marinas, boats and dockside restaurants.

I was envious. There’s really nowhere like it in Virginia. What an exquisite spot to inspire the smart growth legislation that Maryland has enacted into law!

If you read Ed Risse’s latest post, “Light at the End of the Tunnel,” however, you might guess where I’m heading. Especially if you took note of this quote, as I did, having recently seen the vivid truth of it:

EMR is often quoted as having pointed out for 20 years that from 50,000 feet there is not a whit of real difference between the human settlement patterns in Maryland, vs in Virginia (or West Virginia) or North Carolina or Pennsylvania.

My father, an old Navy grad, had warned us to take the U.S. 58/I-95 route home, even though it was a longer route as measured by miles. But fool that I was, I decided to take the “scenic” route back to Richmond along U.S. 301, bypassing the Washington Beltway with all of its hazards. It was Sunday afternoon — no rush hour. How bad could it be?

Well, I can tell you that from a ground-level perspective, there’s not a whit of real difference either. U.S. 301 is a monstrosity. It suffers from every evil of “suburban sprawl” (by which I mean scattered, low-density, auto-centric human settlement patterns) that you can find in Virginia. Is this what Smart Growth hath wrought?

A four-lane highway that once served as a useful inter-regional road connecting two state capitals has been transformed into a conduit for cul de sac neighborhoods, innumerable stop lights and endless expanses of strip shopping malls. All traffic in the disaggregated non-places such as Waldorf, Upper Marlboro and La Plata seemed to empty onto U.S. 301. What should have been an hour drive took at least two hours. I shudder to think what the road looks like in rush hour.

Annapolis was founded in 1649 — 360 years ago. The downtown core remains a beautiful, vibrant place because successive generations of inhabitants have fallen in love with it, preserved it and invested in it. That’s what happens with places that “work.” The communities along U.S. 301 do not “work.” They are livable only as long as gasoline remains cheap. They appeal to no aesthetic sense. They will inspire no one to reinvest in them, they will run down, and they will become the slums of the late 21st century.

I don’t call that Smart Growth. I suspect that most Smart Growth advocates themselves would disown U.S. 301. But whatever Maryland has done to create such a blight, we need to make sure we don’t copy it here in Virginia.