A Minnesota court and law has just dealt a major blow to the latest trend in urban planning theory—
densification and the elimination of single-family zoning. The implications of this decision should force cities and metropolitan areas to rethink the environmental tradeoffs between continued sprawl and urban density.
New Urbanism
declared urban sprawl bad for many reasons.
Among them, sprawl produced inefficient use of land and resources. It forced the
use of cars on paved roads resulting in pollution and the use of carbon
fuels. It resulted in mega homes too
costly to heat or cool and green lawns that used up too much water. Sprawl was an environmental problem.
The solution was densification. If cities were eliminate single-family zoning
and encourage greater density of housing and business, it would be good for the environment, especially if coupled with the encouragement of mass transit.
It would yield a better use of
land, provide for less use of carbon fuels and private cars to move people
around. Additionally, elimination of
single-family zoning would encourage the building of more affordable housing
and address the legacy of residential racial segregation.
Minneapolis was the first on board with this idea. Its 2040
comprehensive plan was heralded by the planning community as a major progressive reform. It provided the model for other cities
contemplating similar action to addressing a host of problems.
But somewhere along the line the City of Minneapolis and
reformers neglected to think about the environmental impact of
densification. A coalition of environmental groups challenged the Minneapolis 2040 plan, contending that
it violated Minnesota’s Environmental Rights Act. They brought
suit contend that comp plans were subject to state environmental impact
statement reviews. The Minnesota Supreme
Court ultimately agreed and finally on September 5, 2023 a Minnesota Court
reached a final order declaring the 2024 Plan in violation of state environmental laws and enjoined it
enforcement.
In reaching its decision a Minnesota District Court reached several findings of fact. It found that densification and the plan to
add nearly 150,00 residents to the city by 2040 would include among other things increased noise impacts, pedestrian traffic,
vehicle traffic and vehicle congestion
and idling. It would result in decreased
air quality, increased parking constraints, reductions of privacy, increased
light and glare from buildings, decreased access to light for surrounding
properties, shadowing of adjacent properties,
and impacts of existing solar panels on neighboring structures. The
Court also noted that densification would produce more hard surfaces,
exacerbating water runoffs and heat island effects. Overall, simple densification would produce
significant problems that the City had not accounted for.
For now and pending appeals, Minneapolis cannot enforce
the 2040 Comp Plan and it must continue to use the existing one. But longer term the court opinion, if upheld,
poses a Hobson’s choice for planners and metro areas. Urban sprawl
poses environmental problems as
does renewed urban densification.
How
we assess the competing environmental tradeoffs in these competing approaches suggest that there needs to be a better balance or
assessment in how cities and suburbs are constructed, and that will
require a rethinking of the types of
housing built and where, and how we move people from place to place. We also need to rethink issues such as greenspace location and a host
of other issues. Perhaps the
pandemic and then changing patterns of
where people are choosing to live and
work is the opportunity for this. But
for now the Minnesota courts are forcing reformers to rethink the environmental
consequences of the latest trend in
planning.
