Is There Life After Malls?

(co-authored by John Coleman)

A typical suburban enclosed mall (Crossroads Mall; Omaha, Nebraska; Labelscar, the Retail History Blog)

The enclosed suburban shopping mall came to symbolize the height of middle class American culture from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. The ubiquitous shopping mall was a retail model that wooed stores away from downtowns and main street shopping areas. The enclosed mall became the location for retail, socializing, cinema and the ever present food courts where teens and their families often spent the afternoon far from their community and the comfy confines of their kitchens and dining room tables.

Awards for Sustainable Growth Leadership

Trophy presented to awardees

The Maryland Sustainable Growth Commission held its first annual Sustainable Growth Forum & Awards Ceremony on February 5, 2013 in Annapolis, MD. The focus  of this first forum was economic opportunities created by smart growth.

Christopher B. Leinberger,  noted speaker and author on sustainable growth and “walkable urban places” delivered the keynote address uinder the theme ”Economic Growth through Smart Growth: How Smart Growth Makes Economic Sense for Maryland.” Mr. Leinberger is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

View the videos and pictures from the 2013 Sustainable Growth Forum & Awards Ceremony at http://bit.ly/sgforum13.

37 years is long enough

PlanMaryland Revised Draft

Nearly four decades ago, the General Assembly passed a law calling for the creation of a State Development Plan for Maryland. The Land Use Act of 1974 directed the Department of Planning to “prepare the Plan to promote the general welfare and prosperity of the people of the State through coordinated development of the State.” It prescribed a broad framework for what the plan should include — “studies of governmental, economic, physical and social conditions and trends” – and how the Department should undertake the process.

Concern for the impact of development on the state’s quality of life and environment long predated the 1970s law. Much earlier, the Maryland Planning Commission, one of the first such bodies in the nation, expressed concern about “miserable ‘string-town’ trends that are the result of lack of control. Up to 1900, we find a solid, slow growth within city limits, then a veritable explosion of population as the automobile brought decentralization and the urge to move to the country. Only the ‘country’ in this case has been a sad disillusionment for many.”

That was written in 1938 by the group as chaired by Abel Wolman, a brilliant engineer and inventor known as the father of modern sanitary engineering. In the decades that followed, Maryland has had many nationally recognized smart growth successes at the State and local levels, from gains in bay restoration to agricultural preservation to neighborhood revitalization. But despite the foresight demonstrated by Wolman and many others since, symptoms of the problem of sprawling land use have continued.

Fixing smart growth (Secretary Hall’s Op-Ed from the Baltimore Sun, April 28, 2011)

Despite Maryland’s much-lauded efforts, sprawl continues, at great cost

The following text was originally presented as an Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun’s Commentary section on April 28, 2011

By Richard Eberhardt Hall6:00 a.m. EDT, April 28, 2011

Today the Maryland Department of Planning is unveiling a draft of Maryland‘s first state growth plan, which we’re calling PlanMaryland. In 1974, the General Assembly authorized

How has Maryland been growing?

Growth Trends

The total acreage of developed land in Maryland nearly doubled in the past three decades, resulting in large losses of farms and forests. It took three centuries to develop the first 650,000 acres of land in Maryland and a mere 30 years to develop the next 650,000 acres.