March 17, 2005

TLT event highlights smart growth

By Diane Chiddister

Organizers of next month’s “Smart Growth Weekend” want to offer villagers an opportunity to learn how other communities have addressed challenges similar to those facing Yellow Springs.

“The reason for doing this is that we needed to reach outside ourselves to see what solutions others have come up with,” said Krista Magaw, executive director of Tecumseh Land Trust, which is sponsoring the event. “We’re hoping to get inspired, to get fresh ideas.”

The Smart Growth Weekend will take place Friday, April 1, and Saturday, April 2, at Antioch’s Kelly Hall and at various locations downtown, including the First Presbyterian Church, the Senior Center and Mills Lawn School. The event’s keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tom Hylton, will kick off the weekend at 7:30 p.m. on Friday April 1, at Kelly Hall.

The event is free and people may take part in any or all of the activities, said Kate Bush of Tecumseh Land Trust. Participants may also register at any point during the weekend, though registration is not necessary, Bush said.

Most important, organizers say, is that as many people as possible, and from as many segments of Yellow Springs as possible, take part in the Smart Growth Weekend.

“We hope that disparate voices can come together,” said Dimi Reber, who is one of the event’s organizers and a member of Villagers Addressing Land Issues and Development, or VALID. “We’re eager to bring people in.”

Organizers consider the weekend an important, and distinct, component in the continuing series of events focused on the issue of development. Those events include the three Village Council-sponsored forums that concluded this week and the March 26 Community Forum at Wright State.

While the Community Forum serves the valuable purpose of bringing villagers together to discuss current challenges, Magaw said, the Smart Growth event gives people an opportunity to look outward and learn from others.

Organizers also hope the Smart Growth Weekend can help bring together villagers who clashed over the controversy around the proposed development of the Fogg property. While that issue, and other recent controversies such as affordable housing, have polarized villagers, Smart Growth Weekend organizers hope that this event can remind villagers of what they hold in common.

“We have shared values,” said Len Kramer, a member of the Village Mediation Program Steering Committee. “If we focus on those values, good things will happen.”

“Smart growth” refers to a recent urban planning movement that focuses on maintaining a balance between a town’s economic growth and its environmental and cultural assets, according to the weekend’s organizers. The movement began in response to many urban planners’ belief that urban sprawl had created significant problems.

“People saw how sprawl was depleting town centers, fostering dependence on cars and eating up farmland and open space,” Magaw said. “People stopped rubbing elbows with each other, and they were losing their sense of community.”

Smart growth planners chose to rethink long-held paradigms about growth and development, according to Judy Hempfling, who is also helping to organize the event.

“Traditionally, when people think about growth they see a conflict between development and greenspace preservation,” she said. “The smart growth movement said, ‘wait a minute, is that necessarily true? Are there ways to think outside the box?’ ”

Some of the leaders of the smart growth movement will take part in the Yellow Springs event, including Hylton, author of Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, a planner who has worked with communities in Chattanooga, Portland, Ore., Seaside, Fla., and Carrboro, N.C., among other places. It will also feature Dan Burden, a planner who focuses on creating pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly communities, and Jim Segedy, who teaches planning at Ball State University.

In addition to Hylton’s keynote address, the weekend event will include a series of walks around the village on April 2 focusing on economic development, sustainable -residential growth, local culture and history, accessibility, diversity, geology and good spaces for young people. Trained planners as well as local guides will accompany villagers on the walks, offering their opinions on local challenges. The walks will be repeated throughout the day, so that participants may take part in as many as they want.

Also on Saturday, participants may attend one or more of several panel discussions focusing on smart growth principles and techniques as well as different approaches to a visioning process.

Dan Burden will discuss creating walkable and bikeable communities on April 2 at 8 p.m. in Kelly Hall.

Organizers consider the Smart Growth Weekend part of the first, or learning, phase of a four-part process. The second phase will include a communitywide visioning process, followed by phases focused on planning and taking action.

The Village Mediation Program will take responsibility for the visioning phase of the process, Kramer said.

“We at VMP feel we want to see it through ourselves,” he said. “Someone has to lead, and we’re willing to try to pull it together.”

Task force members who are organizing the Smart Growth Weekend are Magaw, Kramer, Bush, Hempfling, Reber, Phil Hawkey, the Village planner who is currently serving as the acting Village manager, Suzanne Patterson, Dave Neuhardt, Pat Murphy, Megan Quinn and Steven Conn.

Other event sponsors are Antioch College, Antioch University McGregor, Antioch School, Yellow Springs Arts Council, Better Health Cooperative, Community Resources, Community Round Table, Community Service, Inc., Dharma Center, Glen Helen Association, Greene Environmental Coalition, Home, Inc., Miami Valley Chapter of the Ohio Planning Conference, Villagers Addressing Land Issues and Development, Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce and Yellow Springs Community Foundation.

Persons interested in registering for the Smart Growth Weekend, or in volunteering to help, should contact Bush at Tecumseh Land Trust, 767-9490 or kate@tecumsehlandtrust.org.