MODERN TIMES

Art Hobson

ahobson@uark.edu

NWA Times 9 Dec 2006

Ruskin Heights and the 2025 Plan

Despite the successful processes leading to Fayetteville’s excellent Downtown Master Plan and City Plan 2025, citizens are still not getting the point.

City Plan 2025 has six goals: appropriate infill, discouraging sprawl, traditional town form, a livable transportation network, a green network, and attainable housing. Unfortunately, the plan failed its first test last week when a Planning Commission subcommittee voted 2 to 1 against recommending a proposed new development, Ruskin Heights, to the full Planning Commission.

If approved, Ruskin Heights will comprise 295 homes on 29 acres on the north slope of Mount Sequoyah just south of Mission Boulevard (Highway 45), slightly west of Crossover Road (Highway 265). It will embrace the hillside with terraced pedestrian passages progressing up the slope, and will save most of the existing mature trees. It will include retail shops, a dense center, trails, and a mountaintop park.

Ruskin Heights was designed by the Duany Plater-Zyberk Company, an internationally renowned “new urbanist” planning group that follows principles similar to those of the Dover-Kohl Company that conducted Fayetteville’s development process leading to the Downtown Master Plan and City Plan 2025. A highly participatory two-week “charette,” similar to the public charettes leading to City Plan 2025, was an important part of the development process.

I can’t imagine a development more in tune with the 2025 plan than this. Ruskin Heights fulfills the first three 2025 plan goals to a tee: appropriate infill (10 homes per acre on little-used land well inside the city), discouraging sprawl (dense, pedestrian-friendly, not out on the fringes), and traditional town form (people-friendly instead of car-oriented). And it supports the remaining three goals: Its trails, sidewalks, and mixed residential and retail use promote walking and bicycling, the ultimate in “livable transportation.” Its park and trails contribute to our urban green network. Many of its residences will be small and, presumably, more affordable than most new Fayetteville homes.

If the city that passed the Downtown Master Plan and City Plan 2025 doesn’t want Ruskin Heights, then I must ask: What on Earth do we want?

Nevertheless, some Ruskin Heights neighbors attended the Planning Commission sub-committee meeting and raised the objection that it will be too dense. But density is precisely what people asked for in the 2025 plan, as stated clearly in the plan’s first two goals. As a participant in the 2025 plan charettes, I recall Victor Dover giving us stickers to paste onto a city map to indicate where we would choose to put new residents. Everybody, and I mean everybody, chose dense infill over continued outward sprawl. If we reject Ruskin Heights, we are choosing to paste those stickers out beyond the fringes.

Goals 3, 4, and 6 of City Plan 2025 are also partly about density: The traditional town form (goal 3) is much more dense than the standard suburban town form with its cul-de-sacs and land-gobbling “mcmansions.” Attainable housing (goal 6) is impossible if every home requires a large lot. And a livable transportation network (goal 4) means mass transit, which requires densities of at least 10 units per acre; thus if there’s any adjustment in the density of Ruskin Heights, it should be upward, not downward. Washington Post columnist Neal Peirce wrote last week that compact transit-oriented development is “a new, highly relevant 21st-century patriotism,” and advised cities to “work up the political courage to say ‘no’ to NIMBY (not in my backyard) groups trying to block reasonably denser development in their communities.” I’m surprised that people raised density as a point against, rather than a point for, Ruskin Heights, and would be amazed if the full Planning Commission bought this argument.

The neighbors also complained that the development will create additional congestion along Highway 45. But Highway 45’s problems are a result of sprawl on the east side of town. If more of Fayetteville were like Ruskin Heights, we wouldn’t have such problems. Nixing Ruskin Heights will worsen Fayetteville’s congestion, because the 295 homes that would have been located in Ruskin Heights will be built further out in traditional sprawling suburbs, requiring much more driving (remember Victor Dover’s stickers).

The neighbors’ objections are perfect examples of the NIMBY syndrome. On the one hand, citizens applauded the 2025 plan, and on the other hand when the plan is put into action it turns out that the neighbors don’t want it in their backyard. We can’t have it both ways: Low density developments are not compatible with a livable city.

Neighbors have been pressuring the City Council to alter or nix Ruskin Heights, and were successful last Tuesday in persuading the Council to change the area’s zoning to less-dense uses. This was a step in the wrong direction for the entire city and should be rescinded. It would be tragic if it affects plans for Ruskin Heights.

Ruskin Heights matters, because the 2025 plan will improve the entire city—provided it’s not defeated by NIMBYs. The Planning Commission should be falling all over itself to approve it. I hope it’s copied throughout town, and as infill rather than as “green field” development. If it’s denied, our prospects are nil for slowing down the sprawl that is strangling our city, engulfing our fields, congesting our streets, trapping us in the car culture, creating meaningless suburbs, and polluting the planet.

This issue will come up again in the Planning Commission, and in the City Council. The decision shouldn’t be determined by the immediate neighbors alone, as it has been so far. Try to be at those meetings.

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