Art Hobson, ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times, 3 June 2012
Northwest Arkansas Infrastructure Development: Building Wisely
Our
region's cities and towns are mostly wonderful places to live. However, our too-rapid growth means we'd
better pay attention or things will go rapidly awry. To advance, we'd better build our infrastructure
for long-term quality of life, not short-term profits. These decisions will resonate for
decades.
Last
month's Northwest Arkansas Development Conference laid out plans and problems. As this newspaper reported, Bentonville's
Mayor Bob McCaslin and planner Daniel Hitz said renovation around the square, the extraordinary
Crystal Bridges Museum, trails around the museum, restaurants, and farmers markets
have moved downtown development "off the charts." It's the kind of high-quality
people-oriented development that makes our region great.
Fayetteville
is moving in several smart directions.
Trails coordinator Matt Mihalevich and urban
developer Seth Mims talked about the economic benefits of trails, describing
projects built or planned along trails or near Ozark Regional Transit bus stops. The ability of such development to draw folks
together rather than sprawling them all over the countryside is one of the many
benefits of trails, sidewalks, and transit. Maihalevich
said developers are "choosing sites based on the trail being
there."
Mayor
Lioneld Jordan said Fayetteville favors more infill,
and that the city's zoning approach mixes residences, apartments, and
commercial services to form real neighborhoods while discouraging car-dependent
suburbs. It was refreshing to hear
of plans for high-density student apartments near the university. High density saves driving, money, time,
energy, resources, and environment, while reducing boring sprawl, increasing
the feasibility of alternative transportation, and adding to the excitement of
urban life.
Speaking
of infill, Fayetteville's most glaring example of undervalued, ugly urban space
amid high-value surroundings is the block of ground-level parking west of the
Walton Arts Center. Such parking
sprawl signifies urban decay and the sooner it can be replaced with, for
example, decked parking surrounded by people-oriented shops, the better. Some of us have been saying this for
years but this eyesore seems eternal.
All
this fits squarely into the progressive "new urbanism" principles,
although by now this movement is no longer so new. James Kunstler's 1993 gem "The
Geography of Nowhere" is a new urbanism classic and still an inspiring
read that focuses on the devastation of our urban fabric at the hands of
America's car culture.
On
a more depressing note, Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department director
Scott Bennett spoke of further Los Angeles-style freeway development out on
I-540 where the geography of nowhere so obviously rules. The plan is to finance highway widening
to six or (count 'em) eight lanes, along with further
megatons of asphalt spread over our gorgeous state's entire landscape, with a
half-cent statewide sales tax to be voted on this November. As an indication of the magnitude of
this proposal, the state recently began widening a 1.4-mile stretch north of
Martin Luther King Boulevard to six lanes.
The tab for just this bit of widening is about $6 million--comparable to
the $7.5 million that would have been raised each year by the recently-defeated
Washington County transit tax. An extra
two lanes along a measly 1.4 miles of interstate would nearly pay for widespread
buses through the county for a year!
Something's wrong with those priorities.
The
congestion on I-540 happened because, instead of functioning as a long-distance
interstate connection, the interstate was "developed" by our regional
planning geniuses into Northwest Arkansas' main street. Big box stores, big box churches, megamalls,
and city expansion west of the highway, never should have happened. Instead, I-540 has attracted the kind of
sprawl that destroys cities and countryside alike. The downtowns of our four regional
cities are fractured these cheesy car-dependent establishments. The malls and big boxes depend on you
and me to pay for the highways, cars, and gasoline that bring shoppers out to
their sprawling parking lots and their cheap land as they destroy the vitality
of the local shops that used to inhabit our downtowns. It's nowhere, indeed.
I-540
traffic is mostly local, generated by the development that was itself created
by the highway. More lanes only mean
more traffic. It's a developer's
bonanza and a self-fulfilling nightmare, especially for those who can't or
won't afford the annual $9,000 required (according to the AAA) for the care and
feeding of each automobile. And highway
planners now ask Arkansans for an additional half-cent sales tax. Our response should be: If drivers want it let them pay for it,
through gasoline taxes and tolls.
It behooves us to chose wisely between constructive and destructive infrastructure.