Regional Growth and Planning Opportunities in Southwestern PA, By Jonathan R. Farrell

Listed on the wish list of most every state’s natural resource management reports, whether formal plans and assessments or informal agendas, is the need for more coordinated regional planning. It is no mystery why more careful regional planning is viewed as the fix of so many broken land use and resources management programs.

Decades of data collection and analysis have clearly charted the trend: sprawling, low-density suburban development voraciously filling the space between urban cores and the rural countryside; residential developments further from traditional job centers; center-less towns and cities; and an increasingly protracted utility and transportation infrastructure.

The problem often centers around growing metropolitan areas and is a regional problem irrespective of municipal boundaries, but authority is often local, not regional—thus the common invocation of regional planning as that which works but is not done.

In many states, municipalities rather than counties are vested with much of the power for land use planning and regulation by the state. Local development, planned or not, that is uncoordinated across municipalities can lead to problems at the regional scale. And with almost any problem with spatial dimensions, control of the whole depends entirely on communication and coordination between the parts.

Regional planning means simply cooperation but is exceedingly difficult in practice. Municipalities must not view themselves as policy islands, but rather as neighboring development units within a region that is experiencing similar development pressures. Regional planning then coordinates local planning and development activities in municipalities and counties that are in the same sphere of influence.

Real estate developers, like most raw forces in the American economy, must be monitored and managed in order to limit impacts on limited natural resources and ensure efficiency and stability in the providence of public utilities and services to new developments.

Pennsylvania is a Commonwealth government and much authority for land use control has been vested to local governments by the state through enabling legislation in the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code (MPC). This model of governance is most effective in close-knit, centralized communities where residents readily participate in local government decisions and are informed and responsive to community affairs and needs—e.g., small self-sufficient agrarian communities. It does not work very well in modern suburban Pennsylvania.

Most suburban and newly developed rural areas lack traditional town centers around which a land use plan can take shape. Development often occurs at such a rate that land use regulations are outdated and seldom enforced until an issue is obvious. Most residents of new residential developments work outside their municipality and are not involved with their local government. Older residents who may have concerns over land development in their community are unable to articulate these concerns because of the lack of a formal public planning process.

Official local planning commissions function to systematize, publicize, and personalize decisions regarding land development to members of the community. Public hearings, comprehensive plans, development review, and other elements of a formal planning process reify decisions for residents who might have viewed development as a “natural” consequence. Once the decision-making process becomes more transparent, residents begin to see land development as an investment—good or poor—in their community with real costs and benefits to the individual at stake.

In Pennsylvania, different regions have experienced a maturing of land use planning activities at different levels and times. While only 56 percent of municipalities in southwestern PA have planning commissions, compared to over 90 percent in south-central and southeastern parts of the state, according to a 2003 report by the Brookings Institute.

The reaction of local communities to excessive or poor development is far along in south-central and southwest Pennsylvania where sprawl has reached such levels that communities have “learned their lessons” and considered planning. Planning commissions then propose and update comprehensive plans, and zoning and SALDOs are employed to enforce the comprehensive plan.

Community awareness and action in these cases was reactionary. Residents, landowners, and officials perceived an obvious need for planning, land use regulation, and open space preservation—but it is really not “planning” if done in hindsight.

Planning general consists of four principal elements or tools—planning commissions, comprehensive plans, subdivision and land development ordinances (SALDOs), and zoning ordinances. If a municipality chooses to use one of these tools, it does so as prescribed and in accordance with the Municipalities Planning Code.

In Pennsylvania, the use of all four of the land use planning tools are not mandated for municipalities, but all subdivisions and development projects must be approved by the county if not the municipality. In this way, counties are the most basic filter for development review in Pennsylvania. County land use regulations are limited to municipalities that do not have their own regulations. On the other hand, municipal land use regulations and plans, where they do exist, have primacy over any county regulations.

Thus the slight paradox of planning authority in Pennsylvania: counties are required by state law to complete comprehensive plans, but these county comprehensive plans are largely advisory at the municipal level where planning can be the most detailed and effective. Furthermore, county comprehensive plans and regulations are often so general as to have little steering effect on how development proceeds at the local level.

If a municipality chooses to enact a plan, Section 301(c) of the MPC mandates that the county planning agency or a designated agency (usually regional planning agencies) review and comment on “whether the municipal or multi-municipal comprehensive plan remains generally consistent with the county comprehensive plan.”

While this seemingly promotes consistency in planning between municipalities and between municipalities and counties, the effort is unavailing because the municipality is not required to change their plan in response to the county’s suggestions. On the contrary, county planning agencies are required to adopt changes to their comprehensive plans if proposed by municipalities according to MPC Section 302(d).

Similarly, regional planning agencies like the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), which often have the most resources and a holistic perspective of development needs and trends, are advisory bodies with worthy mission statements but little real regulatory authority.

According to the MPC, regional planning agencies can offer technical assistance to counties and municipalities regarding planning activities, mediate conflicts between counties and municipalities, and review comprehensive plans for consistency between counties or municipalities in the same region. Yet again, counties and municipalities are under no obligation to follow their recommendations.

This administrative and jurisdictional incongruity that needs to be overcome—or altered—in order to get smart growth in Pennsylvania. Reforms of the MPC like the Growing Smarter amendments in 2000 have allowed some progress toward multi-municipal planning by removing some of the red tape required to allow municipalities to share planning authority, but few of these reforms have had a meaningful impact in southwestern PA.

The Governor's Center for Local Government Services and the Department of Community and Economic Development and organizations like the PA Association of Township Supervisors and the PA Association of Boroughs are now in place to provide support and guidance for local planning activities in Pennsylvania—though their help will only come through a request from local actors.

If empowered with the right authority and resources for outreach to local governments, regional planning authorities like the SPC in partnership with non-profit organizations specifically focused on smart growth (10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, Allegheny Land Trust, Sustainable Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Center for Rural Pennsylvania, etc.) and the supporting organizations and offices mentioned above, would be the obvious entities to promote and coordinate the use of progressive land use planning and regulation. In the absence of a strong regional planning agency, local ad hoc planning partnerships between municipalities are likely to be the direction of any progress.

Today, southwestern Pennsylvania has the opportunity to establish proactive land use policies to plan for and manage rapid development in still relatively rural areas. Many local comprehensive plans are in dire need of updates, and model ordinances with proven records of effectiveness are waiting to be adopted. This requires cultivating an awareness of the issue and potential solutions before the problem, lowest-common-denominator development, is obvious. Since much of the sprawl in southwestern PA is occurring outlying rural areas, these are the communities that should be targeted in any such initiative.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Outreach and education of municipal officials is a start—but then again, their participation in any program is voluntary because municipalities are under no obligation under the law to plan or pass land use ordinances. Therefore any interaction towards the goal of changing land use policies in southwestern Pennsylvania must involve a “leveling” of local interests; explanation of the opportunities and incentives that exist for land use planning and regulation by local governments and landowners. This might include cultivating interest around very practical concerns such as lowering long-term costs to the community for public infrastructure, controlling property taxes and assessments, and increasing community attractiveness to investors who might build to increase employment.

There is currently a treasure chest of tools available through the Municipalities Planning Code for local governments interested in planning to promote economical and environmentally sound development, or “open space development” as it is sometimes called. In many cases these tools and techniques involve changing or adding options to conventional ordinances in order to make them more flexible in allowing or requiring land conservation amid development.

Subdivision and Land Development Ordinances (SALDOs) do this by manipulating lot arrangement, size, and shape of subdivisions to maximize conserved natural resources as well as directly requiring the dedication of open space or specific landscape requirements in development plans. So-called conservation zoning creates new protective zoning districts for areas of special interest such as floodplains, steep slopes or open space. Stricter development regulations then may be designed for those areas.

Other techniques, like transfer of development rights and planned residential development, are more involved and—if they are to work well—require extensive collaboration with developers, not to mention a fairly sophisticated understanding of land use planning concepts by municipal officials. Yet communities interested in employing these programs can certainly obtain assistance from the organizations mentioned above.

Resources and information about these and other tools have been made available online at PennSCAPEs, a website developed by the Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance at Penn State’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and at the PA Municipalities Planning Code website given below.

Jonathan R. Farrell is a student in the School of Forest Resources, Pennsylvania State University. You may contact him at: 412-400-8755 or send email to: JRF289@psu.edu .

For more information, see these links:

PennSCAPES

Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance

Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code – Made Easy!

A Primer on Local Government Fragmentation and Regionalism in the Pittsburgh Region

“Little boxes” – limited horizons: A study of fragmented local governance in Pennsylvania: Its scope, consequences, and reforms.” Brookings Institute, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy

5/19/2006