Articles

Cluster Clash

By making it easier for developers to "cluster" housing developments, new legislation should reduce costs and preserve open space. But it's unclear whether the law's purported transportation benefits will ever materialize.

By Robert L. Burke

Out of this year’s contentious General Assembly session came one new Virginia law that potentially could reduce housing costs and ease the pressure on the state’s strained transportation budget. 

Despite the ongoing fight over funding, legislators easily passed legislation that would allow homebuilders to build “cluster” residential projects in fast-growing counties. That design option – which localities previously did not have to offer – has several potential advantages. It could cut costs for homebuilders by reducing the amount of roads, utilities and other infrastructure they must build, and those savings could be passed along to homebuyers in the form of lower housing prices. 

For the transportation network, clustered housing could mean fewer miles of subdivision streets for the state to maintain – a savings more critical than ever, given the state’s rising maintenance budget. In yet another benefit, clustering would preserve open space on a parcel of land -- an environmental benefit that would mean less polluted runoff and more of the bucolic vistas that suburban homebuyers covet.

The new law – which doesn’t take effect until July 2007 – is a big win for the homebuilding industry, which has long wanted to avoid the extra costs and bureaucratic delays that go with seeking special permission for every cluster-design project. 

On its face the law seems like a win-win proposition, helping both the state and homebuyers, and protecting the environment. But as is often true with land-use legislation, the devil is in the details. Local governments are wary of the state-imposed mandate, and proponents of smart-growth designs say the jury is still out on whether the new law will actually help the state’s transportation network. For better or worse, no one is really sure what the new law’s impact will be, and we won’t know for several years. 

“We’ve got to be very careful that people don’t oversell what it does,” says Trip Pollard, an attorney with the Charlottesville office of the Southern Environmental Law center. “I’ve heard it billed as a way to reduce transportation costs, and it can. It can also have beneficial impacts in terms of protecting open space. But if you don’t do it properly, clustering can do more harm than good.”

Here’s what the law does: It requires localities with a population growth rate of 10 percent or higher in the most recent census to adopt by-right cluster development and open-space preservation ordinances. The ordinances must apply to at least 40 percent of the unimproved land in residential and agricultural zones. Localities with densities above 2,000 people per square mile are exempted, as are those that enacted cluster ordinances before 2004.

Mike Toalson, executive vice president for the Home Builders Association of Virginia, says the new bill will be a big improvement because only three localities were using the optional ordinance. Plus, requiring developers to seek special approval to build clustered projects often sparked public opposition from nearby residents, even though the market demand was there, he says. Plans were often frustrated by people in neighboring subdivisions, he says. “The ‘not in my back yard’ syndrome developed.” 

Toalson points out that clustered development doesn’t mean a higher overall density. For example, if a 100-acre parcel were zoned for 100 houses, it still would have 100 houses under a cluster development. But more of the parcel would be preserved in open space. Says Toalson: “We are very hopeful that the result of this will be win-win-win. Win for homebuyers because of lower costs, win for the environment because of the open space, and win for [the state] because of less maintenance costs. And that was the goal.” 

Pollard, however, says clustered projects aren't suitable everywhere. While clustering might reduce road maintenance costs, traffic flow isn’t helped if new projects aren’t interconnected with existing ones, he says. In such instances, a clustered development will have exactly the same effect as the sprawling big-lot development it replaced: Auto traffic still will be dumped en masse on a handful of arterial roads ill equipped to handle it. “What you want is interconnectedness, so drivers can go through an existing network of streets," Pollard says. "[In] some of these fast-growing localities, you don’t want more clustering. What you really want is denser, grid-pattern development.” 

The big question, then, is whether localities can make this new mandate work in their favor. “It can be totally misused,” says Jeff Gore, director of governmental affairs for the Virginia Association of Counties. “If you put a cluster development where there’s currently no [road] infrastructure, it’s going to create a traffic jam. So clearly how it’s implemented is going to have a major impact.” 

In addition, says Gore, “We weren’t real excited at the prospect of this being forced down the throats of localities.” The association sticks close to the position that “land-use planning authority should be with the localities; it shouldn’t be done from Richmond.” 

Toalson responds that the new law will fill a demand in the real estate marketplace for clustered projects. “The only places where this type of subdivision plan will be submitted are in those places where there’s demand for housing,” he says. 

What’s more, Toalson says, if the law produces traffic-flow problems, the General Assembly can address those issues in the future. “I’m sure that just like we go and make our case, they can go and make their case,” he says.

But several years will have passed by then, and the challenge of developing a workable transportation network could still be unmet. Plus, fast-growing localities can’t easily undo the development put in place by an aggressive, profit-driven building industry. “We’re digging the hole deeper,” says Pollard of the environmental law center. “The biggest risk… is that [the new law] will make people think we’ve addressed the problem” of traffic congestion. “No one should think we’ve gotten the job done.”

Bacon's Rebellion News Service

June 1, 2006