Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 03/4/07

BY GEORGE MOFFATT

New Jersey's developers claim we can alleviate suburban sprawl by building denser housing projects. Let us build more units per acre, they incongruously argue, and we'll preserve open space between our high-density buildings.

What an interesting paradox — highly dense overdevelopment leads to more open space.

Of course, we've been there before. Remember "garden apartments," where small lawns were planted in front of long strings of buildings? Then "cluster developments" came along, promising that tightly packed housing would be surrounded by mini-parks. After that, we were told condominiums and townhouses would surround us with swales of greenery. But as developers shoehorned more units per acre, the grass quickly succumbed to parking lots.

The latest buzzword is "traditional neighborhoods," high-density projects of apartments, condos and stores that developers promote as warm-and-fuzzy communities where everyone happily waves to each other while walking to work and to shop. Nobody needs a car, our ecologically sensitive developers proclaim, although inexplicably, all their projects have parking lots, garages — and exits to local highways. They're even promoting the fiction that these high-density, cheaper-to-build developments will halt suburban sprawl because they're yet again promising open spaces.

A recent defender of this time-worn argument, perhaps unaware of developers' historical antipathy toward open space, argued that the contradictory idea that high-density, mixed-use projects will slow suburban sprawl deserves a fair hearing. ("High-density housing a sensible alternative to suburban sprawl," commentary, Feb. 21.) Sorry, we've already been there. He also claims "developers are not the architects of suburban sprawl." He's right; the cause is leprechauns.

The writer ignores what every developer knows but will steadfastly deny: development increases property taxes. Don't believe it? Try to find one year when your property taxes went down. His high-density overdevelopment will accelerate the increase in traffic congestion, air and water pollution, school costs, the need for police, fire, and rescue, and demands on the public infrastructure, including roads, sewage treatment and drinking water.

While promising us tightly packaged slivers of the bucolic life, this overdevelopment reduces open spaces, degrades the environment — and pays less per unit in taxes. Every developer who invades your town will cost you tax dollars. But the writer didn't mention the downside of high-density over-development. You'll only learn about that in your next tax bill.

Rather than discuss the social costs of overdevelopment, the writer muddied the debate by misrepresenting the need to control overdevelopment as being anti-development. He argues that if critics of developers' profit-driven high-density hype had their way over the last two centuries, "We would likely be on mud lanes with farmhands, hunters and fishermen, with no hospital, no theater and no grocery store."

This dismissive view of farmhands, hunters and fishermen is disturbing because they have more respect for the land than the writer's developer friends. History may not be the writer's strong suit. Even the most ancient civilizations had hospitals, theaters and grocery stores. As to paved roads, ever hear of the Romans' Appian Way or, closer to home, New Jersey's 18th century "Paterson Plank Road"?

High-density overdevelopment will just enrich developers while making our urban problems worse.

George Moffatt of Oceanport is a local conservationist.