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particularly revenues from local taxes. Compared to
Europe, where a more centralized system is the norm,
a higher percentage of money to fund local govern-
ment in America comes from local taxes. In American
towns and cities, schools, police and fire protection,
and the public infrastructure of streets, sidewalks,
water and sewer are funded directly from taxes on pri-
vate property in the community. To avoid always hav-
ing to raise taxes to pay these costs, which continually
increase due to inflation, local governments try to
attract new development to expand the amount of
taxable property within their borders. They often
fight hard to outbid their neighbors by offering vari-
ous incentives to developers and companies, includ-
ing, ironically, rebates from local taxes.
However, not all growth pays for itself. For
example, the taxes received from a typical American
housing development generally don’t pay for the
services received by the homeowners, mainly due to
the cost of providing schools for their children. But
the taxes on a strip shopping center can create a profit
for local government, as that development doesn’t
require the schools, libraries, community centers,
swimming pools, courthouses and so forth expected
by homeowners and their families. The shopping
center will only need police and fire protection, water
supply and sewer service. Therefore, the types of
development that produce sprawl are often actively
sought out by elected officials and economic develop-
ment officers in American towns and cities in order
to garner revenue to fund civic services.
Another important difference concerns what is
taxed. In Europe, the tax structure is more heavily
weighted to taxes on consumption rather than
property. In other words what you use is taxed more
heavily than what you own. The opposite is true in
the USA, where taxes on consumption, for example,
those on petrol, are only a fraction of the equivalents
in Europe. As often happens, Britain hovers some-
where between the two poles.
This emphasis on taxing consumption is being
extended in many European nations to so-called green
taxes on pollution, particularly in Sweden, the
Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. This policy can
both reduce the contamination of the environment
while allowing for some reductions in personal taxa-
tion. Between 1994 and 1998, for example, Denmark
raised taxes on petrol, water supply, energy and waste
while reducing the income tax levied on its citizens by
8 to 10 percent (Burke, 1997, in Beatley: p. 257). Any
such fundamental changes in tax structure toward this
kind of more centralized and use-based tax system are
very unlikely in America, and local governments will
therefore continue to operate in their normal, com-
petitive, and localized manner. Many observers see
nothing wrong in this; a fundamental mantra of
American culture is that competition provides the best
solution to most questions. In this crucial instance of
municipal finance however, competition is the prob-
lem, not the solution. It is the Achilles’ heel of
American planning.
In addition to competing with their neighbors
for sources of revenue, elected officials in almost
every place we work tell us they fear the loss of their
community’s identity, and are thus protectively sus-
picious of adjacent municipalities who may have
different agendas. For example, the members of sev-
eral progressive town councils in the Carolinas often
share few values with the County Commissioners
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CHAPTER FIVE
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GROWTH MANAGEMENT, DEVELOPMENT CONTROL AND URBAN DESIGN
99
who administer the largely rural lands beyond the
towns’ boundaries. For example, the leaders of the
town of Mooresville, 30 miles north of Charlotte, are
keen to link themselves with the big city’s rail transit
plans, becoming the terminus of a proposed northern
line from Charlotte. However, Mooresville is located
in Iredell County, an area that, apart from
Mooresville and a few other towns, is predominantly
rural as opposed to the urban environment of the city
of Charlotte and its surrounding Mecklenburg
County. It has been very hard for the Mooresville
officials to make common cause with their county
counterparts, who see the rail link and its associated
development as symptomatic of the advancing
urbanization that threatens their rural values.
Mooresville’s ambition to connect to Charlotte repre-
sents a major economic development opportunity for
the town and fulfills some of its Smart Growth objec-
tives. However, these priorities are driving a wedge
between the town and the county, and there is no
overall planning authority with the power to sort out
this dispute and resolve local and regional issues.
Indeed, when North Carolina set up the statutory
Metropolitan Planning Organizations to manage
transportation planning in the state’s urban areas, it
established five separate bodies for the Charlotte
region, specifically so regional coordination would be
difficult, and to resist the rise of regional governance.
While this might be extreme, few American states
see such mediation or plan coordination between
jurisdictions as part of their function; indeed, many
states don’t require coordinated plans for their terri-
tory. In avoiding this issue of extended governance,
state government represents the opinion of many
Americans who view such higher authority, whether
as a regional government or, even worse, a national
government policy for controlling the development
of private property, as a deeply socialistic concept.
Some sectors of public opinion even consider such
planning initiatives as the precursor to the erosion of
fundamental civil liberties.
This was certainly the case in the 1930s when the
federal government first introduced legislation to
create a national housing policy as part of the New
Deal. Opponents destroyed the fledgling American
New Towns program at that time, branding it a
socialist concept, and not many attitudes have
changed since then. The authors are reminded of a
recent observation by a conservative Charlotte politi-
cian to the effect that if an ugly environment is
the result of unplanned free enterprise, then so be it.
The city councilman considered that outcome much
preferable to an attractive city brought about at the
price of government regulation.
This isn’t to say that there is no national legislation
that affects the physical form of American towns and
cities. There are and have been several examples, the
urban renewal legislation discussed earlier being one
dramatic postwar instance. While that set of policies
has left a lingering and difficult legacy, other recent
examples are more progressive. But few concern
themselves with design. The shining exception is the
HOPE VI program, an effort to demolish substan-
dard public housing ghettos and replace them with
more attractive mixed-income neighborhoods. While
the statement of objectives does not mention design,
the federal department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) has been open to the sugges-
tions of New Urbanist architects, including Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk, and supplementary guidance notes
such as