[M II A II R II K]

Will Greater Cleveland Squander Its Chance to Be Competitive Again?


June 1, 2012

By Angie Schmitt

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/06/01...etitive-again/

The Obama Administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative was tailor made for communities like greater Cleveland. Northeast Ohio has been sprawling for decades without adding any population, emptying out the notoriously troubled central city while the regional economy consistently under-performs.

During the last decade the city of Cleveland lost 17 percent of its population. Inner-ring suburbs didn’t fare much better, shedding five to eight percent. Meanwhile, exurban Avon — a tax haven built on cleared forests and farmland 25 miles distant from the center city — grew 85 percent. Northeast Ohio had never undertaken a formal regional planning effort to address the rapid abandonment of its urban areas for unplanned, exurban development.

Northeast Ohio’s metropolitan planning organization, NOACA, has always been careful never to use the word “sprawl” in any of its documents. Its outgoing director, Howard Maier, absolves himself by pointing to the fact that state and federal law have not given metropolitan planning agencies specific powers to do land use planning. Of course, neither has the law forbidden land use planning, as many other regions can attest.

.....

• Video Link