The Knarr family escaped from New York, in part, because they had nowhere to run.

"My kids had an 8-by-10 piece of grass they could run around on," said Fred Knarr. Here, the family stretched out on a half-acre in East Hempfield Township. Life was good.

Until it seemed New York had come after them.

Less than a mile to the east, Charter Homes wanted to build "Independence," 3,000 homes plus retail on 309 acres at Harrisburg Pike and State Road. It would have been the biggest, "densest" development in the county and state; but the developer and many local officials agreed that this type of "traditional neighborhood development," or TND, was the wave of the future.

To Knarr, it looked too much like the past. So he and other township residents organized, agitated and ultimately prevailed, convincing East Hempfield officials to kill the TND ordinance earlier this month. The question is whether the idea behind the ordinance gets buried along with it.

For decades, local government has operated on the belief that the best way to save farmland in Lancaster County was to encourage higher-density development in other, "urban growth" areas. East Hempfield's ordinance was to be a big step forward — maybe too big a step, local officials now acknowledge. Still, they remain convinced that this type of "smart growth" is the way to go; the East Hempfield kerfluffle, they say, was just a bump in the road.

In fact, it may be much more.

While opponents objected to many aspects of the ordinance, the broader objection was to the idea of density itself. It was too much, too out of character for the suburban community; "They were going to dump an urban setting into East Hempfield Township that the citizens did not want, and it wasn't appropriate," said township resident N. Charles Bolgiano, echoing a widely-held sentiment.

"It wasn't just that the ordinance was flawed," he said. "It was that people were opposed to it."

Seen this way, what happened in East Hempfield wasn't so much a bump in the road as a fork. And it prompts a question:

When it comes to the future of Lancaster County, who knows best — local government, or local citizens?

Divisive issue
The ideal answer, of course, is a local government representative of local citizens. But where growth is concerned, there's destined to be a divergence.

Both sides seem to feel the other doesn't quite get it. Residents say that with the TND ordinance, too much effort was made to accommodate developers. Developers, they point out, paid to have the ordinance drawn up.

And Independence was, simply, out of place. "Cramming more than 7,000 people onto a 309-acre plot is density run amok and totally wrong for our township," wrote Camilla Collova in a letter to the Lancaster New Era "It's not traditional, and it's not a neighborhood. It's just a supersized development, as out of place in East Hempfield as a grain silo in downtown Lancaster."

But if 3,000 homes on the site was inappropriate, what would be appropriate? Half that — 1,500 homes? Or 1,000?

The prospect of "big box" stores was another issue; but planners ask, if the goal of creating a community where people can walk to shopping is to be realized, shouldn't the commercial space be closer, say, to a supermarket than a convenience store?

The devil may be in the details, and many who opposed the ordinance were put off by those details. But one of the phrases bandied was the "character of the community," with residents insisting it must be preserved. And here's the disconnect.

Those tasked with studying growth in Lancaster County and crafting a response to it believe the "character of the community" here and throughout the country needs to evolve.

"The suburban sprawl that has characterized the pattern of growth from the 1950s to the present has created the traffic and crowded schools that we currently have," said John Bingham, chairman of the East Hempfield supervisors. "To assume that continuation of the pattern will prevent the very problems that it has created is not good logic."

Bingham and other township supervisors voted unanimously to table the ordinance; it was, he said, both the only thing they could do in the face of such overwhelming opposition and the right choice. The ordinance, which had been revised nine times, was "weighted entirely too far toward the desires of the development community," he said.

But he's not convinced that existing township ordinances will do enough to save farmland or reduce reliance on automobiles. "I would not be doing my job," he said, "if I did not try to find a balance between the valid concerns raised by our residents and the larger picture."

Big picture
It can be hard to see the big picture when you're right up against it.

Mark Stivers is a believer. The township's director of planning, he thinks there was a "knee-jerk reaction" to the ordinance.

But how could there not be?

"People felt it was too much, too fast," he said. "And we got our hands slapped."

He's gratified to see the debate on the front page of the newspapers. People are thinking more about how East Hempfield and Lancaster County as a whole are growing. Yet he worries about the message the public may be sending. At one meeting, Stivers said that he'd lived for a time in Europe, where the TND idea thrives.

A resident who also spent time in Europe concurred, but noted: "We have a mentality in this country to get in your car and drive."

Stivers said he hoped the idea isn't that this is the way things should be, "that you're going to pry my car from my cold, dead fingers."

James Cowhey, director of the Lancaster County Planning Commission, also is wary of the idea that the goal of planning should be to preserve the existing suburban lifestyle. "That's how we turn into Bucks County, and people say, 'I left there, I don't want that,' " he said.

Still, he treads lightly, because he's not certain: "Are people upset because they feel they were left out of the process, or is it that they don't like the idea of density?"

"Congestion is not going to go away if we continue to develop as we have," he said. "Maybe we need to do a better job informing the grass roots why TNDs are a good idea. And part of that message is to ask: What are our alternatives?"

Transplant's view
Fred Knarr certainly doesn't want to turn Lancaster County into Bucks County. Or New York.

But in the midst of a national housing slump, he notes, "there are hundreds of houses on the market [here] whether we build one house per acre or 10 houses per acre."

"I stand on my half-acre and think, what would it be like to have seven other houses on this?"

And so township supervisors did the right thing, he believes.

If that upset some grand plan for the future of Lancaster County, well, maybe that future wouldn't have been so bright after all.

"Maybe [the supervisors] saw some small glimmer of making things better for us — rather than enveloping us in massive housing and stores."

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Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.