I admit it. I was sitting at a meeting feeling my eyelids grow heavy.
After three hours of speakers at Tuesday's day-long Smart Growth Summit, I reached a point where I just wanted to put aside my notebook and lay my head down.
I wasn't drowsy because the topic bores me. Not at all.
I'm actually excited about the potential for Lancaster County if it gets serious about implementing smart-growth strategies.
I think it's important we exercise better stewardship of our land, natural resources and heritage.
I think it's important we strive for a sustainable prosperity that creates family-supporting jobs without putting our values, environment and future in jeopardy.
Most of all, I think it's important we build upon Lancaster County's strengths and distinctiveness so future generations will appreciate the decisions we made in the early years of the millennium.
Mindful of legacy
The above describes the objectives of land-use practices that fall under the heading "smart growth." They point the way to the kind of community I'd like to see us become.
Keeping farmers on rich agricultural land makes sense. So does bringing vacant architectural gems back to life, pulling our Main Streets out of their decades-long slump, and rethinking automobile-centric suburban design that engenders sprawl.
That is the promise of smart growth, and speakers at Tuesday's conference, which was sponsored by the local Coalition for Smart Growth and drew almost 200 attendees, appropriately discussed the costs of haphazard growth.
I guess what I found tedious was the coldly detached, ivory-tower tone of the conversation. They were discussing smart growth as if it were an academic exercise rather than a cause.
And to my mind smart growth is a cause. Envisioning a better future for Lancaster County and doing the hard work to achieve that vision should imbue us with a sense of mission.
Instead, the speakers were lulling me into lethargy.
It was fortunate Carol Simpson spoke up with comments that for me, at least, saved the day.
Upholding balance
From the audience at the Farm & Home Center, Simpson, who is a Manheim Township commissioner, made a few observations that reminded us why we were there and why we need a Smart Growth Coalition.
About a year ago, she said, she was driving through East Lampeter when she saw a yard sign that said, "No TND. Save our farmland."
A TND — shorthand for traditional neighborhood design — is a smart-growth tool that saves outlying farmland by accommodating growth though denser, multiuse, village-style development.
Simpson said she almost drove off the road because the sign was so illogical.
Now, a couple of signs is no big deal. But they're symptomatic of public misunderstanding of smart-growth ideas.
Manheim Township has three TND-style developments and a fourth is in the works. Each one ignited "a firestorm" of controversy, Simpson said, leaving her fearful for the future because people disregard common sense.
Mass opposition to specific smart-growth projects is, indeed, worrisome. The only solution seems to be to patiently and assiduously try to convince people who attack what they don't understand that our present path is not sustainable.
And what is abundantly clear is this is no time to become apathetic and give up the fight. We need to press on lest our legacy is listless downtowns, enervating urban poverty and humdrum sprawl as far as the eye can see.
Yawn.