Steer growth to cities’ urban areas where services are

We all deserve the opportunity to live and work in a great neighborhood where we have a chance to succeed.

But for too long, thoughtless sprawl consumed our region’s farms, forests and rural areas. Middle class families were pushed to rural subdivisions, creating longer commutes with increasingly congested roads, more expensive household costs, disconnected communities and loss of open space.

Now is a pivotal moment for Snohomish County’s fight against sprawl.

By 2035, Snohomish County will have a population of about 955,000. That means we’ll have 200,000 new neighbors looking for jobs, homes and services. Planning wisely now about how our land will be used in 20 years is critical to successfully protect what we love about this county.

County leaders are evaluating where and how our communities will provide the homes and jobs we need to accommodate our growing population. This decision will lock us into a growth pattern that if done wrong, will have significant costs to taxpayers and households, not to mention on our land, air and water.

It’s our choice whether we go the route of high-cost sprawl or low-cost compact growth. It is a choice between focusing growth in Everett, Lynnwood and other cities, or putting more subdivisions in rural areas around outlying small cities such as Sultan, next to our prime agricultural land west of I-5, outside of Arlington, and where water availability to serve rural development is questionable.

Unfortunately, special interests are pressuring the county to choose the high-cost route. They are pushing to open up more land to development, supposedly to help meet the county’s increased demand for affordable housing.

Let’s be honest. Placing more of our future neighbors on the outer fringes of the county will not magically create affordable housing. More houses far away from services and with higher transportation costs aren’t a solution; they’re part of the problem. According to analysis from the Center For Neighborhood Technology, the most affordable places to live in our region are within city limits, when transportation costs are taken into account.

Expanding community services into the non-urbanized areas of the county are a burden on existing taxpayers. Developing neighborhoods from scratch means that we, and our tax dollars, subsidize the new roads, new utility lines, new school construction, along with other public facilities and services. And the costs to our health and to future generations also increase when we don’t do more to ensure clean air and water.

To lessen the impact on our wallets and environment, most new jobs and housing — including affordable housing for all income groups — should be focused in our largest cities rather than overwhelm our smallest towns and rural areas.

The county’s analysis — its Buildable Lands Report — shows we don’t need to pave over more land. Instead, we need to better utilize our existing urban footprint by focusing more growth in key areas of Everett and Lynnwood, our two largest cities.

With Sound Transit and Community Transit’s SWIFT rapid bus line serving both communities, these cities can help meet the demand from seniors and millennials who want to use transit to get to work and live closer to basic services. Evergreen Way/Highway 99 is ripe for redevelopment to create well-designed, walkable and affordable mixed-use centers.

We need to work together to find solutions that will create more equitable communities, more local jobs and more affordable housing — and stop subsidizing poorly planned development on the urban fringe.

Sprawl is not the answer, it’s the problem. Let’s get this right, Snohomish County.

Kristin Kelly is Snohomish/Skagit program director for the statewide organization Futurewise, and Smart Growth director for Pilchuck Audubon Society. To find out more about both organizations, visit their websites at www.futurewise.org and www.pilchuckaudubon.org.