01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, May 13, 2006

BY PETER B. LORD
Journal Environment Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Even though Rhode Island's population increased only slightly in the last decade, a new ring of shopping centers sprang up in South Kingstown, Coventry and Smithfield.

Rhode Islanders developed land in recent years at a rate nine times faster than population growth. The average building-lot size grew to 2.5 acres. Highway traffic jams became nearly an everyday occurrence. And small towns around the state face multimillion-dollar school-expansion projects.

Much of that sprawl and growth was supposed to be curbed and controlled by statewide plans of development in 1975 and 1989. But Kevin M. Flynn, associate director for the state Division of Planning, concedes that they didn't work. "We have not succeeded in implementing our vision."

More than 500 state and community leaders jammed a conference hall at the Rhode Island Convention Center yesterday to talk about a new 20-year development plan for Rhode Island called "Land Use: 2025."

The bad news was that you would have been hard-pressed to find a single statewide politician on hand with the power to provide financing or legislation or clout to make the plan work.

The good news was that so many community leaders and key players in the state bureaucracy took part in The Power of Place Summit, sponsored by Grow Smart Rhode Island, a private group working to combat sprawl.

Former Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a national figure in the anti-sprawl movement, praised Rhode Island for having a plan, a large group rallying around Grow Smart Rhode Island, and a governor who cared enough to recently take part in an all-day session on mass transit for the state.

But Glendening said Rhode Island needs more. It must change its zoning rules and property-tax structure. It must get all agencies of state government involved. And its citizens must get upset about traffic congestion and rising asthma rates in children.

"You really need a sense of urgency for the public to understand all this," Glendening said. "That's when elected officials will start responding.

"It's got to be more than just a plan. Ninety-nine percent of all development plans are feel-good wish lists not backed up by tough political decisions."

Grow Smart executive director Scott Wolf said the conference was designed to help community leaders understand the new state development plan and how to use it.

"Previous state land-use plans languished in part because they were not well understood," Wolf said. With energy costs and obesity rates soaring, he said, "development in a smaller, more sustainable way is the only answer."

Grow Smart Chairman Michael Ryan added that Rhode Island now has an aggressive historic-preservation program, a new building-rehabilitation code, more than 1,300 local officials trained in Smart Growth goals, and yesterday's meeting -- one of the largest public policy gatherings in recent years.

"This vision calls for Rhode Island to remain a unique and special place," Ryan said. "We need the 500 people here to make it work."

The new plan was approved last month by the State Planning Council. It can be read at www.planning.ri.gov.

The plan seeks to focus development in urban areas and limit it in rural areas, Flynn said. The goal is to limit new development until 2025 to just 51,000 more acres, about 7 percent of the state's total.

Some techniques to achieve that goal include focusing state grants on urban development and creation of an interconnected system of greenways, as well as networks of community centers and villages.

Waterfronts and highway interchanges facing high development pressure would get special planning and regulatory assistance. Mixed uses, such as residential and commercial -- now banned by most zoning -- would be encouraged.

The State of Massachusetts may provide some lessons for Rhode Island, according to Douglas I. Foy, a longtime head of the Conservation Law Foundation who most recently headed a super secretariat in Massachusetts that oversaw the Departments of Housing, Transportation, Energy and the Environment.

Foy said he'd never forget the day he introduced the head of the state housing agency to the head of the MBTA. They had never met, he said, even though it would be useful to locate low-income housing near transit lines.

The new idea is to get state agencies to work together to support sustainable development.

Massachusetts had a program awarding more state aid to new schools built in rural areas than to rebuilding schools in urban areas. Foy reversed that.

The state was supporting "green" school buildings, Foy said, but locating them so remotely that few students could walk to them.

Foy called his approach "silo busting" -- getting agencies to think beyond their own special interests to promote the common good.

No place has more beautiful community centers than New England, Foy said.

But "thoughtless" modern planning and zoning rules would make a place such as the picturesque town center of Concord, Mass., illegal today.

"That's madness," Foy said.

plord@projo.com / (401) 277-8036