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In America conservation increasingly means economic development

BY MARK MURO

So let's see: Last fall Boise, Idaho, voted to raise the property tax to protect the mountain foothills that frame it. The same week Scottsdale, Arizona, made progress on its plan to preserve 16,000 acres of state land at the edge of one of the West's hottest real estate markets.

And now a business alliance is playing a big role in five counties¹ efforts to protect the panoramic backdrop provided by Colorado¹s Front Range, which is threatened by runaway growth spurred by the Mile High region's fast growth. Said a board member of the business coalition: "We need to decide what we want to do with the mountain backdrop. I don¹t think we want to put towers on it." What's going on here? Are these gestures the latest round of too little, too-late NIMBY*ism as more American regions continue to fail at squaring economic growth with environmental sustainability?

A few years ago I would have agreed with that view. Too many state, federal and local leaders from Maine to California were flouting every tenet of sustainability in the service of growth at all costs. Today, though, I have a different hunch. What's happening in towns like Boise and Scottsdale is more than aberrational, better than just backlash, and more durable than the current economic downturn.

Very simply, the businesses and political leaders who run more and more communities in the United States are finally realizing that conservation sells--not just to the environmentalists, not just to local voters, but to the high-tech companies and footloose professionals who more and more determine which communities prosper in today¹s knowledge-based economy. To put it crassly, a "race to be green" has broken out in which region after region is trying to prove itself worthy to win the next Novartis or Microsoft research site, or to attract the highly educated professionals who more and more make local economies go. In short, the most exciting new trend in environmental protection in America is the quickening evaporation of the old opposition between economic development and ecological prudence.

Think how the rise of the 'new economy' has altered the way cities, regions and nations establish their economic advantage. In the past, conservation commitments like Boise's or Scottsdale's were the opposite of economic development. They were, instead, an economic sacrifice.

That's because the key to success for American regions has always been simple--cheap natural resources. Once a resource colony of England, later the world's most successful developing country, American even 30 years ago remained preoccupied with industrial production, which dictated until very recently that localities, industries and executives remained focused above all else on driving down the cost of critical industrial inputs such as water, energy, metal and transportation.

Cheap exploitation of federal land was deemed a prerogative of the old timber and ore economies. Vast, ecologically destructive hydroelectric projects were promoted to produce cheap electricity. The interstate highway system ensured fast distribution even as it enabled suburban sprawl. More recently, cheap private land for subdivisions mattered most.

And so the economic development game has centered always on making available plenty of low-cost land to local and national business interests. No wonder America's town fathers and federal land managers resisted land conservation. To them, every set aside of open space and every environmental rule seemed to reduce the local supply of cheap resources--and drive up the cost of doing business.

But that was then. With the rise of the knowledge-driven high tech economy, things have begun to look different. No longer do the leaders of the smartest city governments view the environment as merely a source of dirt for the homebuilders, or wood for the woodcutters. Rather, environmental quality has soared in importance all over the United States, not just as a preference of local residents but as a settled strategy of business leaders, mayors and governors and economic development professionals.

Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago proudly claims to have planted more trees than any other mayor in history (more than 1,000,000 at his last count), as part of the economic development campaign that last year landed the coveted corporate headquarters of the Boeing Company.
The Greater Austin (Texas) Chamber of Commerce touts the need to "reinvest" in the region's "quality of life: its clean environment, recreational opportunities and stimulating cultural scene."
Chattanooga, Tennessee, has thrown off the taint of its heavy reliance on high-polluting industries like iron foundries and textile mills by reinventing itself as a "laboratory" for sustainable development programs. The next steps call for opening a "zero emissions industrial zone" and an eco-industrial park to be built on the former site of the world¹s largest TNT plant.
As part of its bid to attract clean, high-tech businesses, the city council of Fort Collins, Colorado, recently insisted on holding to its master plan mandating seven acres of parkland be added for every 1,000 new residents.
Near Denver, the board member of the business alliance working to protect the Front Range says: "Many of our companies are here because of the quality of life. We hope that if we take a proactive stance we can avoid the problems of Silicon Valley."
Governor Parris Glendening of Maryland has made growth management and sprawl control the central organizing principle of his tenure.

Why has this happened? Why are business leaders taking the lead in environmental preservation? It's happened because regions¹ economic success turns less and less on cheap natural resources and more and more on human resources--local supplies of smart people, as economic development experts as diverse as Paul Romer, Michael Porter, Richard Florida, Doug Henton, Thomas Power and Terry Nichols Clark have been explaining.

Companies flourish today only if they have lots of highly educated creative types to dream up the innovative processes, write the code and execute the business plans that prevail. Meanwhile, such people--who can live where they want--know what they want. These so-called "knowledge workers" are choosing to live in "cool" places with "thick" labor markets, great schools, walkable downtowns and a strong "green" tint. They want the status of living in a region with a rich sense of place and an active lifestyle. And, yes, they gravitate to places with superb natural spaces. They want forests nearby, protected lakes, mountain-bike trails or a place to sail on pure water.

Nor is this all subjectivity. Consider the importance of environmental quality and quality-of-life issues reflected in the findings of a telephone survey for Money Magazine's 1998 "Best Places to Live" report, cited by Richard Florida of Carnegie Mellon University in his important study, "Competing in the Age of Talent: Quality of Place and the New Economy." The Money survey was conducted by Roper/Starch Worldwide in 512 households across the United States. It asked people to rank 37 quality-of-life factors on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important, so it provided a snapshot of what most matters to Americans in choosing a place to live. Here's what it found:

Environmental issues were two of the top three ranked factors- clean water ranked first and clean air ranked third.
Economic factors, such as recent job growth, forecasted job growth, and low unemployment, ranked considerably lower.
Also ranked lower in importance by respondents were traditional, cost-based points of advantage, such as low property taxes, low costs of living, low sales taxes, cheap medical care and cheap car insurance.

Employers, moreover, know all this: Surveys and other studies of high-paying companies have found that environmental quality and natural amenities rank among the most important factors in their choice of locations. Florida, for example, reports research that documents the especially high importance high-technology concerns place on environmental quality as a location factor:

Environmental quality was the top-rated factor for these firms, ranking ahead of housing costs, cost of living, commuting patterns, schools, climate, government services and public safety.
Environmental quality rated considerably ahead of CEO preference--frequently alluded to as a key location factor for high tech companies.
Environmental quality ranked considerably higher as a location factor for technology firms than for all firms.

Didn't there used to be an expression, "You can't eat the scenery"? Well, you can now. In a word, environmental quality and dramatic open spaces have become important not simply as ends in themselves but as prerequisites for attracting talent and companies, whether for moves to Portland, Oregon, or New Jersey; Missoula, Montana, or Scottsdale, Arizona; Denver, Colorado, or Ventura, California.

Mountainous backdrops--as in Salt Lake--provide a sense of place. Snaking mountain-bike runs and challenging trails supply active recreation whether in Albuquerque or Flagstaff. And local park systems like Austin's or Portland's embody for all to see a region's commitment to livability.

The land, in effect, becomes the "brand." To get quality growth, you have to get smart people, and to get smart people you have to go green.

Viewed in this light, Scottsdale's plans for a gigantic mountain preserve and the environmentalism of Boise's mayor, Brent Coles, a solid Republican, look a lot better than too-little-too-late. Rather, they look like considered, sophisticated efforts to compete for desirable growth that demonstrate that a new era is being born. And that, I would suggest, is the most important trend that lies ahead in the decade or two as the United States, so recently a source of natural resources for industrial exploitation, morphs ineluctably into a post-industrial nation where more and more the "natural capital" of green hills and quiet walking trails make all the difference in an economy more and more focused on human capital. America, now a post-industrial growth machine, is increasingly an aspiring ecotopia along the lines of Sweden. Regions, in short, are seeing in the environment a source of economic competitiveness--one based not on the exploitation of raw materials but the amenity value of natural beauty.

Of course, the change has in recent months become harder to see. Bad economic times and the war on terrorism have for the moment demoted the ecological agenda. At the same time, the unenlightened, interest-group-tied environmental stances of the Bush administration on global warming, federal land use and environmental regulation remain out-of-step with the emerging consensus. Disruptive Bush administration stances on water quality, forest protection and air quality, for that matter, threaten to do lasting harm.

Finally, legitimate questions can be asked about the depth of leaders' embrace of "green" development. It could be that local boosters remain addicted to growth in an unhealthy way as they hustle after the next corporate relocation as after the next strike on the old Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Nevertheless, for all those cautions, the fact remains that if the new greenishness remains a hustle, it¹s at least a higher-level hustle- one based on lifestyle concerns and a genuine respect for the world¹s beauty and beautiful use. Personally, I hope that the higher-quality scramble spreads and spreads. And you know, I think it will. Get ready for a greener decade in the US, despite everything.

Mark Muro is a senior research analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University and a longtime contributor to The Earth Times and other publications. He is the co-author of "Hits and Misses: Fast Growth in Metropolitan Phoenix" and "Five Shoes Waiting to Drop on Arizona¹s Future." Both can be viewed on the Web at www.morrisoninstitute.org. Muro can be reached at mmuro@asu.edu .

Courtesy The Earth Times