It’s a city broken.
That’s what we keep hearing—the infrastructure is antiquated and decrepit. Services are deficient. Quality of life is low. Even the mighty Susquehanna River that flows by has a reputation for being sick and dirty.
While that can be disheartening to read, it can be looked at another way—it all means opportunities for rebuilding and innovative improvement.
Harrisburg is in a fortuitous position as this year begins. Not only is there newly elected leadership that has stimulated an atmosphere of optimism and ambition, but there are some important projects already in the works and on the horizon.
These projects include The Harrisburg Authority’s GIS project, Harrisburg Area Transportation Study’s development of the 2040 Regional Transportation Plan, Tri-County Regional Planning Commission’s Cross-River Connections Project and Capital Area Greenbelt Association’s upgrades. Both Dauphin County and the city have started a comprehensive planning process, and several “greening” projects have been launched, such as a tree inventory and planting, stormwater management initiatives and urban garden projects.
These are only a few things that are happening. There are even more as nonprofits, community groups and organizations strategize and implement ways to make the city a better place to live, work and visit.
It all fits well into the concept of “smart growth.”
A buzz term among urban and regional planners, smart growth can be generally defined as an approach to establishing communities where housing, jobs, shopping, schools and recreation are located in close proximity to one another. Before the invention of cars, this is precisely how municipalities were built.
This current approach integrates green practices into the planning process. As Andrew Bliss, grassroots coordinator at Chesapeake Bay Foundation stated, “The great thing about green infrastructure is the numerous social, economic and environmental benefits it provides in addition to reducing water pollution.”
Taking this precise idea as its foundation, smart growth means creating cities that have more permeable surfaces—trees and green spaces not just to make things pretty, but to deal with stormwater runoff, along with water and sewer management.
Every municipality must deal with such public issues. When it rains and pours, too much stormwater runoff causes floods, sweeps garbage into the sewers, strains underground pipes and sends pollution into waterways.
Recently, government agencies like the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have been hitting places with “fix it or be fined” mandates.
This has municipalities searching for how best to fix it.
The fact of the matter is green infrastructure can cost less.
To see evidence of this, we only need to look at Lancaster and its Green Infrastructure Plan. When the city faced EPA fines of $37,500 a day, analysis showed that the least expensive options were green ones. The state’s infrastructure loan program, PENNVEST, agrees that going green is a viable alternative to traditional solutions, such as underground storage bins for stormwater runoff. In the past few years, PENNVEST has added a variety of green infrastructure options to the list of projects available for funding.
So, not only does a focus on green practices save money, but it creates employment in the green sector. This is especially significant for disadvantaged communities.
Smart growth goes beyond “greening” things, though. It is about economic development because it makes places more compact, more economically self-sufficient—bringing jobs, businesses and shopping into an urban core.
Smart growth focuses on the pedestrian rather than the vehicle. The idea is, if a city has everything it needs, people will walk and bike to where they need to go. Cars won’t be necessary, especially if there is sufficient public transportation made available, which is a smart growth consideration, too.
Of course, another positive part of smart growth is that things look pretty.
When places are pretty, people feel better about where they live. Greener spaces mean healthier living because there are more places for people to exercise and enjoy. It also helps to attract visitors to the urban core, which adds value to the local economy.
Although this term wasn’t coined until the new millennium, “smart growth” was the concept that initially revamped Harrisburg more than 100 years ago during the City Beautiful movement. And, with City Beautiful 2.0 just getting started, it’s prime time to re-create Harrisburg as a model of smart urban planning and implementation.
To accomplish this, it will take a concerted, collaborative effort of governments, organizations and citizens. With so many projects occurring at once, it will be necessary to locate the overlaps of resources and efforts to make initiatives most successful.
Harrisburg is a region capable of principles of smart growth. Not only is its urban core a capital city that should be modeling innovative policies and practices, but it’s a river city with a responsibility as steward of an important body of water.
There’s no better approach when so much of the city is in need of repair.
Tara Leo Auchey is creator and editor of today’s the day Harrisburg. www.todaysthedayhbg.com
