CHAPTER 5. THE SPRAWL MITIGATION MATRIX

CHAPTER 5. THE SPRAWL MITIGATION MATRIX

In general, transportation-related strategies involve investments in transportation infrastructure or policies about transportation. In this category, we include land use policies designed to reduce the demand for driving, or “transportation-efficient land use policies.” Growth-management strategies include traditional and innovative approaches to influencing the location and character of development. Tables 5 and 6 list the transportation-related and growth-management related strategies and policy actions respectively. Appendices B-1 and B-2 describe the transportation-related and growth management-related policy actions, respectively, along with relevant examples and references.

An extensive literature review on the topics of growth management, sprawl mitigation, and smart growth provided the basis for the development of the list of strategies and policy actions. This literature review turned up several efforts to catalogue sprawl mitigation strategies, though none as comprehensive as the effort in this study, and none designed to provide guidance to communities in the selection of policy actions appropriate to their specific context. Several of these previous efforts are described below.

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  The City of Austin Transportation, Planning and Design Department (2001) uses the Smart Growth Criteria Matrix to analyze development proposals within the desired development zone. This matrix has limited application since it has been tailor-made for a specific city and a department, covering only local actions. It fails to consider many goals of smart growth and focuses exclusively on how and where development occurs, and tax base enhancement. Hence, it can be used only for the purpose of project evaluation.
  

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  The Smart Growth Network (2002) developed a list of 100 smart growth policies for communities to consider. This list does not provide guidance on appropriate contexts for different policies, however. In a similar effort, the National Association of Counties (2001) has developed an extensive list of strategies with corresponding benefits and concerns. This list also does not provide guidance on appropriate contexts.
  

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  Nelson and Duncan (1995) have developed a matrix titled “Technique Effectiveness Continuum” to measure the effectiveness of growth-management related strategies and policy actions. This matrix considers only four goals: resource preservation, urban containment, efficiency of public facilities, and meeting market demands. It does not cover transportation-related policy actions.
  

An expert panel of thirteen researchers from growth management and transportation was selected to review the preliminary version of the Sprawl Mitigation matrices. A packet that included the matrices, detailed descriptions of the dimensions of the matrices (policy actions, goals, characteristics, and suitability factors), and directions for providing feedback was mailed to the panel in the last week of May 2002. Table 7 lists the nine panelists whose feedbacks were received through the months of June and July. Panelists provided comments on: the specific entries in the matrices; the lists of policy actions and definitions of goals, characteristics, and suitability factors; and the general approach to cataloguing sprawl mitigation strategies and policy actions.