Prince William County is earning itself quite a perplexing reputation. Last Friday, while most of us were recovering from turkey hangovers, the Washington Post reported that Prince William, whose representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates have been instrumental in defeating bills to help pay for Northern Virginia transit improvements, will consider a bill placing a one year moratorium on new home construction. According to county officials quoted in the Post story, the move would represent a "shot across the bow" of the governor and the state legislature in Richmond, which have been "collecting these tax dollars for years, and they have been neglecting our infrastructure."

Not that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine needed the wake up call. As part of his continuing efforts to improve his state's infrastructure needs, the Governor took to Northern Virginia on Monday to discuss growth and transportation issues, including the importance of giving local governments "more tools to reject development," in the words of the Post. During his visit, the Governor was careful to note that he shared Prince William County's frustration, but he also mentioned that it might be helpful for residents there to solve their own problems, so to speak, by taking matters to their stubborn delegates. One imagines it took quite a bit of restraint on the Governor's part not to word his message a bit more strongly.

With increasing frequency, this is the way things work in the Washington area. In a region that continues to grow faster than most of the nation, frustration with the inability of government to put together solutions has exploded, and voters are responding by turning to local authorities. In Prince William and Loudoun County in Virginia, and in Montgomery County in Maryland, residents have expressed a desire to step on the brakes, but while this inclination is understandable, these decisions are often at odds with the plans of other jurisdictional forces. Montgomery County might want to fight sprawl, but Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich's Intercounty Connector is likely to encourage the great push outward. Prince William may want to halt growth, but the federal government seems determined to place thousands of new jobs there, at the Quantico Marine Base, or on the county's doorstep, at Fort Belvoir. And all the while, the District is pouring millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into efforts to bring new economic activity and people to the south and east of the city — an area with enviable geographic and transportation advantages. It's no wonder Prince William County can't get its local officials and its delegates on the same page; in the politics of regional expansion, it's every man for himself.

Managing growth in the Washington area has become a herculean task, and rather than face the hydra headed jurisdictional tangle of political bodies that control the many pieces of the sprawling metropolitan area, leaders are choosing to delegate their problems to officials at the lowest local levels. And while smart growth proposals would be a welcome development in many areas of the metropolis, particularly those farthest out, this piecemeal planning method will suffer many of the same difficulties in attempting to slow growth that it did in attempting to accommodate it. Namely, it won't generate the necessary large-scale solutions, it will shift costs onto those who can least afford them, and it will, in all likelihood, produce more rather than less new sprawl.

Growth in outer suburbs is fueled by a number of factors. For developers, sprawl is preferable because larger land tracts are available, land prices are cheaper, and land-use restrictions are more lenient (it's not unknown for outer-suburb jurisdictions to offer incentives to developers, in order to encourage the expansion of the booming metropolis into their territory). For households, the attraction to the exurbs is similar; more land is available at less cost. These factors ensure that when an area like Prince William County decides to halt or significantly slow growth, a number of things take place. For one, because local and regional job creation doesn't stop, housing demand remains the same or increases, which leads to increases in local home prices. That's all well and good for homeowners, but it's bad news for renters or for new arrivals seeking to escape higher housing costs closer in. For another, the above factors make it likely that those displaced or left out by home building restrictions opt for homes even farther away (in Stafford County, perhaps). If Prince William becomes too expensive for you because home construction is halted, it's unlikely that Fairfax County is an affordable second option. Without a coordinated approach to smart growth, squashing development in one locale just pushes it elsewhere, and typically outward.

What is clearly needed is regional coordination in developing a regional growth and transportation plan funded by regional sources. The question is, in an area where planning is tied into knots by the fierce protection of local interests and by the near total inability of local officials to work together, how could such a progressive move ever come to pass? In the end, necessity may be the mother of cooperation; when Washington congestion is tying up commutes to the Virginia statehouse, perhaps we'll see some change.

Picture taken by DottieboBottie.