he Southern Growth Policies Board, an organization of Southeastern states, created a partnership with the Kettering Foundation of Ohio in the year 2000 to examine the high profile public policy issue known commonly as “smart growth.”   The Board wanted to consider alternatives for the intelligent development of economic and growth policies in the southeastern region, lest the South fall prey to some of the unwanted consequences of unbridled economic expansion that have occurred in parts of the nation.  The outgrowth of this effort was the publication of the special report by authors Tony Wharton and Linda Hoke entitled, Pathways to Prosperity: Choosing a Future for Your Community.

BACKGROUND           

The Southern Growth Policies Board was formed in 1971 by the region’s governors.  It is, by its own proclamation, devoted to strengthening the South’s economy and creating the highest possible quality of life.  Thirteen states—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia—and Puerto Rico—support and participate in the Board’s work.            

The Kettering Foundation, located outside of Dayton, Ohio, is a scholarly organization that has for over two decades explored numerous public policy issues.  The Foundation’s scholars, researchers and writers regularly invite hundreds of public policy experts to inquire into public issues.  To examine various alternative choices in public policy without necessarily recommending one as superior to another, the Kettering Foundation has developed a unique National Issues Forums process.  It was this National Issues Forums technique that was selected as the methodology to be utilized to look at smart growth policies in the Southeast.¹

An advisory committee was established that consisted of resource people from the Southern Growth Policies Board and Kettering.  This committee along with various state representatives swiftly decided to disregard the “pop” terminology associated with “smart growth” in favor of something more appropriate; hence, the title, Pathways to Prosperity: Choosing a Future for Your Community.²

THE REPORT

Pathways is an impressive, artfully crafted document that examines multiple facets of economic, educational and social development that might affect the future of the Southeast.  In the special report, alternative approaches to the future of the states are outlined in three choices, summarized as follows:

• Approach 1 – Create more jobs. “Supporters of [this alternative] believe that creating jobs is our ‘road to prosperity.’  If we create jobs, everything else will follow, they say.   People will have the money they need to buy good houses and send their children to good schools.  In time, crime will go down.  This approach, more than any other, has made the South what it is today.  Why change what’s already working?”
• Approach 2 – Invest in education and health services. “Despite significant progress, citizens of many Southern states lag in math, science, and reading achievement; high school dropout rates are higher than average; and there is a lower rate of adult literacy than in other parts of the country.  Other factors such as poverty, teenage pregnancy, and lack of prenatal care also put our children at risk for failure in the future.  Supporters [of this second alternative] believe these are the true roadblocks to prosperity in the region.  Investment in quality education, skills training, and health care is essential not only for individual success, but for community success.  If we develop healthy, educated citizens, well-paying jobs will follow—the kind that will sustain our families and communities in the long run.”
• Approach 3 – Manage growth rationally. This third alternative stresses that “the best strategy is to manage growth in a rational way, using all the expertise available.  Growth is still better for a community than the alternative, but it needs to be properly planned.  Communities can and should be able to preserve their unique qualities.  That includes the way our citizens and neighborhoods look, the number of trees we allow to be uprooted, the kind of jobs we want our children to have, and the level of daily stress we’re willing to tolerate.”  (Wharton and Hoke, 2001).

• Invest in infrastructure, such as roads and telecommunications to support industry.
• Streamline permits processes to make development easier for businesses.
• Provide tax and other incentives to attract industry.
• Reduce regulations that inhibit business growth.
• Support the development of new, entrepreneurial businesses.
• Help identify new domestic and overseas markets for business.

Approach 2, or “invest in education and health services,” focuses more on the human dimensions of development, seeking to ensure that a prosperous future includes all the people in the region; in short, that the South does not develop a two-tiered society in which there is a wide divide between an affluent class and an impoverished class.  Supporters of this approach generally favor the following measures:

• Spend more money on education, from preschool through higher education.
• Implement aggressive dropout-reduction programs.
• Develop programs to provide training and retraining to those already in the work force.
• Strengthen families through programs in family literacy, parent education, abuse prevention, and other areas.
• Make sure everyone has easy access to quality health care.
• Increase home ownership as a tool for building family wealth and stronger communities.
• Conduct programs to help bridge racial and cultural divides.
• Provide incentives to encourage investment in inner cities and rural areas that have been left behind in the new economy.
• Develop programs to build community leadership and civic engagement.

Approach 3 adopts a number of planning strategies that affect the physical characteristics of growth in more ways than the first two approaches. Clearly, the role of government is larger and more activist than in Approach 1, and tilted more toward the development of the physical characteristics of states and communities than the heavy emphasis on human resources in Approach 2.  According to the special report, supporters of Approach 3 generally favor the following measures:

• Use regulations and incentives to direct development to specific areas.
• Favor existing communities rather than new developments when making public infrastructure investments.
• Ensure that new developments in outlying areas pay the full costs of services.
• Provide incentives to encourage historic preservation and the reuse of vacant buildings.
• Encourage more compact, mixed-use, pedestrian-and transit-oriented developments through zoning regulations and incentives.
• Re-create small, close-knit communities through design features such as front porches, smaller streets, and shared open spaces.
• Undertake comprehensive efforts to revitalize inner cities.
• Preserve farmland and open space through acquisition programs incentives, and/or regulations.
• Provide more transportation choices, such as rail, bus, and/or bike lanes.
• Enact regulations to protect the environment.

After each of the distinct approaches outlined in Pathways, the authors helpfully include arguments “In Support” and “In Opposition” to each position.  These arguments provide an interesting and thorough review of the major issues surrounding growth policies in the Southeast.    

In addition, the special report contains a helpful list “For Further Reading” at the end of each chapter.  A wide variety of books and publications is noted for the reader who desires more information.  

The theoretical and principled arguments in each "Approach" are brought closer to home by ad hoc examinations of what is happening in various communities throughout the South, along with some stories of individual personal ambitions, hopes and dreams.   A case study supporting Approach 1 documents the success story of BMW in Greenville, S. C., which recently expanded its car assembly plant, nearly doubling its work force.  

The Approach 2 text includes the story of Patricia Williams, age 41, of Vance County, N.C.  “She used to make less than $9 an hour  at Burlington Industries and thought she would always work there.  But Burlington closed the plant and Williams realized her 18 years there hadn’t prepared her for any other job.  Recently, Williams started taking classes in early childhood education at a community college, planning to become a teacher’s aide or day care worker.”  

Similarly, Approach 3 tells the story of Elaine Ogburn, 65, who once saw farms and trees through her kitchen window in Varian, Virginia, east of Richmond.  Now she sees new houses.“I used to be able to know who was in the cars driving on Midview Road, but not anymore,” Ogburn told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  “It’s been a real change to see houses pop out of the ground on land that was cultivated.”  The farm her family once operated has been cut up into subdivisions, like many others.

FINAL REMARKS

Scrupulously judicious and non-judgmental, the Southern Growth Policies Board and the Kettering Foundation define the intended purpose and use of the publication Pathways for individual readers, seminars and larger groups:

Faced with all the changes that are taking place around us, what is the best pathway to prosperity for our communities?  Our purpose here is not to suggest a single correct path, but to support exploration of many pathways, each with its own trade-offs and consequences.  To spur conversations, deliberation, and action, three possible pathways are outlined in this summary.  These options and the guide itself are intended to serve as the beginning points for a community’s discussion about what is important as it pursues sound, informed decisions about its future (Wharton and Hoke, 2001).

Pathways to Prosperity: Choosing a Future for Your Community is being made available to policy makers, academic institutions and other organizations in the Southeast to stimulate inquiry on growth issues.  The Kettering Foundation and the Southern Growth Policies Board hope for seminars and discussion groups to use the text in South Carolina and other southern states.

1. Wharton, Tony and Hoke, Linda (2001).  Pathways to prosperity: choosing a future for your community. [Special Report].  Research Triangle Park, NC: Southern Growth Policies Board.

NOTES

1. Members of the Advisory Committee for this project include the author of this review, Fred R. Sheheen of the Institute for Public Service and Policy Research; Christine Chadwick, Executive Director of FOCUS, St. Louis; Susan Taylor of Taylor and Associates, representing the University of Georgia’s Fanning Institute for Leadership Development; and Angela Woodward, Director of Leadership Kentucky.
2. Copies of Pathways to Prosperity: Choosing a Future for Your Community, can be ordered from: Linda Hoke, Senior Program Manager, Southern Growth Policies Board, P.O. Box 12293, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.  Phone: 919-941-5145.  Email: lhoke@southern.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fred R. Sheheen, B. A., is Director of the Center for Citizenship of the Institute for Public Service and Policy Research of the University of South Carolina.  He served previously on the staff of the Governor of South Carolina (1963-65); the staff of the U.S. Senate (1965-66); and as Commissioner of Higher Education for the State of South Carolina (1987-1997).  He has held his current position at the University since 1997.  Other periods of his career included business activities in the private sector and serving on citizen boards and commissions for state government.  He is currently a member of the Board of the Christian Action Council; a member of the Board and Treasurer of the Institute on Poverty and Derivation; Chairman of the Challenge Foundation supporting the Challenge youth training program of the National Guard; and Chairman of the National Advisory Council of the USC College of Social Work.  He is a graduate of Duke University and the Institute for Educational Management of Harvard University. Mr. Sheheen can be reached at sheheen@iopa.sc.edu.