How Smart Growth Solves Sprawl

Smart Conservation: A Highway Runs Through It

One of the appeals of living in Western cities like Seattle is the easy access they offer to mountain wilderness. Yet the same roads that carry hikers and skiers into the forest also bring homebuilders, businesses and suburban growth.

When Interstate 90 was widened in the 1980s, the drive from Seattle to the Cascade Mountains dropped from one hour to 30 minutes. Seattle's eastern suburbs began crawling up the mountains, and in 1990 alone, the highway carried 15 million people through the forests, farmlands, salmon-spawning grounds, and mountain-lion habitat that stretch from the mountains to the city. Thanks to a group of dedicated hikers, this vibrant corridor is now protected by the Mountains to Sound Greenway.

In 1991, the Mountain to Sound Greenway Trust began creating a 120-mile-long corridor from the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountains to the shores of Puget Sound. The trust never attempted to buy all the greenway properties -- that would have been prohibitively expensive.

Instead, it facilitated land swaps with government agencies and pressed for sound management on private land. Since continued growth was inevitable, the group shaped a strategy that allowed some development in appropriate areas along the greenway.

Today, the greenway is almost complete: it runs for 105 miles, and it has protected more than 50,000 acres of private farms, forests, and other green space.

Credits: Based on Solving Sprawl: Models of Smart Growth in Communities Across America, a November 2001 book published by the Natural Resources Defense Council.