Public and private interests are aligning to develop large scale, master planned projects. From building new cities to finding new uses for discarded brownfields, creative partnerships are producing lasting legacies.  Columbus’ fifty year old annexation policy for better or worse has lead to substantial growth and development in Central Ohio and given our region a strong and viable major city when every other major urban center in Ohio is dying.  However, annexation has created a city of over 200 square miles.  How much bigger can a city get? Who is leading the charge in Central Ohio for this new development model?

Keith Myers, Principal at MSI and ULI Columbus Advisory Board Member, answers the key questions for Plan It. Build It.

Key Questions:

1) How will new master-planned communities differ from those built in recent years?

It would appear that the large master planned community model of recent years, that is a greenfield site comprised of hundreds or even thousands of acres planned around a central amenity such as a golf course, is largely extinct.  And is likely to remain so for the time being.  The rapid and now apparently unsustainable pace of home building and neighborhood building over the last twenty years has been brought to a screeching halt in the last two years by the collapse of the financial institutions that had artificially fueled that growth.  That, combined with the continuously evolving demographic for housing is likely to demand new kinds of neighborhoods, with a greater mix of uses and incomes, and closer to the urban amenities that are offered in cities.  That is not to say that the large suburban master planned community of the last few decades will disappear.  Rather, those projects will have to be carefully designed to be very flexible and particularly responsive to market conditions.  And, funded with very patient money.  Developers of such projects will need to be very wary of the commitments they make in the initial entitlement process.  To succeed, they will need to be creative, nimble and well financed.

2) How can large-scale development become more sustainable and better integrated into existing infrastructure networks?

The simple answer is to establish sustainability as a primary goal at the outset.  That, of course, will become increasingly important as the market continues to become aware of principles of sustainable development and embraces them.  The integration into existing infrastructure networks will likely occur naturally as an outgrowth of the new reality in community building.  Cities have suffered serious financial setbacks in the recent recession and as a consequence are not generally in a position, nor exhibit the inclination to create the substantial new infrastructure required to support large scale projects.  They will be very selective in determining which projects to support and will increasingly look favorably to projects that respect and integrate into the infrastructure that exists today.  This seems to favor the redevelopment of brownfield projects which are often comprised of under developed or abandoned sites with substantial existing infrastructure which was built for another use, in another time.  This is not a phenomenon unique to older cities by the way.  One could easily consider the redevelopment of the Dublin Village Center on Sawmill Road a brownfield or perhaps more accurately a grayfield site.

3) What role is location in the metropolitan context playing in the project delivery of public infrastructure and services? 

The delivery of public infrastructure and services would appear to be tied directly to the ability to financially support future development.  This speaks more to the competitive position of a community within its metropolitan environment.  Some cities have the tax base to support expansion and likely will, others do not and likely never will.

4) What role do existing community institutions – universities and hospitals — play in anchoring new master planned communities?

Community institutions of all types are very important in anchoring new communities since they can provide the draw and demand that makes the planned community possible.  Hospitals provide a large base of generally well paying jobs.  Schools and universities provide a rich cultural base bring in a diverse population that can add excitement and the market demand that make the difference in making a mixed use project work.  They too provide an employment base.  In fact, in many suburban communities, the school districts are one of, if not the largest contributor to the local income tax base.  The difficulty will be finding the right institutions that can and are willing to act as partners in the development of a community.  These institutions are generally fairly insular and can have a byzantine decision making process.  Properly nurtured however, they offer a great opportunity and will likely contribute to a more economically sustainable model for development.

5) How can regional planning and cooperation replace annexation for a development model ?

For any kind of regional planning to have a hope of replacing annexation it will have to have the total commitment of all the parties to the plan and an implementation process.   Central Ohio has experimented with this idea with the development of the Rocky Fork Accord in northeastern Franklin County, and again with the Big Darby Accord in western Franklin County.   In each case the parties to the plan have made agreements about the pattern and some of the specifics of future growth.  That being said, it is clear that the strength of these agreements is defined by each community’s pursuit of ‘enlightened self interest’.   Considering this, they are tepid agreements at best and are difficult implement.  Annexation does not suffer from these constraints.  It, by definition, represents a community acting in its own self interest.  For regional planning and cooperation to ever replace this model the economics of community development will have to be addressed.  This will take a new model that is not particularly clear at this moment.