Wrong for Montgomery County? Photo by dan reed on Flickr.

Do urban living arrangements have no place in Montgomery County? Should the county favor automobile travel to the over other forms of transportation? An influential group of local activists say so.

At a zoning hearing three years ago, former councilmember Rose Crenca declared, “When did we vote to change SUBURBAN to URBAN? For those who prefer an urban environment, please leave.” She added that if there is a need for more housing than current zoning allows, it should be built in the county’s agricultural reserve.

At the time, most listeners shrugged off those words as a relic of a disappearing past. But now a group of activists, centered in Chevy Chase but extending countywide, has emerged with a similar program. A close reading of the manifesto of the “Citizens Coalition for Responsible Growth,” issued with the aim of influencing this year’s election, shows that the group shares Crenca’s desire to prevent the urban centers from emerging alongside the county’s single-family subdivisions.

The group, whose leadership is so far anonymous, comprises residents who opposed the county’s recent zoning updates. Those of changes made it easier to rent out part of a house as an apartment and reduced minimum parking requirements for new buildings near Metro.

The manifesto decries such measures, characterizing them as “using land use and development policies to spur behavioral and social changes, without regard to choices and investments already made by those in the County.”

Wouldn’t tenants, who perhaps have no investment in a Montgomery County house due to lack of funds, benefit from being able to rent an apartment in one? Their voice counts for little. “Our government,” the manifesto argues, “has a responsibility to effectively support the interests of homeowners.”

On high-speed roadways as in neighborhoods, change is suspect. Bicycle improvements are fine, but not if they come “at the expense of vehicular travel and parking lanes.” After all, “very few Montgomery County residents bike to work.” By this logic, you wouldn’t build a bridge if too few people were swimming across the river.

Almost everyone recognizes, of course, that new buildings can’t be stopped entirely. They can come, the coalition says, only when wider roads accompany them. The group would strictly tie development approvals to a measurement called “level of service,” which California recently repudiated. This pseudoscientific concept measures how fast cars move rather than how quickly people get to their destinations, making road widenings the solution to almost any transportation problem.

In contrast, the coalition does not want to consider transit as a way to get people to and from new development. “Bus rapid transit, light rail, and other large-scale transit systems,” it writes, “must not be used as mechanisms to allow increased development” in areas where traffic moves slowly.

The Citizens Coalition cannot be faulted for lacking vision. It dreams of a 1950s suburb, made up of strip malls and subdivisions. But half a century ago Montgomery County realized that such a future was undesirable and unworkable. The county chose a very different vision — a diverse community where livable downtowns, quiet single-family neighborhoods, and farmland coexist. That broader vision has been only very partially achieved. Only by embracing change, and not rejecting it, can we do better.