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GROWTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE CONCERNS Original URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25576-2000Sep17.html
By Peter Behr Although many Northern Virginians and Maryland suburbanites share similar bumper-to-bumper Beltway nightmares, they don't all feel the same way about them. According to a recent poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, conducted for Negative Population Growth, a District-based group that is on an extreme end of the debate over growth, Northern Virginians hate traffic a lot more. When area residents were asked to volunteer the "most important issue" facing their community, more than 40 percent of Northern Virginians named traffic-related problems, compared with 17 percent of suburban Marylanders. Traffic was only the third-ranked problem for the Maryland respondents, behind education and crime. Why that difference? "It's telling us that traffic is much worse in Northern Virginia suburbs. The [Springfield] Mixing Bowl is a constant, daily issue and they know it's going on for years," said Mason-Dixon principal Larry Harris. Not that Maryland can pat its back too hard. A sizable part of Northern Virginia's traffic woes comes from commuters from Maryland who clog the Beltway on their way to jobs in Virginia. Apart from differences over traffic, there were deep concerns about the impact of growth on both sides of the Potomac, the poll found. Slightly more than 37 percent of Northern Virginians said they "strongly agreed" that population growth is threatening their quality of life, while 28 percent of Maryland respondents felt that way. (The poll's margin of error for the Washington area results was plus or minus 8 percent.) Negative Population Growth is part of a Cassandra chorus warning that the United States is using up too much green space, too much water and loading too much pollution into the air, sowing the seeds of an inevitably unlivable society. While current growth patterns are taking us in that direction, the questions are how fast that future is approaching and whether it is indeed inevitable. NPG concludes that the United States is already overpopulated. And because it doesn't believe that human will or ingenuity can head off a collision between people and resources, NPG wants to slam the brakes on population growth. And while survey respondents might not agree with NPG's view of the right size of the nation's population, a significant portion appeared to share one of NPG's solutions--a cutback in immigration. About one-quarter of respondents in both states "strongly agreed" that the federal government should reduce immigration to ease economic development pressures. Another one-quarter of the respondents "somewhat agreed" that immigration should be limited. The respondents weren't asked whether their child's friend, or the person who founded the company they work for, or the engineer who runs their office network, or the nurse in their recovery room, or the workers who took down the damaged tree in the back yard, or the owner or cook in their favorite restaurant might be immigrants or the children of immigrants. Would the region's long-term future be better off without its newcomers? There would be fewer cars and less environmental impact, but the region would be poorer in many other ways. So maybe the message from the survey is to take seriously the current debate about managing growth and protecting the region's quality of life. Or in the longer run, the debate may turn to who should be living here. © 2000 The Washington Post Company |
