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The Michigan Land Use Institute was founded in 1995 to establish a new approach to economic development that strengthens communities, enhances opportunity, and protects the state's unmatched natural resources.
Our mission from the beginning has been to help northern Michigan avoid the patterns of suburban sprawl and
over-development that cause traffic congestion, pollution, loss of community, rising costs to individuals and
governments, and a deteriorating quality of life.
In 1997 these ideas became more widespread in Michigan. Across the state, farmers and business owners,
environmentalists and industrialists, urban leaders and suburban homeowners discovered common ground in the
hard work of halting sprawl. A new neighborhood-based grass roots political movement has emerged to improve how land is used.
The Institute and other leaders of this movement are laying the foundation for new policies at the state and
local levels. Such policies will redirect economic investments to improve Michigan's cities, and to encourage
the construction of affordable neighborhoods near downtowns where homes, shops, businesses, schools, and
civic institutions are in close proximity.
There is a sense of shared mission and common purpose in all of this -- to protect the countryside,
strengthen the farm economy, and improve the ways that people can live, shop, and work.
The Michigan Land Use Institute is helping to frame an optimistic message about the need to reform land
use policy that is pro-business, pro-community, and pro-environment. Our members are enthusiastic about this
approach. We now have:
•850 member families, organizations, businesses, and local governments, twice as many as in 1996.
•An income that also has doubled as support from members, donors, and foundations increased.
•Five full-time and three part-time staffers, and 11 board members.
With this report, we wish to provide our members and friends with an accounting of the Institute's exciting
work in 1997.
Making the Transportation Connection to Stop Sprawl
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Northern Michigan has become the target of more than $2 billion in proposed new highways, including
expensive and damaging bypasses in Traverse City and Petoskey. The Institute is assisting local governments
and citizens in developing alternative approaches, which rely on easing traffic by modernizing existing roads,
and by giving people more transportation choices. This approach is fiscally responsible and respectful of businesses, neighborhoods, and the land.
Among the 1997 highlights:
•In partnership with the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest, the Institute
established a project to build popular support for an alternative, region-wide, land use and transportation program for northern Michigan. The project is inspired by the success of transportation and land use programs
conceived by 1000 Friends of Oregon for Portland.
•Keith Bartholomew, staff attorney at 1000 Friends of Oregon and one of the nation's foremost authorities
on integrated transportation and land use strategies, spent a busy day in northwest Michigan in October at the
Institute's invitation. Mr. Bartholomew described to local policymakers and transportation activists how Portland is strengthening the economy of its urban center and reining in sprawl in the suburbs by purposely not
building new highways.
•Arlin Wasserman, the Institute's policy specialist, formally critiqued an environmental study of the proposed $300 million Traverse City bypass that was conducted by the Grand Traverse County Road Commission.
He found that the commission failed to look at the entire scope of the project to determine how the bypass
would affect development and the environment. The Federal Highway Administration agreed, and asked the
Road Commission to provide a more thorough analysis.
•The Institute is working with Whitewater Township in Grand Traverse County on a communications plan to help keep residents up-to-date on a new land use and zoning ordinance that will conserve the township's farmland.
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