Regional and Urban Design Committee

"The concept of city versus suburbs: drop it. It's obsolete, we need a new lexicon."

(Christopher Leinberger, non-resident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and former professor and founder of University of Michigan's graduate real estate development program). 

Planners have long used infrastructure as a planning tool and restricted development without adequate services. To allow annexations and development only in areas served by water and sewer, who would argue against that? Schools, fire service, a post office and roadways for getting around, are the fundamental services that are clearly. If those services can't be assured, isn't it logical, then, to throttle down additional development? At least until those services have been approved.
Indeed, many jurisdictions have regulations on their books that fall under the bulky category of Adequate Public Facility Ordinances, or short: APFO. But what may be a good policy to protect the farmlands and woods from too rapidly expanding development backfires when it comes to applying the same rules to established communities.  The National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland determined this already in its 2006 report  titled Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances in Maryland: Inappropriate Use, Inconsistent Standards, Unintended Consequences. 

Per Baltimore County's "basic services map" this Catonsville intersection is failing and with its service level F blocks additional development in the area (Photo: ArchPlan)

In short, applying the greenfield standards of APFOs in established communities pushes development out, away from the centers where smart growth wants it and where it is essential for revitalization to the very greenfields that the standards had intended to protect. AFPOs in the final analysis tend to create more dispersion and sprawl instead of less, they encourage outward instead of upward development.