At a panel discussion yesterday about smart growth in Maryland, a group of experts had one vague goal for the state in terms of urban planning and preservation: progress.

The five experts on the panel titled “Smart Growth in Maryland – What works? What doesn’t?  Where do we go next?” broke down the details of the state’s recently passed Smart, Green and Growing legislation before a crowd of 50 people in an auditorium in the Architecture building. The new laws deal with statewide sustainability, conservation and urban sprawl prevention.

Alex Chen, an associate professor of urban studies and planning who teaches a class on the topic, planned the event as way for his students to be introduced to legislation that may seem like it has no consequences for them.

“Smart growth decisions can affect anyone,” Chen said.

The experts discussed how local governments are responsible for their own planning. Mayoral candidate Andy Fellows made a recent pledge to create a more sustainable College Park, making smart growth an important consideration in creating a greener city.

“It’s an issue that everyone is grappling with – land use, transportation and housing – and this panel talked about how cities like College Park and the county will respond to the legislation,” Chen said.

Gerrit Knaap, who organized the panel and serves as the director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, said the university already serves as model of smart growth.

“The university is generally viewed as a smart growth community because it has a high density and a lot of pedestrians,” Knaap said. “But we can improve it by decreasing the amount of commuters so there’s less people on the road and figuring out a way we can manage storm water.”

The panel paid particular attention to how state and local governments need to work together and how much regulation will be needed to bring about large-scale reductions in carbon emissions – the state has adopted the goal of reducing emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Richard E. Hall, the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Planning, said setting regulations on local governments is one of the hardest changes to implement.

“Sometimes we have challenges getting people to agree, so it’s difficult to affect climate change,” Hall said. “We have a desire to do it, but it’s tough to do it statewide.”

While funding problems were a concern for the university’s Climate Action Plan, which echoes some of state’s initiatives, Jon Laria, a lawyer on the Task Force on the Future for Growth and Development in Maryland said the Task Force would hope that the recommendations would hold out through the economic crisis.

“People keep saying we need more money, but the money is just not there,” said Laria, whose task force introduced 52 recommendations for the state. “But we won’t shape our recommendations around the current fiscal situation because it will change and get better.”

Despite a myriad of recommendations, the four experts agreed that change was about putting one foot in front of the other every day and moving toward that one goal: progress.

“It’s about doing better tomorrow than we did today,” Hall said.

dcetrone at umdbk dot com