Gary LoRusso Alaska

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Gary LoRusso: How “Smart” is “Smart Growth”?

According to Gary LoRusso, urban planners and government specialists have, in recent years, made a point of advancing the concept of “smart growth.” Supposedly, smart growth is designed to promote local economic growth, reduce pollution, increase pedestrian and cyclist accessibility, improve the use of public transit, provide for more affordable housing, reduce commute times, and facilitate stronger, more unique, and more interconnected communities and neighborhoods.

However, while smart growth proponents insist that cutting down on suburban sprawl is the key to creating more sustainable and livable areas, there is also a completely different side to the argument.

The Case against Smart Growth

Smart growth detractors, contrary to popular belief, are not against most—or perhaps even any—of the concept’s supposed goals. Healthier communities, shorter commute times, more affordable housing, and reduced air pollution: these are improvements that few people would say no to. In fact, LoRusso believes that the reason smart growth can be such an appealing concept to government and to other supports is that its proposed impacts are so much in line with the things we as a society consider to be “for the public good.”

What smart growth detractors question about the concept has very little to do with its goals. Rather, detractors believe that smart growth fails to achieve the majority of its goals, and can actually prove to have an adverse impact on communities and neighborhoods in the long run due to actually exacerbating the issues it is trying to solve. In short, smart growth detractors question whether or not the concept is really “smart” at all.

The Portland Example

People who are against smart growth certainly have a few pieces of compelling evidence on their side. One particularly troubling case of smart growth in action happened in Portland, Oregon toward the end of the decade.

City planners, in an attempt to create denser epicenters of life in Portland, set minimum density requirements with the goal of building small, isolated neighborhoods into teeming apartment complexes and condo communities. Under smart growth principles, the goal of the regulation was to concentrate more people into fewer living spots, in turn building stronger local communities and economies, and cutting down on personal transportation and the pollution it causes.

However, while Portland’s use of smart growth sounds like a terrific idea on paper, it didn’t work quite so well in execution. Many families, drawn to the city by the small town feel of its residential neighborhoods, rejected the city planners’ demand that their neighborhoods be turned into generic condominium communities or apartment complexes. Families who had come to Portland looking for comfortable, private homes and spacious yards were suddenly greeted by a city which wanted to destroy those freedoms.

Whether or not Portland saw a mass exodus of families in the wake of its smart growth movement has not yet been proven. However, the increased density of people in new apartment and condo communities did have a number of measurable impacts, and very few of them went along with what the goals of smart growth had predicted.

For instance, despite an increased emphasis on public transit, many Portland residents have continued using their personal vehicles, leading to increased traffic congestion in high-density areas. Since Portland’s smart growth plan dictated a move toward higher-density population centers across the board, that means traffic has gotten worse overall. In addition, housing costs, which were supposed to become more affordable, have arguably only increased.

Gary LoRusso Considers Why Smart Growth May Be Failing in Certain Areas

So why has smart growth met with failure in Portland, and does that failure mean that the concept is flawed, or merely that Portland’s experience was not the right area for its implementation?

According to Gary LoRusso, it is difficult to entirely discount smart growth as a compelling urban planning strategy, if only because creating higher-density population areas does generally create great business and economic opportunities. However, LoRusso did have a few reservations about smart growth, and he thinks these items will need to be addressed and reconsidered before the concept can become a viable one for most areas.

Smart Growth Assumptions about Transportation May Be Off Base

One of the definitive aspects of the smart growth theory is that it is supposed to make communities more accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, as well as more viable for public transportation opportunities. However, LoRusso thinks that many Americans, just as they want big houses and wide open backyards, simply want to drive their own cars.

Convenience: For one thing, personal automobile transportation is usually faster than walking or biking and is often cheaper than taking public transportation. As a result, residents in areas like Portland don’t feel inclined to adhere to the smart growth provisions. If one’s own car is the most convenient form of transportation—which it is virtually everywhere other than in the biggest cities—then that is the form of transportation that most people are going to use.

Air Pollution: Furthermore, since people are still driving, but are facing greater traffic congestion, smart growth may actually be having an adverse affect on pollution. Cars in stop and go traffic tend to contribute more to air pollution than other vehicles, and public transportation stalwarts like buses cause dreadful levels of pollution in their own right.

ABOUT:

LoRusso is a professional land surveyor with licenses to work in both Alaska and New Hampshire. In his spare time, Gary LoRusso pursues music (he plays banjo and guitar), supports charities, and enjoys the escape that hiking trails, biking, and fishing can provide.

 

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Gary LoRusso Alaska

 

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Gary LoRusso on How Traditional Surveyors’ Tools Work

By keeping up with the latest technological developments in his field, land surveyor Gary LoRusso has an especially clear insight into just how far the industry has advanced throughout the years. With the introduction of amazing new tools such as aerial satellite imagery, global positioning systems, and near limitless electronic data storage, surveyors have more incredibly useful tools than ever before at their disposal.

However, says Gary LoRusso, despite the undeniable usefulness of all of these new technological advancements, many surveyors still make occasional use of many of the same time-tested tools of the trade that they have been using for centuries.

In particular, these tools can be especially useful in work such as the mapping or reestablishment of land boundaries through forests, which often present special challenges for surveyors using GPS devices. As LoRusso explains, survey work through forested areas often needs to be repeated more regularly than other areas, as boundaries and other lines can become lost or moved more easily as forests slowly grow and change over time. Particularly dense forests, however, sometimes interfere with the satellite signal from GPS satellites, making the use of traditional tools necessary.

The most commonly utilized of these traditional tools, both in the past and in certain instances today, are the compass and the chain. Below, he explains how each of these survey tools works.

Measuring Bearings and Angles Accurately with a Traditional Compass

Compasses have always been a vital standby in surveying work, says LoRusso, and traditionally usually came either hand-held or conveniently mounted on a tripod or staff. By using a compass, surveyors could get their initial bearings and set a starting point for their work, both of which are important to collecting accurate data measurements.

Before beginning work, surveyors first needed to set the correct magnetic declination on their compass to account for any known sources of local magnetic interference. This was especially important when surveying land in either the far western or northeastern regions of North America because of more extreme magnetic declination. “Traditional compasses point toward magnetic north, not true north toward the North Pole,” explains land surveyor Gary LoRusso. “Magnetic north can vary as much as 20 degrees in either direction across the continent, so adjusting these compasses accordingly was important to obtaining accurate results and usage.”

When mapping or reestablishing the lines of a property with these compasses, says LoRusso, it was important that surveyors recorded all angles according to their true bearing rather than the value corrected for declination. For less sophisticated compasses without declination settings, this translation of bearings could be performed later at the end of the survey work, although doing so presented more complications and time demands.

 

Gary LoRusso Explains the Uses of the Surveyors’ Chain

“The surveyors’ chain, also called Gunter’s chain, is a traditional unit of horizontal measurement in land surveying,” LoRusso explains. “It has long been used by surveyors, foresters, and forest owners as the preferred unit of measurement for all public United States Government Land Survey work, especially the land west of the Mississippi River.”

This uniformity of measurement ensured that survey data was easier to interpret and compare. The widespread use of this measurement was adopted after being used in the original survey work of most public land and forest boundaries throughout the country.

 

Calculating Acreage from Chain Measurements

“One important reason for the traditional use of the chain, as well as its adoption to a uniform standard, is its ease of conversion,” LoRusso explains. “Converting chained dimensions into acreage was simple and could be accomplished through a fairly basic calculation. This is why the tool was adopted traditionally and why we still refer to the measurement unit today.”

Converting square chains into acres required only the division of the former measurement by ten, as one acre is exactly equal to ten square chains. “To make calculations even easier,” says LoRusso, “what we call a ‘section’ of land is an area measured 80 chains on each side. This makes 640 acres of land, or a single square mile. These sections could then be easily quartered into 160 acre lots, or again into 40 acre lots.”

 

Using a Traditional Chain to Measure Horizontal Distance

 

“Before technological advancements in the field, foresters and land surveyors typically used one of two methods to measure any horizontal distance of the area they were working on,” says LoRusso. “These methods were pacing and chaining.”

Of the two, he says, chaining created more accurate and exact measurements. “To chain a distance, you needed two people, a compass, and a surveyors’ chain, which is a steel tape measuring 66 feet long,” says LoRusso. “The rear surveyor used the compass to find the correct bearing, and the front surveyor dropped the length of the chain along that bearing. These drop points were measured with pins to indicate the number of chains contained within a distance.”

Pacing, however, also had its uses, says LoRusso. “Pacing was a rudimentary way to roughly but quickly estimate a distance,” he explains. “If you didn’t have the time, the help, or the equipment to drop a chain for more accurate readings, pacing would often suffice temporarily.”

ABOUT:

As a land surveyor and property developer, LoRusso provides many important services for his community of Palmer, AK. Most of his work is done through Keystone Surveying & Mapping, a surveying and developing company that he founded himself in 1991. Through his dedication to keeping current with the latest technological advancements and trends in his field, Gary LoRusso has made himself a highly active expert in the surveying industry.