Functional villages vs. gridlock
Author: Lee Altenberg

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# The Maui News

## Letters To The Editor

Thursday, February 24, 2000

#### Functional villages vs. gridlock

What is the quickest way to solve Paia's daily gridlock? The answer is more development. How is that? Paia is in gridlock because developers have built huge numbers of houses in Kuau and Haiku, and nothing more. You can't live your entire life in your house, and in order for Haiku residents to go to work, they have to get on the Hana Highway and commute past Paia every day.

All those trips can be short-circuited by building a downtown in Haiku where residents could work, shop, socialize and do business. Nobody thinks of this as a desirable solution because developers in America make horrible messes out of downtowns. For a model of a beautiful, workable town, you have to go to turn-of-the-century America, or to today's country villages in Europe.

But the ``traditional town design'' movement on the Mainland is changing this. Its main tools are traditional neighborhood-district zoning overlays and urban-growth boundaries. If Haiku and Paia adopted these, they would develop into charming, functionally complete villages. The need to commute into the sprawl of Kahului would be greatly decreased. Current zoning law must be overthrown if gridlock is not to become our common future.

The problem is lack of democracy: Residents of these communities cannot put citizens' initiatives on the ballot that would have the force of law necessary to do the job. We depend on the County Council, whose majority is about 30 years behind current understanding of how to create ``smart growth.'' The people of Maui must investigate these issues for themselves and, for our love of Maui, demand from the political system whatever it takes to set a new course.

Lee Altenberg

Kihei