The Public Is Leading and Politicians are Following

When I started writing this column a few years ago, I was a voice from the past with regard to land-use thinking — a somewhat lonely and isolated advocate of carefully managed growth.

Today, as I look around, I am pleased to say I am one of many voices rising out of the community on issue after issue. My one little column can no longer keep up with, or even allude to, the many expressed public concerns for conservation, open space, watershed preservation and the idea of establishing a carrying capacity for tourism.

Traditionally we think of officeholders as leading public thinking, but that idea is being turned upside down. The public is leading, and politicians are following.

When the Legislature blocked the construction of a high-rise makai of Ala Moana Boulevard in Kakaako, a key legislator was quoted as saying, “The public has spoken.” Similarly, the city government followed in the footsteps of a public outcry to preserve Waimea Valley for posterity.

It becomes clearer with each passing month that we must turn from ad hoc skirmishing to a much deeper assessment of how we are using our limited land space. The makeshift compromise for the Big Island’s Hokulia development comes to mind. The proposal to build five hotels at Turtle Bay is a prime example, as I attempted to point out last month. So is the announced plan to transform Waiawa into something bigger than Kapolei — a plan that, like Turtle Bay, is based on long-standing zoning developed for other circumstances.

To frame a new land-use initiative, we must ask, “Where are we on the curve of change? Where do we want to go?”

First, we are two to three decades into the post-plantation era. Our economic rationale for protecting prime agricultural lands and open spaces has been seriously (if temporarily) weakened, laying vast tracts vulnerable to poorly planned development.

Second, we are in the middle of our third economic boom since statehood. The first boom was the 1960s, which was followed by a long period of consciously slowed, managed growth in the 1970s. In the 1980s the economy progressively accelerated, but then it slowed frighteningly in the 1990s, during which time the economy damped down development the way government policy had previously.

Now we are again in a boom period, yet with our statewide planning capacity at an all-time low. It is no wonder that land-use disputes are flaring up in widely varied settings. It is no wonder that a survey conducted for the Tour-ism Sustainability Study found such extensive public resentment of tourism in its many forms.

What plagues me is why there is so little public discussion of these findings, or what should be done about them.

What reassures me is the way the public is finding the right answers on a case-by-case basis, despite the silence of the Capitol. Nonetheless, ad hoc public reactions are no substitute for coordinated and visionary political leadership. Specifically, we need a new approach to the Land Use Law of 1959, a renewed long-range commitment to agriculture, a clearer understanding of what “rural” zoning means, a deeper commitment to the relationship between water and land use, and a more vigorous preservation of conservation districts, watersheds, forests and cultural sites.

We need to again ask ourselves, what do we love about Hawaii? What must we pass on to our children and grandchildren? With the public more obviously asking such questions, I personally no longer feel like a voice of days past, but rather one of many voices calling out for more careful attention to the future.

George R. Ariyoshi, chairman and cofounder of Convergence CT and Cellular Bioengineering, is the former president of Prince Resorts Hawaii Inc. He is active in international business circles, particularly in Asia. An attorney by profession, Ariyoshi served in elective office in Hawaii from 1954 to 1986. He served as governor of Hawaii from 1973 to 1986 and was the first Japanese American to be elected governor in the United States.

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