The former governor and mayor has a decent record of fighting sprawl.
I first met Kaine shortly after publishing a book about sprawl, and had transitioned from the Boston Globe to Mitt Romney’s smart-growth office in Massachusetts. Virginia was interested in Romney’s organizational initiative to coordinate the state agencies that are involved in growth and development—transportation, housing, the environment, energy, economic development—that ultimately was adopted in the federal partnership of DOT, EPA and HUD under President Obama.
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Like HUD Secretary Julián Castro, also vetted in the veepstakes, Kaine was a mayor, and picked up all the urban mechanics that comes with the job. He came to be chief executive of the city of Richmond as a Harvard Law School graduate focused on fair housing, and won a jury verdict against Nationwide Insurance for discriminatory practices.
But it was in statewide office that he built a record that should pique the interest of anyone who cares about cities. In a state known for extensive conventional suburban development—far-flung single-family subdivisions and rambling corporate office parks—Kaine became a bit of a crusader against sprawl.
He was among several governors who took up the cause of smart growth at the beginning of this century, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger (California), Janet Napolitano (Arizona), Christine Todd Whitman (New Jersey), Angus King (Maine), Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) and of course Maryland Governor Parris Glendening.
In a slow evolution in thinking away from building new highways and eight-lane arterials, Kaine talked about new approaches to transportation that were better integrated with sustainable land use: increasing options to include transit, bicycles, and pedestrians. Unhappy about the ravaging of Virginia farmland and countryside, he pushed through a $100 million open-space acquisition initiative.
More recently, he was an important force in bringing about the remarkable transformation of Tysons Corner, from soulless edge-city poster child to transit-oriented development hub. Kaine favored a tunnel for the D.C. Metro extension there, arguably making the area even more vital. (Although he apparently joked about the fierce advocacy of “mole people” during the debate over surface versus underground).