Agricultural land fragmentation: the spatial effects of three land protection strategies in the eastern United States

Fragmentation of agricultural land by urban sprawl affects both the agricultural production capacity of the land and its rural scenic quality. In order to assess the resulting fragmentation of the three most common types of agricultural land conservation tools in the United States, this study analyzes the spatial form of three land protection strategies: a purchase of development rights (PDR) program, a clustering program and a transfer of development rights program. By assessing a series of measures of success such as total acreage protected, size of parcels, contiguity and farming status, the study compares the effectiveness of programs that have been in place for approximately 20 years, analyzing the extent to which each program prevents or enhances fragmentation. The analysis shows that although the number of acres protected is an important factor in program success, the amount of protected land remaining in active farming is additionally influenced by any development rights that may remain with the land, the use of a variety of tools to reduce the likelihood of parcel isolation, and the adjacency and contiguity of protected parcels.     

Books Received

Problem: In 1997, the State of Maryland adopted a bold new approach to growth management based on a novel instrument: priority funding areas (PFAs). PFAs contain growth by directing state spending to areas designated by local governments and reviewed by the state government. Despite widespread acclaim and subsequent imitation, little is known about whether PFAs effectively contain urban growth.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to evaluate the adoption, implementation, and performance of PFAs in Maryland in order to provide planners and policymakers with insights into their efficacy as instruments for managing growth.

Methods: First, we describe the statutory definition and mandated role of PFAs in state funding. Then, we describe the process used to create PFAs, the resulting pattern of targeted growth areas, the relationship between PFAs and local comprehensive plans, and the extent to which PFAs altered state spending. Finally, we examine the effects of PFAs on residential development patterns.

Results and conclusions: We find that PFAs have fallen short of expectations. The criteria used to establish PFAs produced boundary configurations that vary widely and are in many cases not ideally suited to managing urban growth. Ten years after their official designation, PFAs are not well integrated in land use decision making processes in many local jurisdictions. Finally, state agencies have not altered budgetary systems to monitor and guide the spatial allocation of funds and there is little evidence that after 10 years they have had any effect on development patterns.

Takeaway for practice: Targeting state funds to promote compact growth is a conceptually sound approach to urban growth containment, as land is less likely to be developed if it is not served by public infrastructure. But, as with other planning tools, the key is effective implementation. If states want to contain growth by targeting state spending, they must change budgeting processes to ensure that funds are spent appropriately and that the level of state spending is large enough to make a difference.

Research support: None.     

Response to APA Comment (Drinan, 2015)

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Local governments often react to sprawl by adopting urban containment policies to limit fringe growth and encourage core development. An alternative is to design impact fee programs accounting for the higher costs of providing services to remote locations. Zone-based impact fee programs carry this potential, but there is no empirical work investigating their effect on residential development. We explored the effects of a zone-based impact fee program on residential permits issued across the Albuquerque, NM, metropolitan statistical area using 21 years of data, identifying countervailing influences on density. The program mitigated sprawl by reducing the share of construction occurring near the urban fringe and by increasing the share in more centrally located areas, but there is no evidence the program increased core development. During a brief period when Albuquerque had impact fees but an adjacent community did not, we observed spillover effects that exacerbated sprawl.

Takeaway for practice: Planners managing sprawl can use zone-based impact fee programs that account for the higher costs of fringe development to effectively increase the density of residential construction, but it may be necessary to use regional programs or coordinated efforts to prevent spillover to adjacent communities.     

Predicting the Behavior of Predevelopment Landowners on the Urban Fringe

If the planner had a simple predictive technique to assess the likelihood that a parcel in nonurban use on the urban fringe would be sold during the next few years, he would be in a better position to anticipate the location of new urban fringe development. Such a model was developed from tests in two North Carolina cities, utilizing landowner and property information generally available in public records or in the planner's files. Utilizing data on how long the land had been held prior to the start of the study period, whether or not the owner lived on the land, whether or not the owner was retired, whether the ownership was single or joint, the assessed value of the land, and the amount of urban development surrounding the parcel, the model was able to classify from 60 to 80 percent of the sample parcels correctly as being “sold” or “held” over the 10-year test period.     

Land cooperatives as anapproach of suburban space construction: Under the reform of Chinese land transfer market

In China,the urban-rural dual structure of land market has resulted in urban sprawl caused by industrial diffusion. Urban sprawl disintegrated agricultural communities in suburbs, thereby increasing the unemployment rate among farmers who lost their lands. To address this problem, the Chinese government proposed a reform program to analyze the monopoly of the government in the land market and guarantee the property rights of farmers. This study analyzed the connection between land market mechanism and suburban space formation. Results concluded that the current land transfer system caused industrial urban sprawl, and the reform program may promote the urban sprawl of population. Twot ypical models of rural land development were studied. A model called land cooperatives based on land pooling joint stock system was proposed to build a compact and sustainable suburban space.     

Is Compact Growth Good for Air Quality?

Problem: Explicitly prohibited from regulating the land use planning activities of municipal and county governments by the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 131), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been forced to pursue an end-of-the-pipe approach to air quality management that has not proved successful in fully reducing ozone and fine particulate matter below health-based standards in many large U.S. cities. The persistence of these pollutants, in combination with a rapid rise in vehicle travel in recent decades, has raised concerns within the planning and public health communities about the long-term success of an air quality management program that is effectively divorced from the land use planning process.

Purpose: This work, which is part of an EPA-sponsored study titled Projecting the Impact of Land Use and Transportation on Future Air Quality (PLUTO), was intended to assess the effectiveness of compact growth in improving air quality at a geographic scale compatible with secondary pollution formation and transport and over a planning horizon sufficient to capture the longer-term benefits of regional land use change.

Methods: Future air quality is associated with alternative land development scenarios in this study through the integration of three separate and previously unrelated modeling components. These components consist of a set of standard population projection techniques, a household vehicle travel activity framework, and a mobile source emissions model (MOBILE 6) developed by the EPA.

Results and conclusions: The results of our analysis find the median elasticity of vehicle travel with respect to density change over time to be ?0.35, suggesting metropolitan areas can expect a 10% increase in population density to be associated with a 3.5% reduction in household vehicle travel and emissions. In addition, vehicle elasticities derived for urban and suburban census tracts across the 11 metro regions suggest density increments within urban zones (?0.43) to be more than twice as effective in reducing vehicle travel and emissions as density increments within suburban zones (?0.19).

Takeaway for practice: We found compactness to be associated with greater reductions in vehicle travel than in previous studies, which suggests land use change can play a measurable role in improving regional air quality over time. Importantly, we found where compact growth occurs to be critically important to determining the extent to which higher density development reduces vehicle travel and emissions. We found the densifi-cation of urban zones to be more than twice as effective in reducing vehicle miles of travel and emissions as the densification of suburban zones, suggesting compact growth to be better for air quality than historical patterns of growth when densifying urban zones is given priority over non-urban zones.     

Registration of 3D underground parcel in Korean cadastral system

Economic growth and urbanization have reduced urban land resources to the point that such resources are now, in some cases severely, limited. In order to support sustainable development and to solve the problem of land shortages in urban areas, one practical solution is the shifting of land usage from above the surface to underground. However, in most countries, including Korea, the cadastral system cannot adequately handle the legal, administrative, and technical aspects of the registration and maintenance of underground parcels. The main purpose of this research, therefore, was to propose a conceptual registration framework for 3D underground parcels. In order to do that, issues of unregistered underground space were summarized, and the legal, administrative, and technical limitations were revealed. In consideration of these limitations, the registration framework for 3D underground parcels is herein proposed. This framework consists of four steps: 1) preparation of 3D underground parcel data with consideration for information regarding 3D underground cadastral surveying and building-components; 2) definition of 3D underground parcels, based on deep underground regulation in Korea and the registration extent, registration unit, absolute height and relative height of systems; 3) 3D underground cadastral registration according to the three types of cadastral maps and land registration; 4) registration of 3D underground rights, such as ownership and sectional superficies of the 3D underground parcel. Finally, in order to implement the proposed registration framework for a 3D underground parcel, legal, administrative, and technical improvements are proposed.     

Do Industrial Preservation Policies Protect and Promote Urban Industrial Activity?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In recent years, several major cities have implemented industrial preservation policies to attract and retain industrial uses after facing acute pressures to rezone often centrally located industrial land to “higher and better” uses. Minimal research to date, however, has examined how effective industrial preservation policies have been at protecting and promoting urban industrial activity. In this study, we ask how New York City’s (NY) Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) program affected four measures of urban industrial activity—industrial business registrations, industrial employment, industrial building permits, and industrial land—in IBZs in New York City. We benchmark our results against a comparison group established using propensity score matching. We find that the IBZ program had a significant impact on retaining industrial land in IBZs but that it did not have a significant impact on promoting new industrial business registrations, employment, or building permits in IBZs.

Takeaway for practice: Our research provides evidence of how various measures of urban industrial activity change following the designation of an industrial preservation policy. This research suggests that industrial preservation policies can be an effective tool to stem urban industrial land losses in cities facing land use conversion pressures, but that such policies need to create more robust linkages with economic development planning objectives. In the interest of continuing to protect middle-class industrial job opportunities in central cities, planners and practitioners should consider how to strengthen ties between physical land use planning and economic development planning.     

Proposing an agricultural belt to protect a city’s semi-rural characteristics: The example of Bartın,Turkey

Urban sprawl, a type of urban expansion, is perceived as a global problem due to changes in land conversions and landscape patterns. Farms, forests and shores have been converted into urban areas; this transformation affects energy flow, biochemical cycles and climatic conditions. To follow and evaluate the physical, social and ecological results of urban sprawl, we identified and measured temporal changes in land use and land cover. This is especially important for urban planning policies. In this study, temporal change is identified in the city of Bart?n using remote sensing and landscape metrics. An analysis of land cover and land transformation was done with LANDSAT5 TM/ETM satellite images from 1985 and 2015. These images were used to identify agricultural areas as land that has most commonly undergone drastic changes. Bart?n is a small semi-rural city that has undergone significant changes. Among the most important reasons for these changes were uncontrolled urban sprawl due to political and administrative decisions that lacked long-term planning and a comprehensive city plan. This study examined the risk factors for loss of semi-rural characteristics using the example of Bart?n city. To protect semi-rural city characteristics and control urban sprawl, we propose an agricultural belt based on spatial suitability and an evaluation of landscape metrics.     

Globalized Freight Transport: Intermodality,E-Commerce,Logistics and Sustainability

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Recent research reveals growing spatial disparities in warehousing-related environmental externalities, including air pollution and traffic safety concerns, across municipalities. The existing research, however, fails to present how institutional factors contribute to spatial variations. In this study, I explore how variations in planning practices contribute to the different trajectories of warehousing development. I interviewed planners, local residents, warehousing developers, and regional agency staff to identify local planning practices and policy elements that affect the location choice of warehousing facilities. My results show land use policies (land use permission, industrial zoning, and land parcel division schemes), job-related policies (job creation initiatives and job density requirements), financial incentives (tax rates and financial incentives), and environmental regulations (building design, land use buffering, and landscaping) are the major planning elements that affect warehousing development. Relative to brownfield redevelopment in the municipalities close to the urban core of a metropolitan area, developing greenfield warehousing facilities in suburban cities is likely to cause more environmental concerns in the near future. However, unmeasured factors could be responsible for some of the warehousing development patterns I find in the data.

Takeaway for practice: Knowledge, communication, and collaboration are needed to cope with the rapid growth and, in particular, the disproportionate concentration of warehousing-related environmental externalities in certain municipalities. In this study I also provide planning strategies to regulate excessive warehousing development, including land use- and job-related policies, financial incentives, and environmental regulations. With these strategies, planners in warehousing-intensive cities can determine the best way to reduce the impacts of environmental externalities on local communities in the long term.     

“Urban Farming Is Going High Tech”

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How do traditional forms of urban agriculture and the newer digital urban agriculture converge and diverge from one another in terms of land use and gentrification? I interrogate the subject of digital urban agriculture with data from 82 semistructured interviews and notes taken during public forms and tours of facilities. Respondents were located in Denver (CO; n?=?30), New York (NY; n?=?26), and San Francisco (CA; n?=?26) and held positions ranging from community organizers, investors, local food powerbrokers, and planners to engineers involved in facilitating urban foodways based on vertical farming, automation, and related technologies. I find digital platforms—systems exhibiting characteristics including real-time surveillance, artificial intelligence, and automation—share similarities with traditional urban farming systems. Both platforms have the potential to disrupt dominant political economies and also have links to gentrification and other inequitable land use patterns. Potential divergences include differences in a) social, cultural, economic, human, and built capital barriers and outcomes; b) land use life course; and c) zoning.

Takeaway for practice: Digital urban farming systems inhabit a regulatory gray area; respondents encountered agricultural, industrial, or commercial zoning permits. The “digital” aspects of these systems contributed to this ambiguity and are used by powerbrokers to obtain further zoning permission than is possible with traditional urban agriculture. Compared with more traditional urban farming systems, digital urban agriculture taps into different forms of human capital. Finally, my findings are inconclusive on the issue of land use life course. Some data indicate digital farms will remain in urban cores, whereas other evidence points to the eventual migration of these platforms to the metropolitan periphery.     

Planning The Expo

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Many cities have adopted minimum parking requirements, but there is relatively poor information about how parking infrastructure has grown. We estimate how parking has grown in Los Angeles County (CA) from 1900 to 2010 and how parking infrastructure evolves, affects urban form, and relates to changes in automobile travel using building and roadway growth models. We find that since 1975 the ratio of residential off-street parking spaces to automobiles in Los Angeles County is close to 1.0 and the greatest density of parking spaces is in the urban core, while most new growth in parking occurs outside of the core. In total, 14% of Los Angeles County's incorporated land is committed to parking. Uncertainty in our space inventory is attributed to our building growth model, on-street space length, and the assumption that parking spaces were created as per the requirements.

Takeaway for practice: The continued use of minimum parking requirements is likely to encourage automobile use at a time when metropolitan areas are actively seeking to manage congestion and increase transit use, biking, and walking. Widely discussed ways to reform parking policies may be less than effective if planners do not consider the remaining incentives to auto use created by the existing parking infrastructure. Planners should encourage the conversion of existing parking facilities to alternative uses.     

Exurban development influences woodland bird composition

One of the fastest growing types of land-use change is exurban development—low-density housing outside urban service boundaries. However, how individual species are responding to exurban development remains uncertain. We monitored birds for 5 years across three housing density levels in northern California oak woodlands. We compared community and species responses to exurban development (4–16 ha parcels) with suburban and undeveloped natural areas. We found that individual species and groups of species exhibited variable responses to exurban development. Some species and guilds were impacted by exurban development to the same extent as suburban development while others were less sensitive to this type of land use. For example, the proportion of the bird community composed of tree-and-shrub feeders was similar between exurban and natural areas, whereas proportions of temperate migrants showed significant reductions at both suburban and exurban sites. Similarly, Northern Flicker, Hutton's Vireo, and Orange-crowned Warbler were equally rare in exurban and suburban sites, making large, undeveloped parcels essential for their conservation. By explicitly measuring ecological changes associated with parcel size and density this research provides valuable information to land-use planners on the consequences of zoning for biodiversity conservation.     

HOUSING POLICY GOALS AND THE TURNOVER OF HOUSING

Problem: Congestion pricing and land use planning have been proposed as two promising strategies to reduce the externalities associated with driving, including traffic congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are often viewed by their proponents as substitutive instead of complementary to each other.

Purpose: Using data from a pilot mileage fee program run in Portland, OR, we explored whether congestion pricing and land use planning were mutually supportive in terms of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction. We examined whether effective land use planning could reinforce the benefit of congestion pricing, and whether congestion pricing could strengthen the role of land use planning in encouraging travelers to reduce driving.

Methods: VMT data were collected over 10 months from 130 households, which were divided into two groups: those who paid a mileage charge with rates that varied by congestion level (i.e., congestion pricing) and those who paid a mileage charge with a flat structure. Using regression models to compare the two groups, we tested the effect of congestion pricing on VMT reduction across different land use patterns, and the effect of land use on VMT reduction with and without congestion pricing.

Results and conclusions: With congestion pricing, the VMT reduction is greater in traditional (dense and mixed-use) neighborhoods than in suburban (single-use, low-density) neighborhoods, probably because of the availability of travel alternatives in the former. Under the same land use pattern, land use attributes explain more variance of household VMT when congestion pricing is implemented, suggesting that this form of mileage fee could make land use planning a more effective mechanism to reduce VMT. In summary, land use planning and congestion pricing appear to be mutually supportive.

Takeaway for practice: For policymakers considering mileage pricing, land use planning affects not only the economic viability but also the political feasibility of a pricing scheme. For urban planners, congestion pricing provides both opportunities and challenges to crafting land use policies that will reduce VMT. For example, a pricing zone that overlaps with dense, mixed-use and transit-accessible development, can reinforce the benefits of these development patterns and encourage greater behavioral changes.

Research support: This project was supported by the Mineta Transportation Institute, where the authors are research associates.     

我国城市蔓延的动力机制

我国城市蔓延的动力机制与发达 国家有一定差异。人口增长、经济发展、机 动交通和信息技术的发展引起了城市空间的 快速扩张。当城市空间的扩张缺乏有效的规 范和引导,导致土地利用效率低下时,城市 空间就会进入一种无序蔓延的发展状态。 而我国城市蔓延问题的根源应当归结于政策 制度的缺陷。因此,城市蔓延的控制重在土 地的集约化利用和政策制度的完善。     

Regulatory Practices of Urban Agriculture: A Connection to Planning and Policy

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Municipalities across the United States are gradually recognizing urban agriculture as an integral part of planning, land use, and zoning ordinances. We review the literature on the regulation of urban agriculture at a moment when policy and regulatory vacuums exist and the acceptance and integration of urban agriculture is uneven. We review the current regulatory practices of 40 metropolitan and 40 micropolitan municipalities in the 4 U.S. Census regions. We find that municipalities are filling policy vacuums by adopting enabling ordinances (zoning ordinances, land use designations, resolutions), regulations on urban agriculture production (backyard animals, built structures, practitioner responsibility), and fiscal policy instruments (restrictions on sales of agricultural products, tax abatement, urban agriculture fees). Our findings support local planning practitioners in filling regulatory gaps, practitioners of urban agriculture in seeking how it’s done elsewhere, and researchers in discerning new applied and basic research projects. We identify 3 principal knowledge gaps: Planners need a complete typology of regulatory possibilities; a better understanding of how local, state, and federal legislations constrain or enable urban agriculture; and empirical evidence of the economic, social, and environmental impacts of urban agriculture.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should assess existing urban agricultural practices and consider which regulatory frameworks best support multiple local goals, incorporating a concern with urban agriculture into ongoing activities, deploying existing or innovative land use tools, facilitating institutional cooperation, and promoting inclusive decision making and community engagement.     

The history of urban growth management in South Africa: tracking the origin and current status of urban edge policies in three metropolitan municipalities

ABSTRACT

For many cities in the Global South, colonialism played a dominant role in shaping their urban form. The historical objective of planning in colonial mother-cities was dealing with poor health and living conditions, therefore a planning approach similar to that followed in post-war Britain would appear beneficial in post-colonial cities, characterized by environmental and physical infrastructure unable to cope with massive population growth. Urban growth management is a discourse born in an attempt to control the growing industrial city in the early twentieth century, and in recent years applied through instruments such as urban edges or growth boundaries to limit urban sprawl and encourage higher density urban development. In South Africa, the principles of compaction and urban growth management formed part of the post-apartheid planning agenda towards transforming the inefficient and fragmented landscape inherited from separate spatial development. Consequently, urban edges and urban growth boundaries formed key components of municipal spatial planning frameworks since the early 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin and status of urban edges in three metropolitan municipalities in South Africa to aid in understanding of these spatial instruments in the south.     

A Tale of Two Cities: Physical Form and Neighborhood Satisfaction in Metropolitan Portland and Charlotte

Problem: Literature advocating compact development and mixed uses frequently claims that this form of development supports a higher quality of life, yet the empirical basis for this claim is weak.

Purpose: I assess the relationship between physical form and quality of life using neighborhood satisfaction as an empirical definition of quality of life.

Methods: I examine the effects of block and neighborhood housing density, land use mix, the mix of housing structure types, and street network connectivity on residents' ratings of neighborhood satisfaction. Using a multilevel dataset that combines individual household information with neighborhood contextual variables, I compare the Charlotte, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), which have very different development patterns and land use policies.

Results and conclusions: At the neighborhood level, I find density and mixed land uses to be associated with higher neighborhood satisfaction in Portland, but lower neighborhood satisfaction in Charlotte. At the block level, however, I find blocks that are exclusively single family detached housing to be associated with higher neighborhood satisfaction in both MSAs. These findings suggest that the influence of compact development and mixed uses on residents' quality of life depends upon the context, and may be sensitive to the spatial scales at which urban form is examined.

Takeaway for practice: Planners should understand that strategies promoting compact development and mixed uses will have different consequences in different contexts, and should pay careful attention to the appropriate spatial scale for implementing such policies. I conclude that compact growth and mixed uses improve quality of life by contributing to higher levels of neighborhood satisfaction, though they may not succeed in low density metropolitan areas. I conclude that in considering such development, planners should: rely on evidence to identify appropriate strategies; learn how to create conditions that foster urban amenities and discourage urban problems; pay attention to factors that complement the appeal of compact and mixed environments; and consider the possibility that the market will not tolerate mixing different housing types at a fine grain for the purpose of achieving higher density and diversity.

Research support: This research was supported by a dissertation research grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University.     

THE IMPACTS OF STATE GROWTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS ON URBAN SPRAWL IN THE 1990S

ABSTRACT: The urban landscape in the United States has been characterized by sprawl for decades. Despite arguments in favor of sprawl or its component attributes, it is widely believed that sprawl leads to many contemporary United States urban and environmental problems. Since 1961, 15 states in the United States have adopted state growth management programs (SGMPs) with various goals, including curtailing sprawl. This article, among a few previous studies, examines the effectiveness of SGMPs on containing sprawl. We create sprawl indices for 294 metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000, measuring two major dimensions of sprawl: density and land‐use mixture. Our examination of SGMPs involves not only a dummy variable indicating whether a SGPM exists or not, but a score system measuring the degree of state involvement in local growth management and three variables measuring three major attributes of SGMPs. With the refined measurements for both sprawl and SGMPs, we examine the impacts of SGMPs on the sprawl measures in the 1990s of the selected metropolitan areas in the United States. Our statistical results show that SGMPs effectively promoted compact development in terms of population density and land‐use mixture. However, the statistical results do not support the claim that SGMPs with a higher degree of state involvement in local growth management, on average, worked better at curtailing sprawl than those with a lower‐degree involvement in the 1990s. This article suggests that state governments in the United States should more fully exercise their responsibilities to control urban sprawl rather than just leave this issue to local devices.     

School Siting

Problem: The United States is embarking on an unprecedented era of school construction even as debate continues over where schools should be located and how much land they should occupy.

Purpose: My three goals for this study were to trace the evolution of school siting standards, to explain the factors currently influencing school facility location decisions, and to identify what local and regional planners could contribute to school siting decisions.

Methods: I reviewed the land use planning and educational facilities literatures on school siting and conducted in-depth interviews with school facility planners from 10 counties in Maryland and northern Virginia to assess their perspectives on the school planning process.

Results and conclusions: I discovered that different groups use very different definitions of community school. Smart growth proponents advocate community schools that are small and intimately linked to neighborhoods, while school facility planners expect community schools to meet the needs of entire localities. I recommend that individual communities consider the tradeoffs associated with different school sizes and make choices that meet local preferences for locations within walking distance of students, potential for sports fields, school design, and connections to neighborhoods. State school construction and siting policies should support flexibility for localities.

Takeaway for practice: Local and regional planners should work with school facility planners to conduct exercises and charettes to help each community determine how to realize its own vision of community schools.

Research support: The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported this research.