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In the United States (US), low-density, non-contiguous development, termed sprawl, has long been of widespread concern. Since the 1970s, rural residential sprawl, or exurban sprawl, has grown faster than any other development pattern. Exurban sprawl is development beyond the urban/suburban fringe with ties to the urban environment, such as employment and consumption, rather than to rural economies. Exurban sprawl is highly consumptive of land and has implications for conservation, natural resource management, agriculture, and communities. This study explores two main avenues of exurban sprawl prevention in the US: voluntary conservation easements and local government growth management regulations. The use of the conservation easement mechanism in the US has been a success story in many ways. However, there have also been many scholarly criticisms of conservation easements, namely, the fear that financial incentives may undermine traditional regulatory approaches; the lack of public oversight; the potential for a piecemeal conservation approach; and the contention that conservation easements could interfere with public planning priorities. This research focused on how local government planners and land trust personnel in the US view their respective roles in shaping future land use in high-growth areas and how their roles coincide, interrelate, and differ. This was a convergent mixed method design, with twelve case studies of high-growth US metropolitan counties. The sources of evidence included the spatial analysis of housing densities by census block groups over time, semi-structured interviews with government planners and land trust personnel, and a survey of conservation easement iii landowners. This study showed that local government planners and land trusts largely operate with shared conservation goals. Both are heavily reliant on conservation easements to achieve landscape-scale conservation targets. Conservation easements are an integral and necessary tool for counties in the US to achieve their land protection goals. However, they are not sufficient to achieve them. Planners and local government elected officials should frame conservation easements as an integral part of a comprehensive landscape design approach that uses both incentives and regulations. Additionally, planners perceive that landowners do not want high densities in their communities. Low-density rural residential development is likely an ongoing source of exurban sprawl. More research is needed on how to plan and implement development that addresses consumer preferences and rural landowner concerns while maintaining rural areas' agricultural viability and ecological integrity.

Smart Growth is a collection of development principles that address the undesirable environmental, land use, and fiscal impacts that stem from urban sprawl. This report intends to analyze the impacts of Smart Growth through the comparison of Smart Growth states and non-Smart Growth states. Informed by the literature, I selected multiple indicators that quantify the impacts of state-level Smart Growth-policies in Oregon and New Jersey. These indicators were also measured in one non-Smart Growth state: Colorado. Indicators of mobility include work commute mode share, the volume vehicle miles traveled, and the relationship between density (population and employment) and work commute mode share. Housing affordability indicators are home values, multifamily units as a share of new units, and the prevalence of cost burdened households. Each state performed best in at least two of the indicators measured. New Jersey posted the best results for four indicators: the share of cost-burdened renter, median home value, median rent, and vehicle miles traveled. Oregon performed the best for two indicators: new multifamily development and commute by public transit. Colorado also performed the best for two indicators: cost-burdened homeowners and commute by driving alone. Trends revealed by changes in selected indicators suggest Smart Growth policies may produce intended outcomes but are not the best or only way in guiding successful growth management. Planners and scholars might therefore ask whether additional steps are needed to guide successful growth management.

This report assesses the historic, current and future conditions two Spanish Colonial irrigation systems in San Antonio, Texas known as the San Juan and Espada acequias, respectively. The two acequias are the only functional remnants of what was once a city-wide system which supported thousands of early San Antonians. Today, the two acequias are managed separately, each in a way that reflects their complicated history and institutional structure. This report relates in detail those histories and parses out the complex institutional structures in the context of the rapid urban growth of San Antonio and wider challenges such as climate change and groundwater depletion. It demonstrates that the acequias democratic, derecho-based water and land allocation structure is a valuable institutional model for resilient resource management regimes, however their continued existence will require significant adaptation to contemporary legal, political and ecological realities. With this in mind, this report seeks to identify theoretical frameworks with which the acequias could be restored and adapted for these contemporary realities as urban agriculture system while maintaining aspects of their traditional water and land allocation structures. It identifies the acequias as social-ecological systems (SES) that could be incorporated into a broader ecosystem services valuation of the San Antonio River watershed. It argues that the National Park Service (NPS), a major stakeholder in the acequias, should adapt its definition of Cultural Landscapes to better support working lands within their purview. Finally, it identifies the development status of the 1,750 acres of land (broken down by parcels) potentially irrigatable by the acequias and quantifies the potential yield of those parcels as supporting 38,356 people’s recommended vegetable consumption per year.

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of land development growth management programs at two communities that are thoroughbred horse centers - Ocala/Marion County, Florida and Lexington/Fayette County, Kentucky. The study period was 1970 to 2010. Marion County has had a state-mandated growth management program in place since 1985 and Fayette County has had an urban growth boundary since 1957. The agricultural use of the thoroughbred horse industry was selected because it is known to be highly sensitive to sprawl-type development and the long-term economic strength of each location is dependent upon a strong thoroughbred industry as it contributes more than $3 billion dollars a year to Florida and has a $2.4 billion economic impact on Fayette County, Kentucky. The study evaluated the spatial extent of population growth using the US Census of Population. Using GIS, sprawl was quantified in several ways: through density gradients' regression analysis, and through measurement of the linear miles of built streets per square mile in each county. Fayette County was found to have sprawled less during the study period. The next step involved investigation into the political culture to ascertain why stricter growth controls were implemented in one locale and not the other. Political culture, defined as the attitudes, values, beliefs, and orientations that individuals within a society hold regarding their political system. Following Ingelhart (1990), political culture is operationalized through analysis of educational attainment and income levels. The role of the growth machine (Molotch, 1976) was also explored. In Florida, growth machine elites included developers and retirees, largely due to the economic model of retirement/second home development and tourism that has grown the Florida economy since the 1960s. Through participant-observer analysis, it is determined that the growth machine in Lexington seems to be the thoroughbred industry, which maximizes its interests through controlling the incursion of incompatible land uses onto the thoroughbred farms. Therefore, the growth machine may not always be interested in more development. In this case study, it is demonstrated that the growth machine is anti-development, in order to maximize its own profits.

A fundamental purpose of state-mandated growth management has been to infuse regional environmental concerns into local land use planning. Similarly, collaborative ecosystem planning efforts have attempted to encourage local communities to participate in regional planning efforts, and to adopt regional environmental goals and objectives into local land use plans. This paper presents results from a study of state-mandated local planning and collaborative regional planning, addressing in particular local ability to adopt and implement ecosystem planning initiatives for development management. I found that a state mandate not only achieves plans from communities that would not otherwise plan, but also the plans produced are of higher quality than plans made voluntarily without a mandate. However, while these plans generally acknowledge the need for regional resource protection, local plans are rarely go beyond stating support for State minimum resource protection rules. Conversely, I found that participation in a regional ecosystem planning effort had little effect on local land use policy. Within this context, key factors yielding more environmentally focused planning and implementation included local commitment to ecosystem planning, development pressure, and recent natural hazard impacts. Key factors steering communities away from ecosystem management included poor economic conditions, a desire to maintain local autonomy, and consultant-driven planning processes. Challenges for all communities include the ability to adopt policies that address biodiversity and regionally significant landscapes.

The contemporary urban development pattern in the United States is characterized by land consumptive nature of development, such as a sprawled development pattern. Out of concern that the social and environmental costs of this development pattern outweigh their benefits, cities, counties and states have created a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth and to protect open spaces from development. The present research deals with such strategies in three study areas namely Portland Metropolitan Area, OR; Montgomery County, MD; and Orange County, FL in order to find out if growth management strategies have been able to reduce sprawl and promote a compact form of development. Based mainly on secondary sources of information, the research evaluates the characteristics, effectiveness, strengths and weaknesses of selected growth management strategies employed in each of these areas and analyses their implications for promoting a compact form of development.

The population of central Texas is increasing rapidly, and urbanization and suburban development continue amid projections of unprecedented growth to come. How is this affecting the expanses of rich agricultural land and remaining scraps of Blackland Prairie upon which the agricultural industry of east central Texas was built? State Highway 130 is partially complete – providing an urban-area bypass intended to alleviate traffic on I35 between San Marcos and Georgetown. In view of the building of this new transit and development corridor to the east of I35, on the eastern edge of Austin, what can be done to preserve agriculture and native prairie on Austin’s urban fringe? In this PR, I examine this question in terms of two essential components: growth management and land conservation. There are numerous studies on the structures and efficacies of growth management tools and of land conservation strategies, but there is little discussion of the role of growth management in relation specifically to urban and urban-fringe agriculture. I begin with a literature review, surveying the current state of study and practice with regard to growth management and open space & agricultural land conservation. This is followed by a case study of state-level open space conservation policy in Georgia, from which I draw lessons relevant to my case. The next step is to frame the potential management and conservation policies presented win the literature review and case study within the context of local practices, thus narrowing the focus of analysis to the confines of my study area: an approximately 20-mile wide, 58-mile long corridor along a portion of SH130. To gauge the possibilities for management and conservation within the study area, I have produced a matrix of jurisdictions and policy options, and an inventory of vacant land. Using the matrix I analyze, on the one hand, the relevant legal codes available to each jurisdiction, and on the other hand, local attitudes toward growth and agriculture. The land inventory is a graphic presentation – through GIS mapping – of factors critical to the potential preservation of open space. The final operation is to sketch a larger proposal within which this study would fit as a preliminary step. Here I suggest an implementation plan, based on the Envision Central Texas model, and recommend directions for future research.

In 1998, the state of Tennessee passed the Growth Policy Act seeking to minimize urban sprawl. The legislation required municipalities to delineate urban growth boundaries as part of mandated countywide growth policy plans, yet provides a wide degree of discretion to local governments. This research provides an assessment of the state's growth management policy and its local implementation in the small city of Tullahoma, Tennessee. Through analysis of the state's regulatory, institutional, and consistency provisions, weaknesses in the Growth Policy Act are identified that compromise its ability to effectively manage growth. An audit of Tullahoma's planning documents and an analysis of local development patterns reveal practices incongruous with the state's intent to minimize urban sprawl. The research identifies concerns that must be addressed to strengthen state and local growth management in Tennessee, and details a process by which municipalities can evaluate local planning practices for alignment with growth management principles.

In many states, the task of managing the pace and nature of future growth is left to local governments. That they are adequately carrying out the planning process is largely taken on faith. In this dissertation I test the hypotheses that existing land use conformance with master plan goals and future land use maps decreases with growth pressure and increases with planning capacity. I combine GIS analysis, plan and zoning document analysis, and qualitative interview analysis to investigate these hypotheses. Local governments use the long range master planning process to project and manage a future vision for the community. In theory, the process works as follows. First, the planning commission holds a visioning session to gain community consensus on plan goals. Commission members and planners incorporate those goals into the master plan and set forth objectives and implementation steps. Local government officials implement the plan by codifying its recommendations in the zoning ordinance, and enforcing ordinances uniformly. At each of these four steps, however, the process can break down, and the spirit of the community’s vision can fail to be translated into reality. I call these the four potential disconnects. I find that a lack of planning capacity, meaning the resources available to the community with which to plan, can indeed negatively influence conformance with master plan goals; in other words, lack of planning capacity makes it more likely that the community experiences disconnects in the planning process. Some combination of money, community involvement, and staff and official expertise is necessary to first create a high quality plan, then implement it and enforce ordinances consistently. Higher growth pressure is associated with lower conformance between existing land use and future land use maps, but a large part of this difference can be explained by vacant land use succession patterns in urbanizing areas. An awareness of causes and circumstances involved in the breakdown of the planning process allows the direction of resources in a targeted manner to improve conformance between plans and built outcomes.

This dissertation introduces a new theory of practice for land planning in America based on behavioralism. It is called culture based incentive planning, or CBIP. The CBIP model and techniques are based on four pillars: cultural snesitivity, behavior analysis, engineered incentive regimes, and the tools of persuasion. CBIP is designed to provide an adaptable framework from which to approch regulatory reform in planning. The framework is applicable to the full range of planning implementation strategies from commond and control to market-based approaches. CBIP, as a systems model, has been engineered to create a cooperative rather than adversarial relationship between government and the regulated community by recognizing issues of cultural sensitivity, market response, and behavioral motivations. Under the model, effective implementation of planning objectives is directly tied to the role that incentives play in human behavior. Based on the foundation of incentive theory, CBIP integrates a variety of principles and techniques from applied behavior analysis and behavioral economics to align incentives that drive personal behavior with public planning objectives. CBIP utiliizes a variety of incentives in planning practice including economic, process, lifestyle, social, behavioral, and technical assistance inducements.

Controlling urban growth involves accommodating market forces while preventing the spoil of sprawl (Knaap 2000). Keeping a viable economy and preserving the environment is a balancing act with which planning agencies must contend. Due to concerns over the capacity of the environment to absorb growth and concerns with a safe hurricane evacuation the Florida Keys adopted stringent development controls to regulate the rate and location of growth. However, the tourist based economy in the Florida Keys requires a significant low to moderate income labor force, the high cost of housing excludes many families from the local housing market, and stringent growth control policies make it difficult to provide affordable units. This research paper explores the problems with providing affordable housing within the strict growth management policies of the Florida Keys. The research methodology provides a rational for the provision of affordable units from the limited number of annually allocated residential building permits. The research found that more than 5,000 additional housing units are needed to accommodate current demand and that 26 percent may require housing assistance. However, the total remaining housing allocations is 250 units for the county. The remaining allocations cannot alone accommodate the demand for housing let alone for low income households. The existing housing supply is sufficient to accommodate demand; however, many of these are seasonal homes for residents living outside of the county. The recommendations include the provision of additional building permit allocations and the conversion of existing housing such as transient units into affordable units.

Managing urban growth is one the most challenging tasks planners have to do especially when city are spatially constrained. Generally, the containment of a city is based on the allocation of land needed to satisfy the demand based on the city’s growth goals. This thesis assesses the potential containment of Santa Tecla city following this traditional approach of sizing the containment policy based on the city’s growth trends, but it also considers the land suitability, and the administrative capacity of the municipality to enforce the policy. As a result, this study contributes to the development of a methodology in which growth management is assessed with an integrated approach.

This study uses data on the fast-growing peripheral counties located in the 50 largest metropolitan areas to test the null hypothesis that counties located on the metropolitan fringe are demographically homogenous. Using multivariate analysis, the analysis statistically identifies distinct groups of counties in the metropolitan fringe. In contrast to much of the standard literature, the research rejects the null hypothesis and suggests that more than one exurbia exists. This study also explores the varying pressures and demands faced by the different exurban county types in response to massive and compounding growth stresses, recognizing the complexity of managing growth in the fringe and the implications for planners. It is expected that counties identified as "similar" will experience common-responses to different programs and policies addressing growth pressures. Similar counties should therefore use these results to facilitate information exchange concerning successful or unsuccessful strategies.

Established low-density land use development patterns are characterized by expansive urbanization of the landscape. Concurrent effects associated with this present development pattern are declining existing urbanized areas, increasing conversion of open space, and high public service and infrastructure costs. Maryland's adoption of the Smart Growth legislative initiatives marks a potential advancement in the continuing evolution of government policies and programs designed to reduce inefficiencies by planning and managing growth at the state level. The Smart Growth programs are designed to augment, and work in concert with, previously implemented state growth management strategies, including local water and sewer and comprehensive planning. Maryland's ability to effectively direct and control growth in a desirable manner depends on the integrity and support of each of these planning program elements. This thesis recognizes the considerable influence that the provision of water and sewer services exerts on developing urban growth patterns and the increased relevance of water and sewer planning with respect to Smart Growth legislation. Evaluative research, designed to measure water and sewer plan regulatory conformance, demonstrates that locally adopted water and sewer plans exhibit widespread deficiencies in terms of state agency regulatory requirements. The revealed extent and prevalence of water and sewer plan inadequacies indicate that these documents are incapable of providing state administrators the information necessary to accurately determine existing and planned municipal sewer service, as anticipated by the legislation. The fact that legislation requires state agency approval of water and sewer plans prior to their adoption and that adopted plans exhibit deficiencies suggests problems associated with the current plan approval process. This thesis reviews the institutional procedures by which water and sewer plans are developed and approved in order to illustrate formal and informal organizational processes operable to water and sewer plan development. In addition, this thesis offers recommendations designed to enhance the current approval process, so as to lead to the development of effective water and sewer plans and facilitate successful implementation of related Smart Growth programs.

This thesis investigates the role of open space planning within the context of a growth management planning philosophy. For contextual framing, the principles of growth management are presented followed by tools and techniques used in preserving open space. The literature review chapter concludes with a look at the development of an open space plan. To bound the scope of this paper, the focus is on open space preserved for passive and active recreation and natural conservation. Montgomery County, Maryland is used as a case example. The qualitative data comes from interviews with planning personnel from the community and park planning departments. As part of the process, the relationship and roles between these two departments regarding open space preservation are explored. This case study helps us to understand what Montgomery County has learned from the past that is influencing the open space preservation for tomorrow.