Inducing the Residential Land Market to Grow Timber in an Antiquated Rural Subdivision

There are more than ten million platted lots on rural land across the United States, most of them created by subdivision prior to modern land use planning review. They are not usable for homesites since they are too small for on-site water and sewage provision, or for productive uses like farming and timber production because they are held in small and diverse ownerships. What can planners do about rural land wasted by “antiquated subdivisions”? Planning officials agreed to allow a group of property owners to develop a portion of an antiquated subdivision on rural land near Portland, Oregon, as small acreage rural residential homesites and converted about two-thirds of it into productive, large acreage, timber producing “woodlots.” The residential value of woodlots subsidizes otherwise uneconomical timber management practices. Planners elsewhere can use the same approach to increase resource productivity in other antiquated rural subdivisions.