Land Use Primer:
What policies influence Land Use and Land Cover?
- Policies that affect Land Use/Land Cover can be divided into two categories: a) conservation and planning policies that directly affect land use land cover and b) policies that indirectly affect the shape of landscapes.
- Conservation and planning policies
- Zoning, preferential tax treatment, and purchase of transferable development rights are some of the conservation and planning policies that affect Land Use and Land Cover.
a.1) Zoning: Some communities use zoning to direct land use. Zoning is a set of regulations that specify where different types of land use can occur. The primary purpose of zoning is to prevent situations where incompatible land uses occur near each other. A zoning map divides the community into zones. For each zone, an allowable use is defined. For example, in an R1 zone, single family detached housing is allowed, but industrial facilities are not. In this way, residential properties are protected from new development that will decrease their utility and value. Zoning regulations can specify what type of development can occur in a zone, how densely development can occur, and can place limits on building height, setbacks, how much open space must be provided in residential developments, and how many parking spaces must be provided for commercial buildings, for example.
Zoning has sometimes been blamed for encouraging Urban Sprawl. One common zoning tool is a limit on how densely houses can be built. Such a limit will lead to more land in residential use and more houses located further from downtown, resulting in loss of open space and increased commuting travel. However, zoning is also used to try to curb urban sprawl. A system of zoning rules called “Effective Agricultural Zoning” allows some residential development in agricultural areas, but does so in a way that preserves much of the farmland. With a traditional set of agricultural zoning rules for a rural area might require 10 acres of land for each new house, in order to avoid problems associated with wells and septic systems located too close to each other. However, if a 100 acre farm is converted into 10 estates, no farmland is preserved. In contrast, in an Effective Agricultural Zoning system, the owner of a 100 acre farm might be allowed to subdivide off 10 1-acre lots, resulting in 10 new homes but preserving a 90 acre farm.
a2) Preferential Tax Treatment: this policy consists of the provision of property tax relief to preserve land in its current use. An example of Preferential Tax Treatment policy is the so called “use value assessment”. A farm or woodlot may be very valuable because of its potential for development. The farmer or woodlot owner may wish to keep their land undeveloped, but might not be able to afford to pay the property taxes on the valuable land. Use value assessment allows the owner to pay taxes on the value of the land in its undeveloped use, rather than its value as a developable parcel. This reduces the property tax bill, and allows the owner to keep the land in its current state.
- The major land uses benefited from preferential taxation include farmland, forest land and in recent years, a number of states have adopted preferential tax programs for open space and recreational lands.
a3) Purchase of Development Rights (PDR): Development rights are designed to protect parcels of land that have environmentally valuable areas such as wetlands, wildlife habitat, or to protect lands that have productive agricultural value. Sometimes, when the value of a farm is higher as developable land than as a farm, the local government or a nonprofit agency may buy the development rights from the farmer. The farmer keeps the land, but the government or agency purchases an easement that prohibits development of the land. The farmer can sell the farm, but the new owner is also prohibited from developing the land. Purchase of such a conservation easement is a good way to protect specific farms of particular importance from development.
a4) Transferable Development Rights (TDR): In a TDR system, all owners of rural land are given limited development rights. If one owner wants to build more houses than he has rights to, he can buy development rights from other owners. Some areas (receiving areas) are designated as areas where owners can buy rights, other areas (sending areas) are designated as areas where owners can sell rights. Usually, local governments determine the number of rights that a bought on a case-by-case basis.
There are other planning tools that influence what land owners can and can’t do, and the incentives they face. For a more detailed discussion, the table bellow lists some useful links for the states of the CARA region. In some of this links you can find details on local government plans for Land Conservation.
State |
Weblink |
Connecticut |
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District of Columbia |
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Delaware |
http://www.state.de.us/deptagri/aglands/index%20tester.shtml |
Massachusetts |
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Maryland |
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New Jersey |
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New York |
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/greenpointwill/greenoverview.shtml |
Pennsylvania |
http://www.elibrary.state.pa.us/elibpub.asp |
Rhode Island |
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Virginia |
Other Useful links:
Transportation and Land Use and Land Conservation Policies - http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/landuse/
Land Use Planning for Public Lands - http://www.blm.gov/planning/index.html
Policy guides from the American Planning Association - http://www.planning.org/policyguides/
b) Policies that indirectly influence land use
Local, State and national policies can influence the incentives to develop land. Any policy that increases the value of developed land will stimulate development, while policies that increase the value of undeveloped land will slow development.
For farm and forest land, the value of land in undeveloped uses depends on the prices of farm and forest products. If farm or forest product prices fall, due to changes in federal farm programs or the influence of global trade, then farmers and forest owners will have more trouble making a profit, and will be more inclined to sell their land for development.
Decisions made at the local level can have a dramatic impact on the incentives to develop land. Two particular types of decisions are those related to transportation and utilities. A new road built from downtown out into the country will decrease the time it takes to commute from rural areas. This makes the rural areas more attractive for housing, increasing the value of developable land. Land owners near the new road respond to those incentives by developing their land. Also important is construction of new water and sewer lines. In many rural areas, housing development is limited by the fact that new houses must have a well and a septic system. Houses cannot be built close together, and the cost of these systems makes building a house more expensive. When water and sewer lines are built into a rural area, that area can be developed more densely and more cheaply, making it more attractive to build out the area.
Malme (1993) discusses Preferential Property Tax Treatment of Land with more detail. This document can be accessed online at http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/valuation_taxation/dl/malme_2.pdf