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- Info
Land use and demographic change: Results from fast-growth counties
| Author: |
Vesterby, Marlow; Heimlich, Ralph E. |
| Date: |
1991 |
| Periodical: |
Land Economics |
| Abstract: |
Population deconcentration has been the primary force shaping changes in urban land use in the United States since World War II (Long and DeAre 1983). The rate, causes, and effects of agricultural land ur-banization received much national attention in the early 1980s (Brown et al. 1982; Dillman and Cousins 1982; Fischel 1982; NALS 1981; Vining, Plaut, and Bieri 1977). Informed opinion now discounts any threat to food and fiber production capacity from continued urbanization, but the potency of urban land-use conversion as an issue in the popular press remains strong (Simon 1990). State and local perspectives on conversion of rural land for urban uses differ from federal and other national perspectives (Anderson, Gustafson, and Boxley 1975; Barrows and Troutt 1989; Bushwick 1989). Local public concerns include maintaining open space, retaining natural systems and processes, controlling public infrastructure costs, preserving the local economic base and local self-sufficiency, promoting and protecting rural lifestyles, maintaining local specialty crops, and conserving energy. State and local measures adopted to protect rural land uses include current use assessent, purchase or transfer of development rights, agricultural districts, right-to-farm laws, large-area land-use- planning, and exclusive agricultural zoning (Coughlin et al.
X81; Heimlich 1989). Despite scholarly research and government agency findings to the contrary, the popular notion declared in newspaper head-lines is that we are consuming land at higher rates than ever before (Simon 1990). We analyze two ERS data sets on land-use change in rapidly growing counties for evidence about changes in urban land conversion processes in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s (Vesterby 1988a, 1988b; Zeimetz et al. 1976a). Our findings show land consumption rates to be constant during this period. Such data provides useful insight into the rates and dynamics of land-use change and helps state and local policymakers design timely and appropriate land retention or growth control programs: In particular, this study points out the need to account for relationships between characteristics of demographic change and resulting land-use change.
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