The Use of Green Belts to Control Sprawl in the United States

Abstract

The United States is projected to add more than 130 million people by the year 2050, and much of this population increase will probably occur in metropolitan regions. A small number of metropolitan counties have adopted green belt strategies in an attempt to curb sprawling urban, suburban, and rural residential development in their hinterlands. These counties are using urban growth boundaries, low-density agricultural zoning, and the purchase of development rights to farmland to create and maintain green belts. The performance of green belts as a growth management tool in six counties is mixed. There has been notable success in the amount of farmland preserved in green belts compared with farmland developed. But in one-half of the counties, rates of population growth have exceeded the national average, and housing has become much less affordable than the national average. Still, the fiscal condition of these counties is strong.

Notes

1. The US Office of Management and Budget defines a metropolitan county as having a central city of at least 50, 000 people. Metropolitan counties include counties with a high degree of commuting to a county with a city of at least 50, 000 people.

2. For instance, the six New England states have no county government other than the court system. Thus, there is no county-level land-use planning. In Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, counties may adopt comprehensive plans but they are only advisory. The control of planning and zoning is exercised by hundreds of local governments— cities, townships, and villages. It is a land-use system brought from England to America in the 17th century.

3. The State of Oregon's land use planning program required local governments to adopt comprehensive plans, urban growth boundaries, and low-density farm and forestry zoning in the countryside. In 2004 Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 37, which required local governments to waive rezoning review for many rural landowners or pay them compensation. Measure 37 was overturned in 2007, but rural landowners received approval to develop more land than prior to 2004. In short, Oregon relied on regulation alone to protect its rural land from sprawl and nearly saw most of that regulation disappear.

4. In a transfer of development rights program, a landowner is given a certain number of transferable development credits by the county, which the landowner can then sell to a developer. In the process, the landowner's property will be preserved and the developer will be allowed to build projects at a higher density than normally allowed under the zoning. Montgomery County, Maryland has created the most successful transfer of development rights program in the nation to preserve farmland, with about 45, 000 acres preserved. But Montgomery County does not use a growth boundary. King County, Washington has preserved more than 130,000 acres of forestland through transferable development rights, but these lands are far from the growth boundary. In general, a transfer of development rights program is much more difficult to implement that a purchase of development rights program (Daniels & Bowers 1997).