Effects of Urban Growth Boundaries on Residential Development in Pierce County, Washington

Abstract

Although the literature on growth management is extensive, few researchers have explored policy-oriented evaluation methodologies. This article develops a new methodology to measure urban sprawl in order to evaluate the geographical effects of urban growth boundaries in Pierce County, Washington. The methodology utilizes residential building permit data from 1991 to 2002 that were put into a geographic information system and geocoded to the Pierce County street centerline file. The results of our study indicate that since the establishment in 1995 of urban growth boundaries there has been a substantial increase in the clustering of residential permits inside those boundaries. The implications of these findings are important for planning practitioners and the evaluation of growth management policies throughout the United States and elsewhere.

Key Words:

• evaluation methods
• geographic information system
• growth management
• urban growth boundaries
• urban sprawl

Notes

¹ For comparative scholarship on the similarities and differences between American and non-American urban growth management strategies, including UGBs and other planning tools, see chapter 10 in the edited volume by Kushner (2003). For specific discussions of the U.K.'s urban containment strategies using green belts, see Cullingworth and Naden (2000). For research on Holland's widely admired but increasingly controversial Green Heart experience, see van der Valk (1991) and Evers, Ben-Zadok, and Faludi (2000).

² In early 2005, for example, one city complained that “[Pierce County] violated Washington's Growth Management Act by ‘usurping’ local governments' authority to determine how they want to grow.” At issue was a Pierce County policy that a countywide shortage of buildable land must exist before local municipalities can add more land to their urban growth boundaries. The effect of the policy is to force cities to increase population density in existing space to avoid sprawling land-use patterns—which “takes away our individuality as a city,” according to the local mayor (Corvin 2005, B1).