Hotspots for Growth

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about the ability of Maryland's Priority Funding Area (PFA) program to control urban sprawl. We develop an economic-based land use conversion model to estimate if the PFA program steers urban growth to locations inside targeted growth areas within a fast-growing, exurban county. The results indicate that the size of an agricultural parcel, its distance from urban parcels, its proximity to highways, the productivity of agricultural land, and location in or outside PFAs influence the probability an agricultural parcel will be converted to urban use. We find that some of the parcels experiencing the greatest market pressure for development are located outside PFAs, and Maryland's incentive-based strategy is not completely effective at preventing sprawl.

Takeaway for practice: Careful design of the location of entrances and exits on and off highways, limitation of agricultural parcel fragmentation, and vigilant control of land use change in unproductive agricultural areas can limit sprawl. Our analysis highlights, yet again, the importance of communication between transportation and land use planners.

Research support: The research was supported by funding from the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agroecology, Inc.

Keywords:

• smart growth
• Maryland
• land use change
• growth management
• sprawl

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agroecology, Inc. for financial support and to Gerrit Knaap from the National Center for Smart Growth for his insightful comments on this article.

Notes

1. All of the land values per acre as well as the value of products sold are in 2002 dollars.

2. Method taken from Greene (2003, pp. 674–678).

3. There were 4,504 agricultural parcels in 2000, 215 changed to urban over the 2000 to 2004 period. Thus, 2004 started with 4,290 agricultural parcels