Bacon's Rebellion

Development: The People Speak

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Today’s Charlottesville Daily Progress brings news of survey results from Orange County. A questionnaire on development issues was sent to 16,679 county households and 3,349 responded–a 20% rate, twice what was expected.

Almost 51% of respondents found the current county growth rate “about right” while 34% believe growth is too fast.

A whopping 74% said that growth should be directed to certain areas of the county.

Orange County is considering a subdivision ordinance to help manage growth:

A proposed change to the subdivision ordinance would allow Orange’s agricultural landowners to divide their property three times every 10 years, a decrease from the current rule of four times every four years.

Opponents say the measure would decrease the amount of land for sale, driving up prices and hurting small businesses that rely on the homebuilding industry. Some residents simply find the idea an infringement on their rights as landowners.

Proponents, however, trumpet the proposal as a way to control residential sprawl, one that dovetails with the Comprehensive Plan’s focus on directing growth to designated areas.

Jim, you christened this blog with a commentary on growth in the Fredericksburg area. This comment from one Orange citizen who was surveyed should warm your heart: “If we don’t prepare, it will be a mess just like Frederickburg.”

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  1. Barnie Day Avatar
    Barnie Day

    Be interesting to see how many of the respondents thought future growth shoul be directed into the area in which they live. Bet you a popsicle none of them did. There seems to be a genetic disposition in us, even to the DNA level, to tell someone else what they should or should not do with their property–soccer mom Darwinism, or as that wonderful acronym puts it: NIMBY!

  2. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    Reginald Shareef, your Roanoke Times colleague, had a good NIMBY story about the folks of Roanoke County that I mention in tomorrow’s Virginia Pundit Watch. Whether it’s more McMansions, affordable houseing, a jail, a methadone clinic, or a group home for the mentally ill, it does appear that our DNA forces us to viscerally oppose it while almost always saying it would fit just fine somewhere else.

  3. Barnie Day Avatar
    Barnie Day

    Reggie’s a wonderful thinker and writer. He hits a lot of the right buttons. Always makes me think.

  4. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    People in rural areas would not be so frightened by growth if it didn’t take such an awful form. Trouble is, most rural development in Virginia is scattered, low-density construction smeared along rural road “corridors.” It’s ugly and it clogs the roads with traffic. But growth of that type is an artifact, in large measure, of flawed zoning codes and comprehensive plans.

    By contrast, rural development in England or France takes a radically different form. There, growth is concentrated in small but compact enclaves. Towns and villages have a “clear edge” that clearly separates urban from rural. The result is charming–it attracts tourists. Much of what passes for rural “development” in Virginia despoils the countryside.

  5. Barnie Day Avatar
    Barnie Day

    Jim, I suppose you’re right. Is it just coincidence that areas with the most restrictive zoning, control, regulation, etc. seem to have the most problems with sprawl, congestion, and so on? I’ve noticed that we never put up ‘No Dumping’ signs until AFTER dumping has taken place. Maybe enlightened thinking about land use works the same way, you think? We don’t do it until it is too late. These days, some ‘planned’ communities can and do begin with a clean sheet of paper, but it is damned difficult to make that clean sheet somehow retroactive to ones already up and going. I generally think efforts at large-scale planning with an eye towards open spaces, controlled growth, and even so-called ‘smart’ growth will fail until we find a way to allow ownership of the remaining open spaces to realize market value utility without it actually going to market, and subsequently, to development. We’re beginning to see this in land preservation trusts, and such, but not on any sort of scale. Our mindset is such that we’re accustomed to paying folks for doing things. We’re not really comfortable yet with paying people NOT to do things–like devevlop their land. Maybe we get there. We used to pay farmers not to farm, and may still in some instances. We’ve just got to get to where we pay them not to sell their land.

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It seems to me that the growth problem is really pretty simple.

    1. Growth is going to happen unless we introduce mandatory population control.

    2. If you think we are currently conflicted about providing seats for all those school children, just wait till we have to provide them with homes.

    3. If we really want to save land, we have all the legal mecahnism in place to do so. We can raise the money and buy it.

    4. People are not willing to put their money where their mouth is because they know cannot afford it.

    5. Instead they foist the cost off on builders and landowners in the mistaken belief it won’t affect them. Check your next tax assessment.

    6. Due to five, eventually the private landowners can’t afford it either. Even Maryland and Loudoun County are divesting themselves of land.

    7. Current rules forbid them from making small developments or single house lots as their needs arise.

    8. When the pain gets too great they sell out to the big developers who have the skills, horsepower, cash, and time to ram their plans through the system.

    9. The developers laugh all the way to the bank because every home carries a high premium and the excess cost is paid by all of us. The development we see is exactly what the law allows. One third of the land now consumed by development is caused by unwise large lot restrictions.

    10. Growth continues, see Number 1.

    At least in Orange county the landowners subdivision rights have an element of time. In Fauquier county the goal is to reach that state of nirvana in which landowners have no rights forever.

    If my development rights were only one-half percent per year, I could live with that, and my development rights would go down and become slower to accumulate as the land diminishes. I could make planned decisions and consider the market.

    Instead, I have no usable rights, and in order to see something useful come of the place I will either sell it to developers, or give it to Habitat for Humanity. If the latter happens, the county will find themselves in the same boat I’m in – having nonproductive excess inventory, with no way out but development. If I’m real lucky Habitat will give me a life interest and I can live here tax free until the government comes to its senses.

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