On 24 April we posted a review of Gov. Kaine’s commitment to “conserve” 400,000 acres of land over the next four years. Our comment on a history of inappropriate locations of “conservation” actions was based on a survey we did for a client several years ago. Jim Bacon gets to work early in the day and at 6:01 AM on 25 April he asked for examples of land conservation initiatives in the wrong locations.
Jim’s question is very relevant but not easy to respond to quickly. The list needed to be up dated. We started but soon found the list growing very long. In addition, just a listing of examples without context raises more questions than it answers. The following is an attempt to put in perspective the locational dysfunction of “conservation” efforts since 1972 in the northern part of Virginia.
First some caveats:
In reviewing these examples recall that what happened in Radius Band R = 6 to R = 12 (about 70,000 acres of land in Virginia) in the 1970s is now happening to land in R = 20 to R = 50 (about 1,500,000 acres of land in Virginia).
Second, there is profound difference between “conservation” inside the Clear Edge and “conservation” outside the Clear Edge. This is the difference between “Openspace” and “Countryside.” We will not try to sort out all the differences at this time. We have chosen examples that do not turn on the definitions. (Yes, we are working on the Glossary.) We have divided our note into two sections one discussing conditions inside the logical location for the Clear Edge, the second addressing land outside the Clear Edge.
Third, what happens inside the Clear Edge around any urban enclave determines the need to add to or remove land from within a Clear Edge. Also recall that dysfunction within the Clear Edge drives families, enterprises and institutions to scatter urban land uses across the Countryside outside the Clear Edge.
If you are familiar with examples cited below, you may recall some were couched by MainStream Media in terms of lowering density to protect the “character” of the “neighborhood.” Even if not on the front burner, each had a strong conservation rationale.
We were directly or indirectly involved in each of these examples. Each case has a long, complex history. In the real world there are no short stories. These examples are brief summaries from memory and we may have omitted some important details.
INSIDE THE CLEAR EDGE
We address the examples in three categories concerning Balanced Communities, Shared-Vehicle System Station-Areas and Large-Acreage Initiatives.
Conservation Initiatives Thumping the Evolution of Balanced Communities
Huntley Meadows Park was a surplus World War II Navy radio antenna field that was used by Federal Highway Administration to test asphalt paving after the war. Beavers started to dam up Barnyard Run on the site, recreating wetlands that pre-revolutionary farmers had drained to make the land useable for agriculture.
Residents with lots that backed up to the site lobbied for the surplus federal property to become a park to thwart planned roadways from being extended through the site.
Huntley Meadows Park is now a nice place for bird watching and nature education. There is a need for parks and useable Openspace throughout the urban fabric, but …
There is was (and is) no plan for the Balanced Community that should (and eventually will have to) evolve in southeastern Fairfax County. This asphalt test site along with the surplus Belvoir Proving Grounds, the recycled Lorton Reformatory site and Ft. Belvoir itself together with the gravel pits that became Kingstowne and the existing development along US Route 1 plus major parts of ‘Greater Springfield / Franconia’ should have been viewed as an opportunity to create a Balanced Community and not be chopped up into what Jim Bacon correctly called “pods” in his 3 April column “Pod People” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
Why bother to reconsider this conservation decision?
You may recall the Pentagon is planning to move 20,000 or more military jobs to Ft. Belvoir. It is widely agreed that lack of mobility and access will be a result of this shift in jobs.
It would help considerably if Fairfax County Parkway and Van Dorn Street had been extended to US Route 1. That was thwarted for the time being in large part by creating Huntley Meadows Park.
It would be even better to evolve a settlement pattern that supported more fuel efficient mobility systems than private-vehicles to citizens to the those new jobs as well as to services and recreation including places to birdwatch.
It would have been much better to have a Balanced Community in southeastern Fairfax so there would be housing, services, recreation and amenity to balance with the relocated military jobs and other jobs that would be a natural fit in the community but for congestion and high prices due to imbalance.
Now a few of the families that could be living in Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community are living in pods like Jim Bacon’s pod. Some are really nice pods, some not so nice, but all are pods. The rest are living in eastern Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania Counties and are now spreading to Caroline County and beyond.
As documented by the 87 ½ Percent Rule, almost all the scattered urban residents are now living in exactly the same pattern at the Unit-scale and the Dooryard-scale as they would if their home was in the sustainable pattern of a Balanced Community. The difference is that the Units and Dooryards of which the Clusters, Neighborhoods and Villages of the Balanced Community would be composed are scattered over half a million acres.
The Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community of 60,000 +/- acres could be home to over 600,000 people with nearly every family having access to the 40% of the land in the Community that could be openspace if intelligently planned. Now openspace is available to some pod residents – primarily those who live on lots that back up to a park – and those who drive there in their car to a park. Did someone say gas prices are going up? Take another look at Jim’s column on the Pod People.
Think about the traffic in the I-95 Corridor south of the Occquan River if 400,000 fewer people who derive their livelihood north of the Occquan River were not scattered in Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and beyond.
Think about the 500,000 acres of land south of the Occquan that would have been naturally “conserved” because there would be no need to develop it in the first place.
Think about the billions of dollars it will take to retrofit settlement patterns to evolve a Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community.
Think of the angst of having to run new roads, rails and sewer lines through all those nice backyard parks. We did that through Rocky Run Stream Valle Park and it is not easy or cheap.
Think about what may happen due to the cost of rebuilding places like Greater New Orleans and all the other Beta components where Pod People now live. It may mean there is no resources for retrofitting southeastern Fairfax. You may have heard about the prospect of Bangladesh on Potomac in 20 years.
This is not hindsight. As a member of the Southeast Fairfax Redevelopment Authority we told politicians they were selling the future down the river.
This is also not a unique case. Jim and others may recall the map showing the location of the Core’s of 16 potential Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge in the northern part of Virginia. We presented this map at the Spring of 2003 “Shaping the Future” certificate program. There is a “conservation” story in every one of those potential Balanced Communities, not all as clear as Southeast Fairfax but all bad.
Shared-Vehicle System Station-Areas
No land is more important in the evolution of functional human settlement patterns than the 500 to 1,000 acres nearest the station platform of any high-capacity shared-vehicle systems. Shared-vehicle systems like METRO are very expensive and must have a balance of ridership and system capacity to work efficiently.
We briefly reviewed the history of the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station area in our 28 March posting “METRO WEST – 22 Years Too Late.” Nottoway Park and Oakton High School were carved out of the 800 acres of vacant land near station. The existence of vacant and underutilized land was the reason the METRO station was located there and not in Tysons Corner.
However, as soon as the station location decision was made, the Fairfax supervisors moved to take as much land as possible out of play. East Blake Lane Park came along later and was a trade-off to secure approval of a pod of townhouses off of US Route 29 in the station-area.
With intelligent planning in the station-area nearly all the 50,000 to 80,000 residents could have had access to openspace, not just those who back up to a park or get in a car to drive there. They could have walked to jobs and services as well.
You may have heard that gas prices are going up and METRO costing more and more each year because of unbalanced ridership?
From 1973 through 1990 we worked on five projects in the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station-area. “Conservation” was a theme in both governance practitioner and resident opposition to functional settlement patterns in the station-area. This has been the case in many other station-areas. METRO – West is a step in the right direction but think how much better the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station area and all the other station areas might have been with a more intelligent view of “conservation.”
Large-Acreage Conservation Initiatives
The “preservation” of part of the watershed on the Fairfax (north) side of the Occquan Reservoir (a potable water resource) was sold as a “conservation” measure. This is what we called the 83,000 Acre Occquan 5-Acre Lot Lifestyle Strategy. We documented the context and foolishness of this action at the time but will spare you the details. It really helped a lot of speculative land owners who could sell off 5 acre lots rather than having to wait for the market to develop for functional components of settlement.
In summary there would have been less polluting runoff into the water supply and a place for 800,000 citizens to call home and find work, services and recreation if planned and developed in an intelligent, balanced and more sustainable manor. That is more citizens than the total now living in Loudoun and Prince William Counties combined. We will address the issue of 5 and 10 acre horse farms in our forthcoming “Use and Management of Land.”
Had the 1965 plan for the distribution of land uses for the northern part of Virginia been followed, all the urban development supporting the National Capital Subregion in Virginia would have been inside Radius=20-Miles. There would also have been Countryside supporting urban enclaves which we call Disaggregated But Balanced Communities inside their own Clear Edges. See Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005 and “Reality Based Regionalism,” 17 October 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
Had the National Capital Subregion expanded in a rational manner there would be no need for other large-acreage “conservation” initiatives such as the “Rural Crescent” in Prince William County. The “Rural Crescent” is well on the way to becoming 80,000 acres of 10 acres lots with a generous scattering of 1-, 3- and 5-acre subdivisions and 7-11s (aka, low density pods). In twenty years it will be closer to “lunar crescent” than “rural crescent.” Or perhaps lunatic crescent?
On both sides of the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion there are both large and small conservation-excused inappropriate actions taking place. One of our favorites is the attempt to “save” an former farmstead that the recently deceased owner explicitly wanted developed. The site is next to the RV sales lot not far from Wal*Mart and Home Depot in the southwest quadrant of I-66 and VA 234 Business in Greater Manassas.
The site in question is right across I-66 from a new million-foot-square-foot +/- big box center. This new center backs up to Manassas National Battlefield Park. The vast majority of those who go to the new big box center has to 1.) drive through Manassas National Battlefield Park, 2.) drive under I-66 and take a left turn against two lanes of traffic or 3) use the constrained I-66 / VA Business 234 interchange.
If Greater Manassas / western Prince William County needed another big box center (most would suggest the answer is “no”) the “conservation” site behind the RV sales lot would make a lot more sense than the site that was developed. A better idea would be to redevelopment of the entire Greater Manassas urbanized area into a West Prince William / Greater Manassas Balanced Community.
This vignette suggests that Greater Manassas / western Prince William is well on the way to becoming another Southeastern Fairfax. (For a view of the other end of the 15,000 acre West Prince William triangle See “Anatomy of Bottleneck: The US route 29/Interstate 66 Interchange at Gainesville” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com )
In summary, these inside the Clear Edge examples are not unique cases. They are the norm. See “The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com .
OUTSIDE THE CLEAR EDGE
This brief review documents the growing dysfunction inside the logical location for a Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion. Much of the dysfunction is rooted in misunderstandings concerning the role of “conservation.” The facts also document why “conserving” a parcel here and a parcel there outside the Clear Edge is Foolishness – or worse.
An overview of how to understand this reality starts with the First Natural Law of Human Settlement Pattern:
A= PiR2.
Recall that, as noted above, “what happened in Radius Band R = 6 to 12 (about 70,000 acres in Virginia) in the 1970s is now happening in R = 20 to 50 (about 1,500,000 acres in Virginia).”
While the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion has now moved out to between R=22 to R=25, most of the 1,500,000 acres between R = 20 and R = 50 is land that should not be devoted to urban land uses.
Preventing urban scatteration and thus dysfunctional human settlement patterns in this area is critical if citizens are to achieve functional, sustainable places to live, work and play. All of the 1,500,000 acres outside the Clear Edges around the components of the Balanced But Disaggregated Communities in the Countryside needs to be “conserved” in order to:
1) Provide a market to evolve a viable Urbanside inside the Clear Edge around the National Capital Subregion’s Core, and
2) Provide the context for viable components of Countryside throughout the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region.
We noted in the original post on the 400,000 Acre Foolishness (24 April 2006) that “preserved / conserved acres can:
1) Raise the speculative value of adjacent land for urban use (“no one can build next to your five acre lot”),
2) Cause urban development to leapfrog to unprotected land in even more dysfunctional locations and,
3) Waste the public investment that has already been made to serve urban land uses on the newly “conserved” land.”
At this point the parcels that are candidates for “conservation” are awash in a vast area that is a checkerboard of interests and expectations. There are 1,500,000 acres inside R = 50 in Virginia alone. There are up to 10,000,000 acres in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania around the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. There are at least 14,000,000 acres Commonwealth-wide in Virginia outside the three New Urban Regions and the other urban enclaves where over 85 percent of the population resides.
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) uses municipal “comprehensive” plans to determine the appropriateness of parcels for conservation. Other groups, especially land trusts set up to preserve a specific parcel or interest, are said not to follow such criteria. The municipal “comprehensive” plan may not be a useful guide. See “The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com
Note that every one of the problems listed in the Inside the Clear Edge review above was done in conformance with a municipal comprehensive plan – although in some cases the “comprehensive” plans were amended to “conform” after the political decision was made. VOF leadership is aware of the issues outlined here and are doing as much as they can without broader public understanding and therefore political support.
Are there threshold criteria that can be applied? Of course.
New conserved land should be next to existing protected land or be of a scale and in a location that the land can become the anchor for a major new agglomeration of conserved land. It is, however, the holes in the donut near these preserved places where the greatest negative impact from raising the value for scattered urban land use comes home to roost. Our experience as a member of the Maryland Environmental Trust (MDET plays the role of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation in the Commonwealth) suggests that only when the three major issues noted in our original post (and rephrased below) are addressed can sound and rational principles and criteria be articulated.
Major Countryside resources such as the Appalachian Trail or a major viewshed can be anchors of land conservation efforts. Our experience as the Vice Chair for Stewardship of the Maryland chapter of the Nature Conservancy when the chapter Board was faced with finding a context for 11 “ecological gems” that had been donated to the Conservancy over the prior 30 years sharpened our appreciation for the problems encountered.
In this discussion we leave aside the entire issue of who benefits from actions to conserve land and who pays the ultimate costs. See Jim Bacon’s 24 April post on purchase of development rights and easements.
A recent study by Resources for the Future (RRF) titled “The Value of Open Space: Evidence From Studies of Nonmarket Benefits” documents how far the “state-of-the-art” is from establishing a fair value for “open space.”
The first paragraph of the Executive Summary of the RRF report includes this sentence. “And in rapidly growing urban and suburban area, any preserved land can offer relief from congestion and other negative effects of development.” That sort of misinformation is the cause of the Huntley Meadows Park problem.
Conservation of land a few acres here and a few acres there in the 1,500,000 acres within R=50, or within the 14,000,000 acres of land Commonwealth-wide that need protection will not solve any known problem until there is recognition of:
1) The scale and scope of the problem and the difference between and the role of “Openspace” and “Countryside”
2) The reality that there is already far more land committed to urban land use than will be needed in the foreseeable future
3) The need to establish a fair and equitable ways to transition to functional human settlement patterns
A first step is to develop a “Wright Plan” for Virginia that provides a rational basis for defining Clear Edges for the urban development in the New Urban Regions and the Urban Support Regions of the Commonwealth. This will help citizens understand the difference between Openspace and Countryside.
It is not just “open space.” Conserving 400,000 acres of “open space” could do more harm than good if it is scattered in THE WRONG LOCATIONS.
Note:
The entire first paragraph of the Conclusion in the RRF study noted above is a dictionary of error with respect to understanding human settlement patterns. It will be the subject of further review in our forthcoming report on “Use and Management of Land.” Also see our three columns on Vocabulary starting with “The Foundation of Babble” 28 November 2005.
EMR
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