In a 21 April 2006 posting, Jim Bacon reports on Gov. Kaine’s commitment to “conserve” 400,000 additional acres of land in the Commonwealth by 2010. He added a note on the topic today as well. Both were right on. There is however a larger issue:
Let us be clear:
If citizens could be assured that:
The 400,000 acres of land will be used in the future only for agriculture & forestry / air & water recharge / hunting &gathering / passive recreation and other extensive land uses; and,
It was certain that those 400,000 acres will be not be developed for intensive urban land uses; then,
The conservation of 400,000 acres could be an economic, social and physical benefit to the land owners and to the public in general; but only if,
All 400,000 acres of conserved land are IN THE RIGHT LOCATIONS.
Just as clear that if the 400,000 acres are IN THE WRONG LOCATIONS they will have the opposite result:.
Preserved / conserved acres can raise the speculative value of adjacent land for urban use (“no one can build next to your five acre lot”), cause urban development to leapfrog to unprotected land in even more dysfunctional locations, waste the public investment that has already been made to serve urban land uses on the newly “conserved” land. The list goes on.
Underlying the “location” problem is the fact that there are no region-wide – much less a Commonwealth-wide – strategies or plans to provide a context for conservation actions of 40,000, 400,000 or 4,000,000 acres.
A survey of past actions document that many of the “conservation” efforts – especially high-profile “rescues” by municipal and state action – are IN THE WRONG LOCATIONS.
A compounding problem is that just the announcement of a 400,000 acre goal generates a false impression that something really meaningful is being done to rationalize human settlement patterns.
An even greater problem is that 400,000 acres is an inconsequential percentage (1.6% of 25,000,000 acres) of the land area of the Commonwealth. The maximum land area needed (minimum functional urban intensity at the Alpha Community scale) for the daily activities of 95% of the citizens (the urban residents) of the commonwealth is around 700,000 acres.
Between twice and three times that amount of land is already committed to urban activities.
Worse, vastly more land is speculatively held for future urban land uses by those that advocate scattering urban land uses outside Clear Edges. For a discussion of Clear Edges see: “Beyond the Clear Edge,”26 May 2003 at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ and the three part special report starting with “Wild Abandonment, 8 September 2003 at the same site. (Just enter the title in the search window on the home page.)
If someone has documented a different minimum density for functional settlement patterns at the Alpha Community scale, let us know. The formulas to determine minimum functional human settlement patterns are summarized in Chapter 4 Box 5 in The Shape of the Future. They are based on the human settlement patterns generated by the market over the past 50 years. The desired patterns and densities of land use for private-vehicle and shared-vehicle access are the ones for which citizens are willing to pay a premium on the basis of both acreage and square foot of built space.
An optimistic estimate is that there may be 10,000,000 acres of land already “conserved” or completely unsuitable for urban land uses. (Total unsuitability for urban land uses is not slowing down the pace of land subdivision for second home / retirement home / the hobby farm / “off the grid” and other forms of urban development.
Even if 10,000,000 acres are now conserved, that means the Commonwealth needs to “conserve” 1,000,000 acres of land a year, every year, for the next 14 years for functional human settlement patterns to emerge over the next two decades. That is just 10 times the pace of the Governor’s 400,000 acres in four years.
Spending the next 20 years to evolve functional settlement patterns may not be rapid enough given the rising cost of settlement pattern dysfunction. The impact of location-variable costs of goods and services is sapping individual, family, enterprise and agency resources. Settlement pattern dysfunction is best illustrated in the lack of access and mobility and the lack of affordable and accessible housing.
The 400,000 Acre Foolishness illustrates the systemic problem with land conservation efforts, as well intended as such efforts may be. They have not yet addressed:
1) The scale of the problem
2) The reality that there is already far more land committed to urban land use than will be needed in the foreseeable future
3) Fair and equitable ways to transition to functional human settlement patterns
We will be examine these issues in a forthcoming report on the Use and Management of Land.
These issues will also be a focus of PROPERTY DYNAMICS, coming to an Alpha Neighborhood near you soon.
EMR
