A core goal of smart growth is to encourage and attract investment into existing communities, and to ensure that residents in those communities have access to parks and recreational opportunities that make neighborhoods more enjoyable.

In the process, smart growth preserves farmland, ranchland and open space in rural areas by decreasing the pressure to develop there. The opposite is also true. Programs to preserve open space and farmland can aid efforts to direct growth into existing communities, protect the environment and make communities more livable. Read on to find out more about the relationship between sprawl, smart growth, and open space and farmland preservation.

SPRAWL AND LAND CONSUMPTION
SMART GROWTH AND OPEN SPACE AND FARM PRESERVATION

Sprawl and Land Consumption
In October 2002, American Farmland Trust released a report, Farming on the Edge: Sprawling Development Threatens America's Best Farmland that found that between 1992 and 1997, the U.S. paved over more than 6 million acres of farmland, an area approximately the size of Maryland. Americans developed twice as much farmland in the 1990s as in the 1980s, and we are losing high quality farmland –the land best suited for growing food – the fastest.

However, the most disturbing finding was that inefficient land use rather than economic growth was to blame for the trend. From 1982-1997, the U.S. population grew by 17 percent, while urbanized land grew by 47 percent. Over the past 20 years, the acreage per person for new housing almost doubled, and since 1994, 10-plus acre housing lots have accounted for 55 percent of the land developed.

Economic Challenges The loss of farmland and open space often causes unexpected economic challenges for rural communities. In these communities, farmland, forests, ranch land and open space tend to be the economic drivers that attract businesses, residents and tourists. Sprawling development compromises the resources that are the core of the community’s economy.

At the same time, sprawling development rarely brings about the economic benefits anticipated. While it is true that an acre of land with a new house generates more total revenue than an acre of hay or corn, the cost of providing infrastructure and services to that property is greater for residential development than for commercial, farm, or forest land. Cost of Community Services (COCS) studies conducted in more than 83 communities show that owners of farm, forest and open lands pay more in local tax revenues than it costs local government to provide services to their properties. Residential land uses, in contrast, are a net drain on municipal coffers: It costs local governments more to provide services to homeowners than residential landowners pay in property taxes. (Cost of Community Services Fact Sheet).

One land use is not by itself better than another, however, understanding the benefits and costs of different types of development can be helpful in comparing and evaluating alternative growth strategies that may include a mix of different land uses, or simply concentrate on one. COCS studies are also a useful tool for land preservation advocates, who need to dispel the myths that residential development automatically leads to lower taxes, and that farmland must be developed to ensure a community’s continued fiscal stability.


Smart Growth and Open Space and Farmland Preservation
Smart growth is an approach to development that concentrates on investing in existing communities. By directing growth to communities where people already live and work, smart growth limits the amount of farmland and open space that is developed, makes existing communities more attractive -- with a mix of housing, restaurants, parks, cafes, and jobs, and minimizes the need for new water, sewer and road infrastructure that increase taxpayer burdens.

For rural communities, smart growth means supporting town centers and Main Streets, and attracting and encouraging growth and investment in and around these centers and within existing communities, preserving the character of rural towns. In contrast, sprawling development in rural, suburban and urban areas is auto-oriented, single use development -- frequently along or at the intersection of nearby highways -- that draws economic activity out of downtowns, damaging their vitality and dramatically increasing infrastructure needs. Smart Growth, in contrast, simultaneously preserves open space and farmland while ensuring that there is an adequate supply of housing for families with a mix of incomes. Smart Growth provides residents with a mix of shops, offices, restaurants, and other services that they can get to by automobile, bus, bike or foot.

Economic Benefits Communities across the country have found that protecting open space, parks and farmland is a strategy that can be used to strengthen existing communities, attract businesses, and avoid the costs of urban and suburban sprawl. As part of a package of smart growth programs and policies, communities that offer a high quality of life including well-maintained neighborhood parks and extensive park systems consistently attract and retain businesses. For example, Portland, Oregon, which adopted extensive growth management practices beginning in the 1970s and invested in an extensive park system, has attracted numerous new companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Hyundai, which picked the city because its quality of life would be able to attract an educated workforce. “According to Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel, the computer chip manufacturer that has nearly 9,000 employees in Oregon, ‘Companies that can locate anywhere they want to will go to places that attract good people.” For more info click here.

Agriculture contributes to local economies directly through sales, job creation, support services and businesses, and by supplying lucrative secondary markets such as food processing. In many rural areas, tourism is a major industry that supports local economies, and as discussed earlier, farmland and open space impose significantly fewer costs on local governments.

For more information on the economic benefits of open space, and parks, click here.

For more information on the economic benefits of farmland preservation, click here.