Saved By Development: Preserving Environmental Areas, Farmland
Editorial Reviews
Planning, Vol. 64, No. 3, March 1998
"Most communities don't believe that they will actually achieve all of their land use goals"- goals like saving open space, farmland, environmentally-sensitive areas or historic landmarks - writes Rick Pruetz, AICP, in his massive new book Saved By Development: Preserving Environmental Areas, Farmland and Historic Landmarks with Transfer of Development Rights (1997; Arje Press; 436 pp.). Pruetz is a planner with the
City of Burbank California. He argues that communities should not be so pessimistic. If they understood the process of "transfer of development rights" (TDR) and adopted it, they would accomplish more of their goals at a minimal cost.
By now, TDR is not news. A unit of government designates a "sending area" where development is restricted, and a "receiving area" where development is made easier. Property owners in the sending area can sell the rights to develop their land to property owners in the receiving area; usually this allows the receiving owners to build at greater densities than they normally could.
If this works right, says Pruetz, this exchange creates a win-win-win situation. The government can downzone or otherwise restrict development in valued areas (sending areas) without spending scarce tax dollars to purchase the land outright or compensate irate property owners. The sending area property owners do not lose the value of potential development because they can sell those rights to those in the receiving area. Receiving area property owners can buy those rights and gain the chance to build more densely (hence more profitably), at less cost than acquiring more land.
Thus, Pruetz writes in his preface, "TDR uses the profit generated by higher density development to fund the preservation of environmentally-sensitive areas, farmland, historic landmarks and just about any other property that is important to a community."
This is hardly cutting-edge planning thought. Transferrable development rights were a feature of New York City's 1968 Landmark Preservation Law, and were upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court's Penn Central decision in 1978. TDR has helped to preserve 29,000 acres of farmland in Montgomery County, Maryland; 12,000 acres of the New Jersey Pinelands; and several hundred units of affordable housing in Seattle. And yet, in a nationwide survey Pruetz was able to find only 112 TDR programs in 107 communities. If it's so great, why isn't everybody doing it?
The answer most often given by the 558 non-TDR communities responding to Pruetz's survey was that they had not given TDR much serious consideration. Many said they preferred to use traditional zoning, which gives credence to the statement that they hadn't considered it carefully. But it is also true, as his numerous and extensive case histories show. That TDR is not an automatic success. No development rights will get transferred if the community cannot agree on receiving sites or if no one in the receiving sites wants to buy them.
Success depends, among other things, on a demand for high-density building and on government's willingness to kick-start the market. Montgomery County allows much denser building in receiving areas than would have been allowed in sending areas. Even there, the county has so far achieved only about one-third of its farmland preservation goal.
Saved By Development is about as comprehensive a treatment of this topic as one could imagine. Pruetz begins by answering 10 basic questions: What is TDR? How has it evolved? Who should know about it? What can be preserved or created with it? Where is it used? How do you create a successful TDR program? How does it compare with other techniques? What are its legal consideration? (This chapter is written by Los Angeles land-use attorney Donald Berger.) Why don't more communities use it? What is its future? Pretty good, predicts Pruetz, as population and development pressures increase.
All this takes up only one third of the book. The rest consists of 107 case studies, plus a detailed 12-step set of instructions on how to build TDR into the planning process. No sane person would read this book from cover to cover; no planner who is thinking seriously about economically regulating development would be without it.
Book Description
This is the most comprehensive guide yet published on transfer of development rights, or TDR, the market-driven technique that uses private sector profits rather than public dollars to permanently preserve environmentally-sensitive areas, agricultural land, historic sites, open space, infrastructure capacity, housing, urban scale and other important community assets.
In a step-by-step approach, this book demonstrates how to prepare regulations which motivate private property owners to voluntarily deed-restrict their land and transfer growth to areas where communities want additional development. The author is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. However, Saved By Development will be of equal interest to environmentalists, historic preservationists, farmland advocates, government officials, elected office holders and anyone else concerned about the effects of uncontrolled growth.
Transfer of development rights, or TDR, responds to a predicament faced by most communities. These communities believe that they can't protect privately-owned property because they have no funding for compensation. As explained in Saved By Development, TDR motivates owners to voluntarily preserve their properties for non-development purposes in return for being able to sell their "development rights". These development rights are purchased, not by public agencies, but by private sector developers who use them to build additional development in areas where communities want extra growth. So with TDR, development pays for preservation.
Saved By Development: Preserving Environmental Areas, Farmland
Saved By Development: Preserving Environmental Areas, Farmland,Rick Pruetz,Arje Pr,096583140X,Ecology,Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Nature,Nature/Ecology
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