Conservation Development: Residential planning with an environmentalist’s eye

Land conservation has long been central to policymaking efforts aimed at protecting sensitive ecosystems. The creation of private and public areas protected from development will likely continue to be important for environmentalists seeking to preserve vulnerable species and land tracts around the world. To that end, a relatively new tool of conservation aimed at creating protected spaces within planned residential developments has emerged. Conservation development is a method of residential planning in which homes are built closely together in order to maximize and preserve free, undeveloped space.

The paper “Guidelines and Incentives for Conservation Development in Local Land-Use Regulations,” published in the journal Conservation Biology, assesses the spread of conservation development in 414 counties in the western United States. In the west, ordinances promoting conservation development have taken off over the past decade, already accounting for 25 percent of privately conserved land in the United States. The paper’s appraisal of these efforts suggests that although it is a promising method for policymakers hoping to broker compromises between developers and conservationists, conservation development ordinances tend to lack measures needed to maximize protected space.

Overall, the ordinances examined were weak. Compliance was voluntary in 96 percent of ordinances studied. Additionally, although 86 percent of such ordinances included guidelines detailing suggested design schemes for protected lands, few actually encouraged developers to take steps to better understand their land’s ecology. Only 13 percent actually required developers to conduct ecological analysis and only 8 percent required the consultation of biological experts or specific conservation plans. Moreover, only 28 percent required the creation of a specific management plan for protected lands.

The authors suggest that the weakness of conservation development ordinances is due to the variety of policymakers’ objectives. For instance, conservation development has often been used as a tool for preservation of historically, culturally, and aesthetically significant land rather than ecological conservation. In fact, the authors note that the ordinances outlined objectives concerning the protection of culturally and economically important land as often as they did for environmentally important land.

Ultimately the paper outlines recommendations that could boost the environmental impact of conservation development ordinances. These recommendations include mandating consultation with ecological experts, “ecological site analysis”, and the development of management plans. Additionally, the authors suggest offering alternative incentives for conservation development that are less environmentally costly than density bonuses. Tax credits and streamlined review processes are among the suggested alternatives. They also recommend that the ordinances offering density bonuses should require allocating some of the additional profits to conservation efforts.

Conservation development projects are expected to become more widespread. Given their growing popularity, analysis of their efficacy is critical. This paper suggests concrete steps policymakers can take to help make conservation development an effective tool against residential overdevelopment.

Article Source: “Guidelines and Incentives for Conservation Development in Local Land-Use Regulations”, Reed et al, Conservation Biology, 2014

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