Developing the Commons: The Contradictions of Growth in Exurban Montana

Abstract

Property development in exurban areas has the capacity to undermine the amenity values that undergird that development. Predicated on that contradiction, this research seeks to explain the emergence of local, informal, planning-based regulations in the traditionally antiregulatory context of rural Montana. Adopting both the insights of institutional common property theory and those of critical materialist analysis of economic growth, the work reconciles accounts of development as inherently ecologically self-destructive with those stressing creative development and adoption of rules for collective self-governance. Using a detailed case analysis of a Montana county undergoing rapid growth, it examines what drives localized land use regulation, what controls are enacted, and whether such controls are resisted or facilitated by development capital. Findings suggest that informal regulations seek to control externalities of development on valuable amenity commons and that they are adopted with the acceptance, if not encouragement, of the development community. These fragile instruments are vulnerable to opposition, however, highlighting problems of more general relevance: Growth depends on a deregulated development regime, which produces externalities that undermine the valorization of property. Localized regulatory planning regimes are therefore both a solution to contradictions inherent in growth and a potential source of future planning problems. Key Words: exurban, New West, planning, political economy.El desarrollo inmobiliario enáreas periurbanas tiene la capacidad de empeorar el valor utilitario que subyace al mercado inmobiliario. Basado en dicha contradicción, esta investigación busca explicar el surgimiento de reglamentaciones locales e informales basadas en la planificación en el contexto tradicionalmente antiregulatorio de Montana rural. Adoptando ambas perspectivas tanto de la teoría institucional de la propiedad común como aquellas de análisis crítico materialista del crecimiento económico, el trabajo concilia las versiones del *

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