Evaluating urban containment programs

Abstract

Urban containment programs may be evaluated in terms of a theory unifying contributions from the economic, geographic and political science disciplines. The unified theory shows that successful programs will segment the urban-rural land market, remove speculative use value of rural land, and result in the urban land market valuing greenbelt proximity as an amenity.A general model to test urban containment programs against the unified theory is developed and then modified for application to Salem, Oregon. Results are fourfold. First, a gap in the locus of 2 urban and rural land values at the UGB indicates that segmentation of the urban-rural land market is associated with urban containment policies. Second, the simultaneous effect of imposing a UGB proximate to urban development and subjecting rural land to conservancy zoning is to remove the speculative value component of rural land and reveal Sinclair's (1967) underlying convex quadratic agricultural use land value gradient. This finding is important in two respects: (a) it confirms the possibi 1 ity of Sinclair's gradient, which has not been supported empirically hitherto, and (b) it suggests that a program's success in preserving greenbelt land solely for agricultural uses can be evidenced if Sinclair's gradient is revealed. Third, the conditions under which a program may fail to preserve rural land from speculative behavior will be evidenced by the traditional negatively sloping land value gradient. Fourth, where urban development is proximate to a UGB delineating greenbelts, the urban land market will value its proximity as an amenity. This finding is important in two respects: (a) it suggests that proximity to privately owned greenbelts may be valued as an amenity in the urban land market, a finding which has not been reported empirically hitherto, and (b) if an urban land market has confidence in the ability of an urban containment program to prevent sprawl into greenbelts, then it will treat greenbelt proximity as an amenity. The unified theory and methodology developed by this dissertation are generalizable to the evaluation of other urban containment ~rograms. (1) the containment of urbanization within urban growth boundaries (UGBs) and (2) the preservat-jQn of farmland solely for farm uses. Acknowled9'llE!"tsIn the first regard, Oregon's planning program specifically intends to segment the urban-rural fringe land market into distinctive urban and rural submarkets, which is largely accomplished by limiting urban services and urban development to land within a UGB. Second, because the majority of the state's growth occurs in the fertile Wi1lametteValley, Oregon's program specifically intends to protect this farmland from speculators. This is largely accomplished by imposing exceedingly restrictive "exclusive farm use" (EFU) zoning on prime agricultural farmland proximate to urban areas, and this also has the effect of creating a system of greenbelts between urban areas.Hitherto, empirically sound research demonstrating the performance of Oregon's plan...

Hedonic Analysis of Housing Prices Near the Portland Urban Growth Boundary, 1978-1990

“…Rural landscapes, which once were dominated by agricultural uses, have been converted into housing, shopping centers, roads, industrial facilities and office spaces. Urban sprawl has consumed land at a much faster rate than the population (Toulan 1965), an example being that during the l26_Qs, totaLurban population increased by 21 percent while the consumption of land for urban uses increased by 36 percent (Nelson 1984).…”

“…It is similar, as discussed earlier, to areas with lower tax rates, which tend to witness higher land and housing prices. However, Landis (1986) Knaap {1981, 1982Knaap {1981, , and 1985, andNelson (1984 and Knaap tried to give two explanations for these results, the first being that the UGB may have been imposed well beyond the reaches of viable urban developr1tent at the time, especially since the UGB encompassed 25 percent more land than necessary to achieve 100 percent buildout by the year 2000, based on urban growth projections (Knaap 1982;Knaap and Nelson 1992). The second explanation was that the UGB did not have enough time to show an effect because the Beaton et al (1977) study was conducted immediately one year after the UGB was officially recognized.…”

“…However, seven years after the Beaton et al (1977) study was conducted, Nelson (1984Nelson ( , 1986 Although Nelson's 1984 and studies used sales data for years only two years after those used by Beaton et al (1977), his study found that Salem's UGB significantly affected land values. This demonstrates Knaap's (1982) Nevertheless, Nelson's 1984 and studies demonstrate that land values varied significantly according to their distance from the boundary. The study found that land values inside the UGB decreased with distance from the urban core at locations greater than 5,000 feet from the CBD.…”

“…Accessibility factors are among the influential contributors to housing prices. Many researchers found that proximity to CBD (Lloyd and Dicken 1977;Alonso 1964;Meyer et al 1965), employment and shopping centers (Miller 1982;Waldo 1974;Harrison and Rubinfeld 1978;Brookshire et al 1982;Gamble and Downing 1982), major freeways Kelly 1992;Johnson and Ragas 1987), elementary schools (Miller 1982;Li and Brown 1980;Johnson and Lea 1982), and recreation areas such as parks, lakes and waterfront (Gamble and Downing 1982;Miller 1982;Correll et al 1978;Nelson 1984;Palmquist 1980), will affect housing prices.…”

“…The studies reviewed in this work either dealt with UGBs and their effect on land values or analyzed other growth management programs and their effect on land values and/or housing prices. The studies that dealt with the UGBs and their effect on land values (Beaton et al 1977;Knaap 1982;Nelson 1984;) employed posttest-only models in which urban and non-urban variables in the post-UGB period were compared using the method of least-squares regression. Similarly, the studies that dealt with other growth management programs and their effect on land values and/or housing prices employed posttest-only models in which postcontrol urban and non-urban variables (Gleeson 1979) and postcontrol restrictive and less restrictive zones (Beaton 1991) were compared using the method of least-squares regression.…”