A
root cause of the lack of support for
comprehensive, Commonwealth-wide land conservation
efforts is failure to understand the scope and
depth of the current status of land vulnerability
to scattered urban land uses.
The
need for more extensive land conservation is
obscured by Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial
Ignorance in the general population. It is
exacerbated by the lack of quantification that
clouds the perception of conservation
professionals and concerned citizens.
An
abysmal lack of meaningful quantification results
in the pervasive obliviousness to reality and
hobbles land conservation efforts in the
Commonwealth of Virginia.
Disclaimer
The
following material is not:
Summary
The
following material demonstrates beyond a shadow of
a doubt that:
Taken
together, all the current conservation efforts are
ineffective in creating a balance between Open
Land and urban land. A balance between the
Urbanside (including Openspace) and the
Countryside is essential to a prosperous, stable
and sustainable society.
The
current trajectory of urbanization will cause the
Commonwealth to evolve a profoundly unsustainable
distribution of urban and nonurban land uses. The
principal culprits include:
These
facts might be thought of as “The Really
Inconvenient Truth.”
The
Big Picture
There
are about 25 million acres of land in Virginia.
(The acreages and percentages in this document are
rounded for ease of understanding.)
20
Percent: Perhaps 20 percent (5 million acres)
of the land area in Virginia is “conserved” in
relatively large (200 acres +/-) contiguous
agglomerations – the National Forests, National
Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, State Forests,
State Parks, State Wildlife Management Areas,
large municipal and subregional agency parks and
agglomerations of private holdings with permanent
conservation restrictions.
10
Percent: There is now perhaps 10 percent (2.5
million acres) of the 25 million acres in Virginia
devoted to or actively held for intensive urban
land uses.
There
are three fundamental problems illustrated by
these numbers:
That
equation may not seem alarming until one considers
the numbers more closely.
Urban
Virginia
The
Commonwealth of Virginia is a vital part of the
most dynamic and prosperous urban nation-state in
history. Over 95 percent of the population of
Virginia is engaged in urban activities, so it is
reasonable to start with the land needed for
Virginia citizens’ every day urban activities.
The
citizens of the Commonwealth can efficiently use
(at minimum sustainable density at the Alpha
Community scale of 10 persons per acre) only about
three percent (700,000 acres) of land for
intensive urban land uses. These are maximum areas
(minimum densities) and much of the urbanized land
is already developed at higher densities. Old
Town, The Fan and other very desirable components
of Urban Virginia have density ranges from 50 to
100 persons per acre at the village scale. Much of
the affordable and accessible housing averages
from 30 to 50 persons per acre throughout the
Commonwealth. For this reason, 700,000 acres is a
good working number for the amount of land
realistically needed for all the intensive urban
activities of all Virginians.
It
is important to understand that this 700,000 acres
is not the ecological footprint of Virginia’s
citizens but rather is the amount needed for daily
activity. There is a profound difference between
the area for daily activity and the ecological
footprint. Most of the ecological footprint covers
areas in the Countryside (food and fiber) and in
other regions and other continents. These two
numbers are discussed elsewhere in The Use and
Management of Land.
The
bottom line is that there is more than three
times more land already devoted to urban uses
(or held/ planned/zoned for intensive urban land
uses) than for which there is a foreseeable
need.
To
achieve a sustainable trajectory, it is imperative
to shrink the amount of land devoted to and held
for urban land uses. In the following discussions
we use a generous four percent (one million) acres
as the target for urban land. This area would
accommodate intensive urban activities for the
foreseeable future in the Commonwealth.(1)
Nonurban
Virginia
With
respect to the nonurban lands – the focus of
this discussion – the 20 percent number should
raise alarm bells among those concerned with land
and water conservation: If 20 percent is protected
for open land (Countryside land uses) and four
percent is needed for urban land uses, then 76
percent is unprotected from conversion to
scattered urban land use.
The
bottom line is that 19 million more acres (76
percent) of the Commonwealth needs to be protected
from further scatteration of urban land uses. The
unprotected 19 million acres of land in the
Commonwealth, including most of the land within
100 miles of the three New Urban Regions that fall
all or in part in the Commonwealth, is becoming a
checkerboard of conserved and urbanized/exploited/
mined land.
If
current trends continue, at best it will be a 50/50
split instead of a the 4 percent/96 percent ratio
that is the basis for a sustainable Urbanside and
sustainable Countryside in the Commonwealth. (For
a overview of the amount of land subject to the
most intense pressure from scattered urban land
uses see “Stark Contrast: Two Views of the Road
Ahead,” May 2001, S/PI.)
Under
the Hood
The
maximum land area needed (minimum functional urban
intensity at the Alpha Community scale) for the
daily activities of 95 percent of the citizens
(the urban residents) of the Commonwealth is
around 700,000 acres. Rounding this number up to
1,000,000 provides a very generous upper bound for
the amount of land for urban uses needed within
Clear Edges. (For a discussion of Clear Edges see:
“Beyond
the Clear Edge,” May 26, 2003, and the
three-part special report starting with “Wild
Abandonment," Sept. 8, 2003.)
Between
two and four times that amount of land (let us
take three times as a conservative estimate) is
already committed to, or held for, urban
activities. Even worse, vastly more land is
speculatively held for future urban land uses by
those that advocate, and benefit from, scattering
urban land uses outside Clear Edges.
The
VA GAP analysis found that there were about
2,225,000 acres of public and private land managed
for conservation purposes in Virginia. The U.S.
Forest Service holdings accounts for two thirds of
this acreage. The vast majority of this land is
along the western boundary of the Commonwealth,
far from the Cores of the three New Urban Regions
that fall all or in part in the Commonwealth.
An
optimistic estimate is that there may be five
million acres of land already “conserved” in
large federal, Commonwealth, municipal and private
holdings.
There
is additional land that is “completely
unsuitable for urban land uses.” The fact that
land is “completely unsuitable for urban land
uses” is not slowing down the pace of land
subdivision for second home/retirement home/hobby
farms/ “off-the-grid- living” and other forms
of urban development. Land suitability is not a
useful metric for considering the potential for
scatteration of urban land uses. (For a further
exploration of the issues raised in this section
see the Outside the Clear Edge section of the End
Note.)
The
Relevance of a 400,000-Acre Goal
In
late April of 2006 Gov. Timothy M. Kaine committed
to “conserve” 400,000 additional acres of land
in the Commonwealth by 2010. In response we posted
at Bacon’s Rebellion blog, “400,000
ACRE FOOLISHNESS.” The following is an
edited version of that posting:
For
those concerned with conservation, to conserve
400,000 acres over the next four years sounds like
a major step in the right direction. It might be
for one county, but not the entire Commonwealth
which is roughly 25 million acres. It may be a
“politically realistic” goal but not an
ecologically functional goal.
Let
us be clear about the value of “saving”
400,000 acres: If citizens of the Commonwealth
could be assured that the 400,000 acres of land
will be used in the future for agriculture &
forestry/air & water recharge/hunting &
gathering/passive recreation and other extensive
land uses, then the conservation of 400,000 acres
could be an economic, social and physical benefit
to the land owners and to the public in general --
but only if, all 400,000 acres of conserved land
are in the right locations. (See End Note
for a discussion of “right” and “wrong”
locations of land conservation actions.)
It
is just as clear that if the 400,000 acres are
conserved in the wrong locations, they will
have the opposite results. (See End Note.)
Preserved/conserved
acres in the wrong locations could and often does:
The
list goes on. Underlying the “location”
problem is the fact that there are no region-wide,
much less Commonwealth-wide, strategies or plans
to provide a context for conservation actions of
40,000, 400,000 or 4,000,000 acres. A survey of
past actions documents that many of the
“conservation” efforts – especially
high-profile “rescues” by municipal and state
action – are in the wrong locations. (See End
Note.)
A
compounding problem is that the announcement of a
400,000-acre goal without a context to evaluate it
generates a false impression that something really
meaningful is being done to rationalize human
settlement patterns – in the Urbanside or in the
Countryside. A total of 400,000 acres is an
inconsequential percentage (1.6 percent of 25
million acres) of the land area of the
Commonwealth.
The
Bottom Line
Even
if five million acres are now “conserved,”
that means the Commonwealth needs to
“conserve” 1 million acres of land a year,
every year, for the next 19 years for there to be
a suitable framework for functional human
settlement patterns. That is 10 times the pace of
the Governor’s 400,000 acres in four years. Even
spending 19 years to remove land from the
potential of urban scatteration may not be rapid
enough, given the rising cost of settlement
pattern dysfunction.
The
impact of not fairly allocating location-variable
costs of goods and services is sapping individual,
family, enterprise and agency resources.
Settlement pattern dysfunction is best illustrated
in the lack of access and mobility and the lack of
affordable and accessible housing. The broadly
publicized 400,000 acre “goal” illustrates a
systemic problem with land conservation efforts,
as well intended as such efforts may be. No one
has yet addressed:
1.
The scale of the land conservation problem.
2.
The reality that there is already far more land
committed to urban land use than will be needed
in the foreseeable future.
3.
Fair and equitable ways to transition to more
functional human settlement patterns.
4.
The dramatic impact of land conservation in the
“right” and the “wrong” locations
explored in the End Note.
PROPERTY
DYNAMICS provides a strategy to bring these
critical issues into the arena of public
discussion.
Quantification
End Note
Our
comment on a history of inappropriate locations of
“conservation” efforts is based on a survey
for an S/PI client several years ago. A request
for examples of land conservation initiatives in
the wrong locations is relevant but not easy to
provide. The original list needed to be updated
but quickly grew quite long. In addition, a list
of examples without context raises more questions
than it answers. The following is an attempt to
put in perspective the locational dysfunction of
several “conservation” efforts since 1972 in
the northern part of Virginia.
Some
caveats:
First,
in reviewing these examples, recall that what
happened in Radius Band R=6 Miles to R=12 Miles
(about 70,000 acres of land in Virginia) in the
1970s is now happening to land in R=20 Miles to
R=50 Miles (about 1.5 million acres of land in
Virginia).
Second,
there is profound difference between
“conservation” inside the Clear Edge and
“conservation” outside the Clear Edge. This is
the difference between “Openspace” and
“Countryside.” We will not try to sort
out all the differences at this time. We have
chosen examples that do not turn on these
definitions. We have divided the End Note into two
sections – one discussing conditions inside the
logical location for the Clear Edge, the second
addressing land outside the Clear Edge.
Third,
what happens inside the Clear Edge around any
urban enclave determines the need to add to or
remove land from within a Clear Edge. Also recall
that dysfunction within the Clear Edge drives
families, enterprises and institutions to scatter
urban land uses across the Countryside outside the
Clear Edge.
If
you are familiar with examples cited below, you
may recall some were positioned by MainStream
Media in terms of lowering density to protect the
“character” of the “neighborhood.” Even if
not on the front burner, each initiative had a
strong conservation rationale.
The
author was directly or indirectly involved in each
of these examples. Each case has a long, complex
history. In the real world, there are no short
stories. These examples are brief summaries from
memory, and we may have omitted some important
details.
I.
Inside the Clear Edge
We
address the examples in three categories
concerning Balanced Communities, Shared-Vehicle
System Station-Areas and Large-Acreage
Initiatives.
Conservation
Initiatives Trumping the Evolution of Balanced
Communities
Huntley
Meadows Park was a surplus World War II Navy radio-antenna
field that was used by the Federal Highway
Administration to test asphalt paving after the
war. Beavers started to dam up Barnyard Run on the
site, recreating “wetlands” that
pre-revolutionary farmers had drained to make the
land useable for agriculture.
Residents
with lots that backed up to the site lobbied for
the surplus federal property to become a park to
thwart planned roadways from being extended
through the site. Huntley Meadows Park is now a
nice place for bird watching and nature education.
There is a need for parks and useable Openspace
throughout the urban fabric, but ...
There
was (and is) no plan for the Balanced Community
that should (and eventually will have to) evolve
in southeastern Fairfax County. This asphalt test
site, along with the surplus Belvoir Proving
Grounds, the recycled Lorton Reformatory site and
Ft. Belvoir itself, together with the gravel pits
that became Kingstowne and the existing
development along U.S. Route 1 plus major parts of
‘Greater Springfield/Franconia’ should have
been viewed as an opportunity to create a Balanced
Community and not be chopped up into what Jim
Bacon correctly called “pods” in his April 3,
2006, column, “Pod
People.”
Why
bother to reconsider this “conservation”
decision?
You
may recall the Pentagon is planning to move 20,000
or more military jobs to Ft. Belvoir. It is widely
agreed that a loss of mobility and access in
southeastern Fairfax County will be a result of
this shift in jobs. It would help considerably if
Fairfax County Parkway and Van Dorn Street had
been extended to US Route 1. Construction of these
planned improvements was thwarted by creating
Huntley Meadows Park.
It
would be even better to evolve a settlement
pattern that supported more fuel-efficient
mobility systems than private-vehicles for
citizens to get to the new jobs. It would have
been even better to have a Balanced Community in
southeastern Fairfax so there would be housing,
services, recreation and amenity to balance with
the relocated military jobs and other jobs that
would be a natural fit in the community but for
congestion and high prices due to imbalance.
Now
a few of the families that could be living in a
Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community are living
in “pods” like the ones Jim Bacon describes.
Some are really nice pods; some not so nice, but
all are pods. The rest are living in eastern
Prince William, Stafford and Spotsylvania Counties
and are now spreading to Caroline County and
beyond.
As
documented by the 87½ Percent Rule, almost all
the scattered urban residents are now living in
exactly the same pattern at the Unit-scale and the
Dooryard-scale as they would if their home was in
the sustainable pattern of a Balanced Community.
The difference is that the Units and Dooryards of
which the Clusters, Neighborhoods and Villages of
the Balanced Community would be composed are
instead scattered over half a million acres.
The
Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community of 60,000
+/- acres could be home to over 600,000 people
with nearly every family having access to the 40
percent of the land in the Community that could be
openspace if intelligently planned. Now openspace
is available to some pod residents – primarily
those who live on lots that back up to a park –
and to those who drive to the park. Did someone
say gas prices are going up?
Traffic
in the I-95 Corridor south of the Occoquan River
would be dramatically reduced if 400,000 fewer
people who derive their livelihood north of the
Occoquan River were not scattered in Prince
William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and beyond.
As
much as 500,000 acres of land south of the
Occoquan would have been “conserved” because
there would be no need to develop it in the first
place. t will cost millions of dollars to
retrofit settlement patterns so that Southeastern
Fairfax can evolve to become a Balanced Community.
It will require new roadways, new rails and new
sewer lines through backyard parks.
Huntley
Meadows is not a unique case. There are
approximately 16 potential Balanced Communities
inside the Clear Edge in the northern part of
Virginia. There is a “conservation”
story in every one of those potential Balanced
Communities, not all as clear as Southeast Fairfax
but all bad.
Shared-Vehicle
System Station-Areas
No
land is more important in the evolution of
functional human settlement patterns than the 500
to 1,000 acres nearest the station platform of any
high-capacity shared-vehicle system. Shared-
vehicle systems like METRO are very expensive and
must have a balance of ridership and system
capacity to work efficiently.
We
briefly reviewed the history of the
Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station area in our 28 March
posting “METRO
WEST – 22 Years Too Late.” Nottoway Park
and Oakton High School were carved out of the 800
acres of vacant land near the station. The
existence of vacant and underutilized land was the
reason the METRO station was located there and not
in Tysons Corner. However, as soon as the station
location decision was made, the Fairfax
supervisors moved to take as much land as possible
out of play. (East Blake Lane Park came along
later and was a trade-off to secure approval of a
pod of townhouses off of U.S. Route 29 in the
station-area.)
With
intelligent planning in the station-area, nearly
all the 50,000 to 80,000 residents could have had
access to openspace, not just those who back up to
a park or get in a car to drive there. They could
have walked to jobs and services as well.
You
may have heard that gas prices are going up, and
that METRO costs are rising each year because of
unbalanced ridership?
From
1973 through 1990, we worked on five projects in
the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station-area.
“Conservation” was a theme in both governance
practitioner and resident opposition to functional
settlement patterns in the station-area.
This
has been the case in many other station-areas.
METRO-West is a step in the right direction, but
think how much better the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU
station area and all the other station areas might
have been with a more intelligent view of
“conservation.”
Large-Acreage
Conservation Initiatives
The
“preservation” of part of the watershed on the
Fairfax (north) side of the Occoquan Reservoir (a
potable water resource) was sold as a
“conservation” measure. This is what we called
at the time “The 83,000-Acre Occoquan 5-Acre Lot
Lifestyle Strategy.”
We
documented the context and foolishness of this
action at the time but will spare you the details.
It really helped a lot of speculative land owners
who could sell off five-acre lots rather than wait
for the market to develop for smaller lots that
would become Dooryards and Clusters in functional
components of settlement.
In
summary, there would have been less polluting
runoff into the water supply and a place for
800,000 citizens to call home and find work,
services and recreation if planned and developed
in an intelligent, balanced and more sustainable
manor. That is more citizens than the total now
living in Loudoun and Prince William Counties
combined.
We
will address the issue of five- and 10-acre horse
farms in our forthcoming Use and Management of
Land.
Had
the 1965 plan for the distribution of land uses
for the northern part of Virginia been followed,
all the urban development supporting the National
Capital Subregion in Virginia would have been
inside Radius=20 Miles. There would also have been
Countryside-supporting urban enclaves which we
call “Disaggregated but Balanced Communities”
inside their own Clear Edges. (See "Regional
Rigor Mortis,” June 6, 2005, and “Reality
Based Regionalism,” Oct. 17, 2005.)
Had
the National Capital Subregion expanded in a
sustainable manner, there would be no need for
other large-acreage “conservation” initiatives
such as the “Rural Crescent” in Prince William
County. The “Rural Crescent” is well on
the way to becoming 80,000 acres of 10-acre
lots with a generous scattering of one-, three-
and five-acre subdivisions and 7-11s (aka,
low-density pods).
In
20 years, it will be closer to “lunar
crescent” than “rural crescent.” Or perhaps
lunatic crescent? On both sides of the logical
location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the
National Capital Subregion, there are both large
and small conservation-excused inappropriate
actions taking place. One of our favorites is the
attempt to “save” a former farmstead that the
recently deceased owner explicitly wanted
developed. The site is next to the RV sales lot
not far from Wal-Mart and Home Depot in the
southwest quadrant of I-66 and VA 234 Business in
Greater Manassas.
The
site in question is right across I-66 from a new
million-square-foot +/- big box center. This new
center backs up to Manassas National Battlefield
Park. The vast majority of those who go to the new
big box center must:
If
Greater Manassas/western Prince William County
needed another big box center (most would suggest
the answer is “no”), the “conservation”
site behind the RV sales lot would make a lot more
sense than the site that was developed. A better
idea would be to redevelop the entire Greater
Manassas urbanized area into a West Prince
William/Greater Manassas Balanced Community.
This
vignette suggests that Greater Manassas/ western
Prince William is well on the way to becoming
another Southeastern Fairfax. (For a view of the
other end of the 15,000 acre West Prince William
triangle, See “Anatomy
of Bottleneck: The US Route 29/Interstate 66
Interchange at Gainesville.”
In
summary, these inside-the-Clear-Edge examples are
not unique cases. They are the norm. See “The
Role of Municipal Planning in Creating
Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns.”
II.
Outside the Clear Edge
The
prior section documents the growing dysfunction
inside the logical location for a Clear Edge
around the Core of the National Capital Subregion.
Much of this dysfunction is rooted in
misunderstandings concerning the role of
“conservation.” The following examples
document why “conserving” a parcel here and a
parcel there outside the Clear Edge is foolishness
– or worse.
An
overview of how to understand this reality starts
with the First Natural Law of Human Settlement
Pattern: A= PiR2. Recall that, as noted above,
“what happened in Radius Band R=6 Miles to 12
Miles (about 70,000 acres in Virginia) in the
1970s is now happening in R=20 Miles to 50 Miles
(about 1.5 million acres in Virginia).”
While
the logical location of the Clear Edge around the
Core of the National Capital Subregion has now
moved out to between R=22 Miles to R=25 Miles,
most of the 1.5 million acres between R=20 Miles
and R=50 Miles is land that should not be devoted
to urban land uses.
Preventing
urban scatteration and thus dysfunctional human
settlement patterns in this area is critical if
citizens are to achieve functional, sustainable
places to work, live, seek services and
participate in leisure activities (aka, work and
play).
All
of the 1.5 million acres outside the Clear Edges
around the components of the Balanced but
Disaggregated Communities in the Countryside needs
to be “conserved” in order to:
1.
Create a market sufficient to support the
evolution of a viable Urbanside inside the Clear
Edge around the National Capital Subregion’s
Core, and
2.
Provide
the context for viable components of Countryside
throughout the Washington-Baltimore New Urban
Region.
We
noted in the original post “The
400,000 ACRE FOOLISHNESS” that
“preserved/conserved” land in the wrong
locations can:
1.
Raise the speculative value of adjacent land for
urban use (“no one can build next to your five-acre
lot”),
2.
Cause
urban development to leapfrog to unprotected
land in even more dysfunctional locations and,
3.
Waste
the public investment that has already been made
to serve urban land uses on the newly
“conserved” land.”
At
this point, the parcels that are candidates for
“conservation” are awash in a vast area that
is a checkerboard of interests and expectations.
There are 1.5 million acres inside R=50 in
Virginia alone. There are up to 10 million
acres in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and
Pennsylvania around the Washington-Baltimore New
Urban Region.
There
are at least 14 million acres Commonwealth- wide
in Virginia outside the three New Urban Regions
and the other urban enclaves where over 85 percent
of the population resides.
The
Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) uses municipal
“comprehensive” plans to determine the
appropriateness of parcels for conservation. Other
groups, especially land trusts, set up to preserve
a specific parcel or interest, are said not to
follow such criteria. The municipal
“comprehensive” plan may not be a useful
guide. (See “The
Role of Municipal Planning in Creating
Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns.")
Note
that every one of the problems listed in the
Inside the Clear Edge review above was done in
conformance with a municipal comprehensive plan
– although in some cases the “comprehensive”
plans were amended to “conform” after the
political decision was made. VOF leaders are aware
of the issues outlined here and are doing as much
as they can without broader public understanding
and therefore political support.
Are
there threshold criteria that can be applied? Of
course!
New
conserved land should be located next to existing
protected land or be of a scale and in a location
that the land can become the anchor for a major
new agglomeration of conserved land. It is,
however, the holes in the donut near these
preserved places where the greatest negative
impact from raising the value for scattered urban
land use comes home to roost. Our experience as a
member of the Board of the Maryland Environmental
Trust (MDET plays the role of the Virginia
Outdoors Foundation in the Commonwealth) suggests
that only when the three major issues noted in our
original post (and rephrased below) are addressed
can sound and rational principles and criteria be
articulated.
Major
Countryside resources such as the Appalachian
Trail, or a major viewshed, can be anchors of land
conservation efforts. Our experience as the Vice
Chair for Stewardship of the Maryland chapter of
the Nature Conservancy when the chapter Board was
faced with finding a context for 11 “ecological
gems” that had been donated to the Conservancy
over the prior 30 years sharpened our appreciation
for the problems encountered.
In
this discussion, we lay aside the entire issue of
who benefits from actions to conserve land and who
pays the ultimate costs. (See Jim Bacon’s April
21, 2006, post on purchase of development
rights and easements.)
A
recent study by Resources for the Future (RRF)
titled “The Value of Open Space: Evidence From
Studies of Nonmarket Benefits,” documents how
far the “state-of-the-art” is from
establishing a fair value for “open space.”
The
first paragraph of the Executive Summary of the
RRF report includes this sentence: “And in
rapidly growing urban and suburban area, any
preserved land can offer relief from congestion
and other negative effects of development.” That
sort of misinformation is the cause of the Huntley
Meadows Park problem.
(The
entire first paragraph of the Conclusion in the
RRF study noted above is a dictionary of error
with respect to understanding human settlement
patterns. It will be the subject of further review
in “Use and Management of Land.” Also see four
columns on Vocabulary starting with “The
Foundation of Babble,” Nov. 28, 2005.)
Conservation
of land a few acres here and a few acres there in
the 1.5 million acres within R=50 Miles, or within
the 19 million acres of land Commonwealth-wide
that need protection will not solve any known
problem. There must be a recognition of:
1.
The
scale and scope of the problem and the difference
between and the role of “Openspace” and the
role of the “Countryside.”
2.
The
reality that there is already far more land
committed to urban land use than will be needed in
the foreseeable future.
3.
The
need to establish fair and equitable ways to
transition to functional human settlement patterns.
A
first step is to develop a “Wright Plan” for
Virginia that provides a rational basis for
defining Clear Edges for the urban development in
the New Urban Regions and the Urban Support
Regions of the Commonwealth. This will help
citizens understand the difference between
Openspace and Countryside.
It
goes without saying that efforts inside the Clear
Edge to “lower densities” of urban uses result
in the scatteration of urban land uses outside the
Clear Edge. The same is true for those outside the
Clear Edge around the Core of the Region or
Subregion.
These
actions scatter urban land uses whether they are
inside or outside the Clear Edges around the
components of Disaggregated but Balanced
Communities.
PROPERTY
DYNAMICS, a program of 1000 Friends of
Virginia’s Future. Suite 100, 124 Derby
Way, Warrenton, VA 20186-3031
(1).
The area for intensive urban use does not include
uses such as multi-regional airports, regional
facilities such as landfills but does include all
Community-scale and smaller urban activities.
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