Most urban areas are experiencing significant disinvestment in older industrial-warehouse areas, along with a net loss of employment, tax base and related activity. The few recent surveys done to measure vacant industrial land suggest that, in Northeastern and Midwestern cities, 15 to 20 percent of industrial sites are inactive. In major cities such as Chicago or Philadelphia, vacant land can amount to several hundred parcels comprising several thousand acres. Often there are significant financial liabilities associated with the ownership of these “brownfield” sites due to the high incidence of contamination and related safety and environmental problems.

Vacant or underused properties are often located in areas suffering generally from physical decline, concentrations of low-income households and high crime rates. Thus, older cities are faced with the dual challenge of improving the capacity of the resident population to participate productively in the labor force and restoring the competitive market standing of areas with declining fiscal capacity.

While recent economic changes have resulted in a net decline in business activity in older industrial areas, many of these sites have the potential for residential, commercial or office reuse, with varying degrees of investment required. However, reuse is often constrained by factors including fragmentation in ownership, risks associated with the ownership or use of contaminated property, and the high market risks associated with front-end investment in environmental assessments, market studies, land assembly and area planning.

Currently, federal laws and regulations dealing with contaminated sites add to the high risk for new owners, investors and users who might otherwise contribute to reinvestment in and reuse of these areas. Also, federal and state clean up programs tend to operate independently of concerted area-wide redevelopment strategies and programs.

Special Situations for Industrial Reuse

Unfortunately, examples of successful reuse approaches which effectively orchestrate federal, state and local government policies and actions with private landowner, investor and business development actions are limited and tend to be concentrated in a few special situations. One circumstance involves a strong private owner such as a financially healthy major corporation which cannot avoid the liabilities associated with the site yet cannot afford the adverse publicity of simply abandoning it.

Another situation is when a strong private reuse market for the site creates a high reuse value relative to the current “as is” value. This typically involves waterfront or other property adjacent to growing downtowns or sites which happen to fit the development needs for a major, publicly subsidized facility such as a new stadium or convention center. In these situations, the private or public reuse benefit calls forth the financial and political resources necessary to acquire, clean up and redevelop the land.

However, most vacant or underused former industrial-warehouse properties do not meet these conditions. Generally the demand for reuse is weak or declining, in part due to deteriorating neighborhood conditions. Because of low land values, even for clean, ready-to-develop sites, finding investors for either equity or debt investment in acquisition, renovation or new development is problematic. These areas typically require more concerted efforts involving business, government and civic group participation.

Site-Specific vs Integrated Redevelopment

While interest in brownfields reuse has increased over the last several years, policy discussions at the national level and programs in the states tend to approach brownfields as a site-specific contamination cleanup problem rather than an area-wide reuse problem within the context of the metropolitan economy.

The case for integrating site treatment into a broader redevelopment strategy can be argued from several angles. One is simply that giving priority to cleanup expenditures may do little to foster area reuse and may preclude the more effective use of public funds. If the contamination is contained within a small area and the public can be protected from any potential harm, then area reuse may be more effectively fostered by focusing on the removal of other constraints to investment. These constraints may include improving access, removing unsightly buildings, installing landscape improvements, clearing sites of obsolete structures, and subdividing the area to better meet current facility demands.

Another argument for integrating site cleanup into an overall redevelopment strategy is that the cleanup costs are difficult to finance in a situation where the value of clean sites is very low. If an area-wide redevelopment effort focuses initially on increasing the overall demand to reuse sites, putting vacant clean sites into use will improve the demand/supply balance. Then, the cleanup costs can in most cases be funded out of the increased site value, and private owners of such sites will be motivated to clean up the sites voluntarily. Area-wide financing schemes using tax increment financing (TIF) and special taxing and benefit districts can also facilitate the funding required for remediation and indemnification against any future liabilities.

New Models and Strategies

The Lincoln Institute, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is undertaking a research project to explore the problem of recycling urban industrial areas which fall outside of the special situations described above. The study builds on recent work conducted by the Lincoln Institute, the Northeast-Midwest Institute, the author and others who have researched reuse potential and demand/supply constraints in industrial areas. Some examples are the American Street industrial area in Philadelphia, the Collinwood area in Cleveland, the Southwest industrial area in Detroit, the south side of Chicago and several areas in Pittsburgh.

Research directed at discovering common opportunities and constraints and the related strategies most effective at addressing different types of situations is very limited. Therefore, our approach is to conduct a broad survey of industrial reuse markets based on a review of existing reports and interviews with local experts, and then to develop a series of in-depth case studies to assess alternative reuse strategies appropriate to common types of situations.

Each case study will include a survey and assessment of the city-wide situation and the conditions in various industrial subareas. Model solutions will focus on a single subarea chosen to represent a combination of factors, including the relevance of that case to other cities and the relative importance of the subarea to its city’s overall reuse plan. In each case, a group of development professionals familiar with the local real estate market will be involved in assessing opportunities and constraints, alternative strategies and implementation measures. Ultimately, our objective is to identify changes in federal, state and local techniques, policies and programs that would support the implementation of the strategies being developed.

J. Thomas Black, visiting fellow of the Lincoln Institute, is an urban development economist and the principal investigator for this project. The study is in its early stages and the author invites your insights, ideas and suggestions on the subject, particularly for case examples demonstrating opportunities, general strategies, particular techniques, financing methods or organizational structures that work well.

FYI

The Collinwood Yard in northeast Cleveland is a 48-acre, mainly vacant industrial site which has lost 20,000 jobs since 1970. Its access to Interstate 90 and the rail lines is a key element in the revitalization of the area.

The Union Seventy Center in St. Louis is a multi-tenant industrial/warehouse facility occupying a remodeled 2.7 million square foot General Motors assembly plant. It is part of a 171-acre redevelopment project which demonstrates the reuse and investment potential of older urban industrial areas.

In June 2003 the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute established a Joint Venture project to assist diverse audiences in improving state trust land administration in the American West. The goal of this partnership project is to ensure that conservation, collaborative land use planning, and efficient and effective asset management on behalf of state trust land beneficiaries are integral elements of how these lands are managed. The two institutes seek to utilize their core competencies to broaden the range of information and policy options available to improve state trust land management. This article introduces the Joint Venture and describes some of the work now under way in Arizona and Montana.

State trust lands are a phenomenon that dates back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1785. With this ordinance, the U.S. Congress established a policy of granting land to states when they entered the Union as an asset to generate funding to support the public education system, a fundamental state responsibility. Starting with Ohio in 1785 and ending with Arizona and New Mexico in 1910, each new state received a set of federal lands that, under federal enabling legislation and the corresponding state constitution, were to be held in trust for the benefit of the public schools. The trust mandates established by the U.S. Congress and the states are clear: to generate revenue to support the public schools and other institutions. In some cases there are other minor institutional beneficiaries as well, but the public schools (K–12) are by far the largest beneficiary throughout the state trust land system. That singularity of purpose continues today and distinguishes state trust lands and the state programs that administer them from other types of public lands.

While Congress intended state trust lands to be perpetual, the lawmakers expected that over time some lands would be sold to produce revenue. Initially Congress provided little guidance to states on how they should manage their state trust lands. Many states that entered the Union soon after 1785 quickly sold all or most of those lands for profit, and today little remains of that heritage. Because of these actions, Congress placed increasingly stringent requirements on new states in order to limit the use of state trust lands. Since most western states entered the Union in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they retain most of the original state trust lands designated at the time of statehood.

Today these lands continue to be managed to generate income for the authorized beneficiaries. This revenue is either made available in the year in which it was generated (typically from leasing activities) or, in the case of outright sale of land or nonrenewable resources, deposited into a permanent fund that generates annual income for the beneficiaries. In Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming these permanent funds or endowments are in excess of one billion dollars each.

What Is a Trust?

A trust is a legal relationship in which one party holds property for the benefit of another.

There are three participants in this relationship: a grantor or “settlor,” who establishes the trust and provides the property to be held in trust; a trustee, who is charged by the settlor with the responsibility of managing the trust in keeping with the settlor’s instructions; and a beneficiary, who receives the benefits of the trust.

The trustee has a fiduciary responsibility to manage the property held in trust (the trust corpus) in keeping with the instructions of the settlor and for the benefit of the beneficiary. This fiduciary responsibility can be enforced by the beneficiary if the trustee fails to meet the obligations outlined in the trust documents.

Fifteen western states continue to own and manage appreciable amounts of state trust land (see Table 1). The nine states with the largest and most significant holdings are the initial focus of the Lincoln Institute and Sonoran Institute Joint Venture: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (see Figure 1). Collectively these states manage more than 40 million acres of state trust lands. The landholdings are as diverse as the states that manage them and include coastal forests in Washington, mountaintops in Montana and low deserts in Arizona.

Traditionally these lands have been managed almost exclusively for natural resource production, with the leasing and sale of natural products being the principal sources of revenue. The reliance of state trust land management on natural resource extraction is understandable in the context of the natural resource–based economies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But today, as the West continues to urbanize and the region’s economies shift to the information age, trust land managers are recognizing a need to broaden the land use activities of their trust land portfolios. Invariably that means rearranging the portfolio from one that is overly reliant on natural resource extraction to one that recognizes the real estate value associated with commercial, industrial and residential development, as well as recreation and conservation.

Like many land use decisions, particularly in areas experiencing explosive growth, state trust land administration is increasingly controversial. As on federal public lands, traditional uses (i.e., cropland, grazing and timber production, and oil, gas, coal and mineral extraction) are at odds with public interests in recreation and natural open space. Efforts to sell and lease lands for commercial and residential development can create tensions between a state agency acting as a trustee and a local community vested with managing growth. Balancing the protection of the public values inherent in many of these lands with traditional and new uses, all within the context of the state trust’s fiduciary responsibilities, is a challenge for trust land managers.

At the same time, population pressures in the West have increased demands on public education funding. State trust lands are one obvious source of revenue to meet these funding demands, which in turn may generate even more pressure on trust land managers who as trustees of a permanent trust need to achieve both short- and long-term financial returns from the trust’s assets. An additional complexity is that the application of trust principles varies among the states, based in part on differing state trust land enabling legislation created in each state at the time of statehood.

Recognizing the value of bringing diverse interests together and providing solid information to stakeholders and key decision makers in land use planning and development environments, the Lincoln Institute and Sonoran Institute Joint Venture project seeks to

• facilitate efforts to modernize state trust land laws and regulations in key western states
• foster education and research efforts that focus on key issues related to state trust land administration
• increase public awareness of the resource and economic values of state trust lands along with the impacts of state trust land management decisions on local communities, including implications for public finance
• develop and implement on-the-ground model projects designed to explore innovative approaches to collaborative land use planning and conservation management of state trust lands
• provide relevant technical information and tools to decision makers and agency staff involved in state trust land management.

Trust Land Reform in Arizona

Arizona is in the midst of a three-year discussion among diverse stakeholders to reform its laws governing state trust lands. Arizona is noteworthy because the burgeoning growth of Phoenix and Tucson is reaching significant tracts of state trust lands. These lands are some of the most valuable real estate holdings in the Intermountain West and comprise 12 percent of the land in the state. Unlike many other western states, Arizona has long recognized the real estate value of its holdings and has an active real estate disposition program that has sold thousands of acres into the urban marketplace. The revenue from these sales has been deposited into the permanent fund of the state trust entity, and the income from the fund is directed to the trust’s beneficiaries. The permanent fund is now valued at more than one billion dollars and is predicted to double in value over the next 10 years.

In the mid-1990s state trust land sales in metropolitan Phoenix came to a screeching halt when the development interests of the Arizona State Land Department encountered conflict with the goals of local communities interested in preserving some of this land as natural open space. Attempts to accommodate local concerns through state legislation have met with mixed results due to the strictures of the Arizona enabling act and state constitution. Several key court decisions interpreting these laws have constrained the Arizona State Land Department from conserving open space or enabling the department to achieve the highest and best use on these lands when sold or leased for residential and commercial purposes. An attempt in 2000 to secure voter approval to revise aspects of Arizona’s constititution and modernize state trust land management failed at the ballot box in the face of unanimous opposition from the conservation community.

This situation has set the stage for a diverse group of interests to convene in the hopes of developing a comprehensive reform proposal that the Arizona legislature and governor’s office will consider. Even with their support, the final package will need voter approval to amend the state constitution, followed by changes in the federal enabling act that will require the approval of the U.S. Congress.

The Joint Venture directed its initial efforts toward working with the conservation organizations participating in the stakeholder group. We provided analyses of the current laws and proposed changes, with assistance from the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, to help the conservation community promote a constructive agenda that has been incorporated into the package. In addition, our information related to land use planning was useful to other stakeholders in developing elements of the package that will ensure more collaborative planning between the Arizona State Land Department and local governments charged with land planning responsibility, while also increasing the range of tools available to local communities to protect natural open space on state trust lands.

We are also working with officials from the City of Tucson (the second largest city in Arizona) and the Arizona State Land Department to assist their efforts to develop 10,000 acres in the city’s growth corridor. This Houghton Area Master Plan includes more than 7,500 acres of state trust lands. Our work is directed toward the planning effort by providing examples of smart growth development at the urban edge. A key element is to document evidence that greenfield projects are not necessarily synonymous with sprawl and that a number of examples of recent master-planned communities at the urban edge are incorporating smart growth elements, such as interconnected open space for active and passive recreational use, pedestrian orientation, mixed-use development accessible to public transit, and a diverse mix of housing types, sizes and prices. As important, these progressive master-planned communities are achieving success in the marketplace, which is a preeminent concern of the Arizona State Land Department.

While the City of Tucson, in partnership with the Sonoran Institute, is working to promote infill and brownfield development, even under the most optimistic of scenarios more than 50 percent of the city’s explosive growth will be greenfield development. If successful, this master-planning effort will guide development on 50 square miles of state trust lands within the city and can serve as a local land use planning model for other state trust lands.

Trust Lands in Montana

The Joint Venture has also initiated an assessment of policy issues affecting state trust lands in Montana. Working with a local advisory group chartered by the Department of Natural Resources (the manager of Montana’s state trust lands), we have provided information that will help guide land use planning on 12,000 acres of state trust lands in Flathead County at the gateway to Glacier National Park. This effort will serve as a template for future department plans for land uses other than grazing and forest management. For example, the department has shown an interest in generating revenue from leasing land for conservation, recreational, residential, commercial and industrial uses. Increasing interest in these “special uses” is creating a paradigm shift in how the Department of Natural Resources interacts with local governments and how local governments interact with state trust lands.

As growth expands throughout much of western and central Montana, the department seeks to capture additional revenue opportunities through the development of special uses. While local communities are recognizing that state trust lands can be a source of economic growth and can contribute positively to meeting growth demands, they are also requiring those land uses to be responsive to local community values and concerns. Sound, objective land planning and valuation information are essential to the development of policies that will guide Montana state trust land management in the future.

Final Comments

In the brief time since the Joint Venture was established there has been no shortage of issues that could benefit from better information and collaboration among diverse parties. This fall the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute will convene a small group of experts from academia and the public and private sectors to identify the issues of greatest concern that will guide further research efforts. Our work in Arizona and Montana will continue as we seek to develop a broad-based approach to increasing awareness about state trust lands. The successful resolution of the issues affecting state trust land management will benefit not only local school children, but also many conservationists, developers, ranchers and businesses throughout the West.

Reference

Souder, Jon, and Sally K. Fairfax. 1996. State trust lands: History, management and sustainable use. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Andy Laurenzi is the program director for state trust lands at the Sonoran Institute, a nonprofit organization established in 1990 to bring diverse people together to accomplish shared conservation goals. The Sonoran Institute is based in Tucson, Arizona, with offices in Phoenix and Bozeman, Montana (www.sonoran.org).

Harmful impacts of sprawl in terms of air and water pollution, waste of energy and time, traffic congestion and highway accidents, lack of affordable housing, increased flooding, and loss of biodiversity have been widely documented (Platt 2004, ch. 6). Also, the fiscal impacts of sprawl on local communities have been evaluated by researchers at the Brookings Institution, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and elsewhere.

Slaying the “beast of sprawl” has been the Holy Grail of planners and land use lawyers for decades, stimulating the development of new tools like planned unit development (PUD), cluster zoning, subdivision exactions, preferential taxation of farm and forest land, transfer of development rights (TDR), state land use planning, and growth management. Reflecting the antisprawl fervor of the 1970s, a prominent policy report titled The Use of Land euphorically declared:

“There is a new mood in America. Increasingly, citizens are asking what urban growth will add to the quality of their lives. They are questioning the way relatively unconstrained, piecemeal urbanization is changing their communities and are rebelling against the traditional processes of government and the marketplace.” (Rockefeller Brothers Fund 1973, 33)

La cuestión central que deben resolver los conservacionistas de suelos hoy en día es cómo ampliar la escala de sus esfuerzos para proteger paisajes y sistemas naturales completos. El movimiento de fideicomisos de suelos se ha cimentado en los éxitos individuales de conservación de propiedades privadas, pero crecientemente tanto los conservacionistas como los propietarios que llegan a acuerdos de conservación quieren saber cómo se puede extender este esfuerzo a sus vecinos, a su barrio y, por sobre todo, a su paisaje (Williams 2011).

Los agricultores y ganaderos expresan la necesidad de sustentar una red continua de tierras de trabajo —una masa crítica de actividad agrícola ganadera— para no correr el riesgo de perder las actividades de respaldo comercial y la cooperación comunitaria necesarias para sobrevivir. Los bomberos abogan por mantener las tierras distantes sin desarrollar, con objeto de reducir el peligro y el costo de incendios en las comunidades locales. Los deportistas están perdiendo acceso a suelos públicos y a la vida silvestre cuando el hábitat es fragmentado por emprendimientos rurales. Los biólogos conservacionistas han argumentado desde hace tiempo que se podrían sustentar más especies, si se protegen espacios más extensos, mientras que, por el contrario, la disminución y desaparición de las especies se debe principalmente a la fragmentación del hábitat. Por último, un clima tan rápidamente cambiante redobla la necesidad de proteger ecosistemas grandes e interconectados para que puedan mantenerse a largo plazo.

Muchos financistas y socios del sector público están tratando de concentrar sus esfuerzos de colaboración para la de conservación del paisaje, de manera que la comunidad de fideicomisos de suelos tiene una excelente oportunidad de potenciar su buena labor embarcándose en “alianzas para el paisaje”. Los fideicomisos de suelos, con su desarrollo de base y estilo de trabajo cooperativo, están en una muy buena posición para respaldar iniciativas locales. El proceso de construcción de estos esfuerzos, sin embargo, requiere un compromiso que va más allá de la urgencia de transacciones y campañas de recaudación de fondos, y exige un esfuerzo sostenido que es mucho más amplio que las metas inmediatas que se proponen muchos fideicomisos de suelos.

¿Cómo se mide el éxito?

El río Blackfoot en M ontana se hizo famoso en 1976 gracias a la historia A River Runs Through It (Nada es para siempre) de Norman Maclean (Maclean 2001), pero lo que realmente es destacable en la región de Blackfoot es la manera en que una comunidad ha trabajado durante muchas décadas para sustentar este lugar tan especial. En la década de 1970 se iniciaron los esfuerzos de conservación por parte de los propietarios locales y en 1993 se estableció la organización Blackfoot Challenge con el objeto de aunar los diversos intereses de la zona en medidas consensuadas que posibilitaran el mantenimiento del carácter rural y los recursos naturales del valle. Jim Stone, presidente de este grupo de propietarios, dice: “nos cansamos de quejarnos de lo que no podíamos hacer, así que decidimos hablar sobre lo que sí podíamos”.

En este esfuerzo conjunto se han utilizado estrategias novedosas de conservación en Blackfoot que se han reproducido en muchos otros lugares. El trabajo del grupo comenzó concentrándose en una mejor gestión del creciente uso recreativo del río y en proteger el corredor fluvial. La primera exención para conservación de Montana se promulgó en Blackfoot en 1976, como parte de este esfuerzo pionero. A partir de este éxito inicial, se fueron creando iniciativas más ambiciosas con la participación de un creciente número de aliados.

Cuando los propietarios se quejaban de que no tenían suficiente ayuda para controlar la maleza, Challenge estableció el distrito de control de maleza más grande del Oeste. Cuando los propietarios plantearon que no había recursos suficientes para conservar las haciendas en funcionamiento, Challenge ayudó a crear un programa innovador del Servicio de Pesca y Vida Silvestre de los EE. UU. (US Fish and Wildlife Service, o USFWS) para adquirir servidumbres de conservación junto con el Fondo de Conservación de Suelos y Aguas (Land and Water Conservation Fund, o LWCF), que históricamente se ha usado para la adquisición de suelo público.

Cuando los propietarios estaban preocupados por la venta potencial de grandes áreas forestales en el valle, Challenge lanzó un plan comprensivo de adquisiciones que conectó haciendas privadas protegidas al pie del valle con suelos forestales públicos más altos. Cuando los propietarios reconocieron la necesidad de realizar una restauración sistémica del río, Challenge y la sucursal Big Blackfoot de Trout Unlimited ayudaron a restaurar más de 48 corrientes tributarias y 600 millas de pasos piscícolas para preservar la circulación de la trucha nativa y la salud de la cuenca (Trout Unlimited 2011).

Blackfoot Challenge se ha asociado con más de 160 propietarios, 30 empresas, 30 organizaciones sin fines de lucro y 20 dependencias públicas. Claramente, la visión de Challenge para la región no se limita simplemente a algunas haciendas, sino que se preocupa por la salud a largo plazo de todo el valle del río, de “ladera a ladera”, según las palabras de Jim Stone (ver figura 1).

El aspecto admirable de la historia de Blackfoot es que no se trata de una rara excepción, sino que constituye el emblema de un movimiento creciente que se dedica a esfuerzos de colaboración para la conservación en todo el país. Estas alianzas para la conservación del paisaje confirman un consenso emergente sobre la necesidad de proteger y sustentar paisajes completos que son vitales, tanto para la salud de los peces y la vida silvestre, como para la vitalidad de las comunidades locales, su economía y su calidad de vida.

Esfuerzos de conservación iniciados por los propietarios

La historia de Blackfoot subraya una de las lecciones más importantes que emergen de las iniciativas de conservación comunitarias: los propietarios locales deben liderarlas, y todos los demás deben respaldarlos. El ejemplo del río Yampa, en el oeste de Colorado, ilustra esta estrategia. A comienzos de la década de 1990, los grupos conservacionistas estaban tratando de proteger esta región, pero toparon con la falta de confianza de los ganaderos locales. En el valle había personas con visión de futuro entre la comunidad y grupos que trataban de impulsar la conservación en la región, pero ninguna de las ideas arraigó de forma efectiva, precisamente porque los propietarios locales no lideraban el proyecto.

Esa dinámica sufrió un vuelco de 180 grados con varias iniciativas de los propietarios, entre las cuales destacó la del Plan de Suelos Abiertos del Condado de Routt (Routt County Open Lands Plan). Las recomendaciones de plan surgieron de una serie de reuniones que los propietarios locales celebraron a lo largo y ancho del condado. El plan proponía ocho medidas significativas para gestionar mejor el crecimiento explosivo en el valle, desde una ordenanza que otorgaba el derecho a cultivar, hasta un programa de adquisición de derechos de desarrollo inmobiliario en haciendas activas. El condado de Routt se convirtió en uno de los primeros condados rurales del Oeste en obtener fondos públicos por medio de una medida electoral para proteger las haciendas activas.

Malpai Borderlands es otro ejemplo ilustrativo de cómo el liderazgo de los propietarios puede superar varias décadas de inacción. Después de muchos años de conflicto entre los ganaderos propietarios y las agencias federales sobre la gestión de los suelos públicos situados alrededor de las montañas Ánimas, en el talón de la bota del estado de Nuevo México y el sudeste de Arizona, Bill Macdonald y otros ganaderos propietarios de la zona organizaron una alianza llamada Grupo de Malpai Borderlands para volver a introducir el fuego como medio para preservar la salud de los pastizales y la economía ganadera local. Este esfuerzo generó una asociación innovadora entre ganaderos, grupos de conservación y dependencias públicas para conservar y sustentar este ambiente silvestre de 404.684 hectáreas en actividad por medio de servidumbres de conservación, bancos de pastizales y un enfoque más integrado de administración del sistema en general.

Fideicomisos de suelos y sociedades públicas-privadas

De la misma manera que el liderazgo de los propietarios es fundamental en los esfuerzos cooperativos de conservación a escala de paisaje, los fideicomisos y agencias de suelos también pueden desempeñar un papel importante como líder secundario y aliado fiable que posee fuertes vínculos locales, conocimientode los recursos externos y una capacidad para implementar proyectos de investigación y conservación. En Rocky Mountain Front, en Montana, por ejemplo, los ganaderos locales están colaborando con varios fideicomisos de suelos y el USFWS para proteger los suelos activos por medio de servidumbres ecológicas. El comité de propietarios locales ha sido presidido por varios ganaderos locales, pero ha sido su amistad de 20 años con Dave Carr de The Nature Conservancy el hecho decisivo para que el comité se mantuviera activo. Greg Neudecker, del Programa de Socios para la Vida Silvestre (Partners for Wildlife Program) de USFWS, ha jugado un papel similar en Blackfoot, dados sus 21 años de servicio en la cooperación comunitaria.

Muchos propietarios y fideicomisos de suelos son renuentes a crear alianzas con dependencias públicas para proteger el paisaje porque frecuentemente abogan por la conservación con medios privados. Sin embargo, cuando se las incorpora como parte de una sociedad para la conservación del paisaje, las agencias estatales y federales pueden ser aliados muy efectivos. En Blackfoot, los estudios científicos, investigaciones, monitorización, financiamiento y trabajo de restauración efectuados por el estado

de Montana y el USFWS han tenido un impacto enorme en la recuperación del sistema del río.

En el frente de protección de suelos, la adquisición pública de bosques madereros extensos en Blackfoot ha complementado el trabajo de los fideicomisos de suelos privados al consolidar suelos públicos y permitir el acceso de la comunidad a dichos suelos para pastar, explotar el bosque y realizar actividades recreativas. Reconociendo los problemas generados por un siglo de supresión de incendios, el Servicio Forestal de los EE. UU. inició proyectos experimentales de desgaste forestal de pequeño diámetro para restaurar la estructura y el funcionamiento de los bosques y reducir la amenaza de incendio en el valle. Esta actividad se está ampliando ahora por medio de un nuevo Programa de Cooperación para la Restauración del Paisaje Forestal (Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration ProgramiI>, o CFLRP) financiado por el gobierno federal en los valles de Blackfoot, Clearwater y Swan.

El principio más general es que todas las partes interesadas principales tienen que involucrarse activamente para consensuar una base de intereses comunes. David M annix, otro hacendado de Blackfoot Challenge, explica lo que ellos denominan la “regal 80-20”: “Trabajamos sobre el 80 por ciento en queestamos de acuerdo y dejamos el 20 por ciento restante a la puerta, junto con el sombrero”. Jim Stone afirma que cuando la gente va a una reunion de Blackfoot Challenge “le pedimos que deje sus intereses organizativos en la puerta y dé prioridad al paisaje”, y se centre en la salud de los suelos y de las comunidades que de ellos dependen.

Para que estas alianzas entre el sector privado y el público puedan funcionar, es realmente importante que participe la “gente que importa”, es decir, individuos creativos que estén motivados por una vision común y que, al mismo tiempo, sean lo suficientemente modestos como para reconocer que no tienen todas las respuestas. La colaboración toma tiempo. Una vez que se hayan alcanzado acuerdos en común, es fundamental tener un éxito inicial, aunque sea pequeño, que sirva de base para futuras soluciones de mayor envergadura.

La necesidad de financiamiento

La barrera más importante para que los grupos cooperativos locales puedan alcanzar sus metas a nivel de paisaje es la falta de financiamiento adecuado. Sin un respaldo financiero suficiente, los esfuerzos cooperativos pierden, con frecuencia, su impulso, lo que puede retrasar este tipo de trabajo por muchos años.

El financiamiento no es un elemento estático, pero es proporcional a la escala de resultados que se pueden obtener y al número de participantes que se incorporan al esfuerzo. Los financistas privados o públicos no quieren participar en un éxito parcial a menos que sea un paso hacia un objetivo sustentable de largo plazo. Y no quieren proporcionar financiamiento en lugares donde los grupos están compitiendo. Cada vez más, los fideicomisos y agencias de suelos se han dado cuenta del potencial que se puede alcanzar por medio de la colaboración. Los donantes han tomado siempre la iniciativa en este tema, porque viven en un mundo de recursos limitados y comprenden el valor de potenciar una variedad de recursos y financiamientos.

Aunque se realicen grandes esfuerzos de cooperación con objetivos comunes y una gran probabilidad de éxito, frecuentemente existe una brecha de financiamiento para alcanzar una verdadera conservación del paisaje. Mark Schaffer, exdirector del Programa del M edio Ambiente de la Fundación Caritativa Doris Duke, estimó que esta brecha asciende a alrededor de 5 mil millones de dólares por año en financiamiento nuevo e incentivos tributarios que harán falta en los próximos 30 años para conservar una red de paisajes importantes en los Estados Unidos.

En la actualidad la comunidad de fideicomisos de suelos está conservando suelos a un ritmo de alrededor de 1,05 millones de hectáreas por año, un total acumulado de alrededor de 14,9 millones de hectáreas de acuerdo al último censo de 2005 (Land Trust Alliance 2006). No obstante, para sustentar paisajes completos antes de que las necesidades más urgentes cierren las puertas de la oportunidad, este ritmo se tiene que duplicar o triplicar, y se deben realizar esfuerzos de forma aun más orientada.

Oportunidades emergentes para la conservación a nivel de paisaje

Hay varias tendencias importantes y oportunidades de corto plazo que se podrían aprovechar para promover la conservación a escala de paisaje, pero su éxito depende del nivel de participación y liderazgo de los fideicomisos de suelos. Primero, es fundamental que el Congreso haga permanents las deducciones ampliadas de las servidumbres de conservación. La organización Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelos (Land Trust Alliance, 2011) apunta que estas deducciones pueden proteger más de 101.170 hectáreas adicionales por año. Dado el interés actual del Congreso por recortar gastos y rebajar impuestos, esta es una de las pocas herramientas de financiamiento de conservación que quizás sea alcanzable en el corto plazo. A más largo plazo, un programa nacional de créditos tributarios transferibles similar a los de Colorado y Virginia podría crear un enorme incentivo para generar servidumbres de conservación.

La segunda tendencia se relaciona con el aumento del interés federal en proteger paisajes completos promoviendo las comunidades que ya están trabajando en conjunto. En 2005, la administración Bush lanzó un Programa de Conservación Cooperativa que mejoró la coordinación entre las agencias y los subsidios de capacidad para trabajos cooperativos locales. En 2010, la administración Obama lanzó la iniciativa America’s Great Outdoors para ayudar a las comunidades a sustentar sus suelos y recursos hídricos por medio de asociaciones gobernadas localmente, y reconectar a la juventud norteamericana con el medio ambiente natural (Obama 2010).

Si bien los recursos federales están enormemente restringidos en el corto plazo, los programas y el financiamiento existentes podrían concentrarse más en proyectos de conservación a nivel de paisaje. El Secretario de Agricultura, Tom Vilsack, anunció un cambio importante en la política de su departamento hacia un enfoque “integral de suelos” para conservar y restaurar los grandes sistemas de los Estados Unidos. Por ejemplo, el Servicio de Conservación de Recursos Naturales (Natural Resources Conservation Service) anunció recientemente que iba a reinvertir 89 millones de dólares de fondos del Programa de Reserva de Humedales que no se habían gastado para adquirir la servidumbre de conservación de 10.522 hectáreas en haciendas activas en la zona de los Everglades en Florida. La oportunidad que se presenta para la comunidad de fideicomisos de suelos es asegurar que estos proyectos se implementen como manera de obtener un apoyo amplio para este tipo de trabajo en el largo plazo.

La tercera oportunidad es aprobar medidas locales y estatales para aumentar el financiamiento y los incentivos tributarios a la conservación. A pesar de la economía debilitada y de los continuos proyectos para efectuar recortes gubernamentales y reducir los impuestos, los votantes aprobaron en las elecciones de 2010 el 83 por ciento de las iniciativas electorales en todo el país para financiar la conservación de suelos y de agua. En total, se aprobaron 41 de las 49 medidas de financiamiento, generando más de 2 mil millones de dólares para proyectos de conservación de suelos, aguas, parques y tierras agrícolas durante los próximos 20 años (The Trust for Public Land 2010).

La tendencia y oportunidad finales para la comunidad de fideicomisos de suelos es asociarse con financistas de capital privado para llevar adelante proyectos de conservación de suelos. Entre 1983 y 2009, cambiaron de manos más de 17,4 millones

de hectáreas de suelos forestales (Rinehart 2010). Nuevos grupos de capital privado, llamados Organizaciones de Gestión de Inversiones Madereras (Timber Investment Management Organizations o TIMO) y Fidecomisos de I nversión I nmobiliaria (Real Estate Investment Trusts, o REIT) adquirieron en muy poco tiempo 10,9 millones de hectáreas, y muchos de estos grupos de inversión, como Lyme Timber, Conservation Forestry, Ecosystem Investment Partners y Beartooth Capital Partners, utilizan la conservación como parte de su modelo de negocios.

La cuestión de escala

Una tendencia en curso en el movimiento de conservación ha sido darle un enfoque cada vez más amplio, pasando de las propiedades individuales a barrios, paisajes, ecosistemas, hasta llegar ahora a las redes de ecosistemas. Por ejemplo, los propietarios de Blackfoot, Swan Valley y Rocky Mountain Front han comprendido que la salud de sus paisajes depende de la salud del ecosistema Crown of the Continent (ver figura 2).

Crown, un área de más de 4 millones de hectáreas que rodea Bob Marshall Wilderness y Glacier-Waterton International Peace Place, es uno de los ecosistemas mejor preservados de América del Norte. Gracias a un siglo de designaciones de suelos públicos y 35 años protección privada de suelos por parte de las comunidades locales, este ecosistema no ha perdido una sola especie desde el asentamiento de los europeos en América. Los propietarios y otros socios se han conectado a lo largo de Crownde varias maneras para ver cómo pueden trabajar de forma más estrecha para el bien de todos.

Aun en la inmensidad de Crown, la sustentabilidad de su población silvestre depende de sus conexiones con otras poblaciones de las Montañas Rocosas del Norte. Sin embargo, estas redes aún mayores de sistemas naturales sólo se pueden concretar si se logran sustentar los vínculos esenciales de la región. Por esta razón, los fideicomisos de suelos de Wyoming, Idaho, Montana y Canadá han estado colaborando dentro de un marco llamado Corazón de las Montañas Rocosas (Heart of the Rockies) para identificar prioridades comunes y necesidades de conservación. Este nivel de colaboración regional ha generado un nuevo nivel de conservación y una mayor atención de los financistas. También ha sido clave para la colaboración entre fideicomisos de suelos basada en prioridades políticas comunes.

Para poder sustentar sistemas naturales interconectados, es realmente imperativo que se establezcan organizaciones a esta escala, pero también es importante comprender lo que se puede obtener a cada escala. Las grandes iniciativas regionales tienen gran importancia para crear una visión amplia y atractiva, pero no para implementar la conservación propiamente dicha. Dichos enfoques de gran escala sirven para aplicar la ciencia a nivel de la naturaleza, crear colaboraciones regionales alrededor de prioridades comunes y establecer un foro para intercambiar ideas novedosas, creando una mayor atención sobre la región. También brindan un contexto importante para realzar el trabajo local.

Melanie Parker, una líder local de los esfuerzos para la colaboración en la conservación de Swan Valley, lo expresa de esta manera: “Tenemos que integrar nuestros esfuerzos en una región más amplia para tener influencia política y acceder a recursos, pero cualquiera que piense que el trabajo de conservación se puede o debe hacer a una escala de 4 millones de hectáreas está seriamente equivocado. Este tipo de trabajo se tiene que realizar a la escala del lugar donde la gente vive, trabaja y comprende su paisaje”.

La gente local quiere actuar para preservar su propio lugar y su propio modo de vida. El diseño de estrategias a gran escala es frecuentemente demasiado abstracto para los propietarios y, en algunos casos también puede hasta conducirlos a la alienación. Como en la política—los politicos responden mejor a proyectos locales, diseñados y apoyados por sus residentes— toda la conservación es local. Conocer cuán amplios pueden ser los esfuerzos regionales sin que se pierda la cohesion comunitaria es una cuestión importante, pero lo cierto es que Blackfoot, Rocky Mountain Front y Swan Valley están al límite de lo posible hoy en día. Cada una de estas regiones opera en una escala de 202.340 a 607.000 de hectáreas.

Los fideicomisos de suelos pueden agregar valor a los esfuerzos locales por medio de colaboraciones regionales. Si bien los propietarios y residentes locales frecuentemente no tienen el tiempo necesario para participar en estas iniciativas de mayor calado, quieren

que su lugar y sus intereses estén bien representados. Los fideicomisos de suelos y las organizaciones de conservación pueden desempeñar un papel muy importante para interconectar grupos locales y geográficos, pero tienen que coordinarse con estos grupos en vez de tratar de liderarlos. En última instancia, la comunidad de fideicomisos de suelos puede beneficiarse si refuerza su trabajo cooperativo, profundiza su participación en asociaciones de paisajes, y trabaja a gran escala para alcanzar éxitos en el ámbito de la conservación.

Conclusión

Después de muchas décadas de trabajo extraordinario, los más de 1.700 fideicomisos de suelos en todo el país pueden usar su impulso para conservar los grandes sistemas que resultan más importantes para la gente y para la naturaleza. En efecto, esto es lo que las comunidades están pidiendo y lo que la naturaleza necesita para sobrevivir. Trascender más allá de victorias aisladas, generando una visión de conservación más interconectada, es tan importante para el sustento de las economías locales y su acceso recreativo como lo es para los corredores de vida silvestre y las cuencas hídricas saludables. Para tener éxito a esta escala hace falta una colaboración real y una reorientación de todas las partes interesadas. Con las múltiples oportunidades que se presentan actualmente para la conservación de paisajes completos, el impulso está de nuestro lado.

Sobre el Autor

Jamie Williams es el director de conservación de paisajes de The Nature Conservancy en América del Norte, con sede en Boulder, Colorado. Se concentra en programas para proteger los grandes paisajes por medio de alianzas innovadoras públicas y privadas. Fue Kingsbury Browne Fellow en el Instituto Lincoln durante 2010–2011. Tiene una Maestría en Estudios Medioambientales de la Facultad de Estudios

Forestales y Ambientales de Yale y un título de licenciatura por la Universidad de Yale.

Referencias

Land Trust Alliance. 2006. 2005 national land trust census. Washington, DC. 30 November.

———. 2011. Accelerating the pace of conservation. www.landtrustalliance.org/policy

Maclean, Norman. 2001 [1976]. A river runs through it and other stories. 25th anniversary edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Obama, Barack. 2010. Presidential Memorandum: America’s Great Outdoors, April 16. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-americas-great-outdoors

Rinehart, Jim. 2010. U.S. timberland post-recession: Is it the same asset? San Francisco, CA: R&A Investment Forestry. April. www.investmentforestry.com

The Trust for Public Land. 2010. www.landvote.org Trout Unlimited. 2011. Working together to restore the Blackfoot Watershed. February. www.tu.org

Williams, Jamie. 2011. Large landscape conservation: A view from the field. Working Paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Policies affecting the use, regulation, and taxation of land in the United States are promulgated and applied primarily by states and local governments, and real estate markets are largely local and not national in scope. However, national policies including those on taxation, property rights, and mortgage financing have a significant impact on local land and housing policies and their outcomes. Accordingly, it often makes sense for local policy makers and activists to combine forces so they can learn from each others’ experiences and ensure that their viewpoints are present in national land policy debates. The Lincoln Institute has played, and continues to play, an important role in sponsoring research and fostering training, communication, and organizational activities that promote land policies consistent with the its mission.

One example is the Lincoln Institute’s role in helping to establish the Land Trust Alliance (LTA), the national network of nonprofit conservation organizations that protect natural resources such as farmland, forests, and wilderness areas. The Lincoln Institute in 1981 provided a fellowship to Kingsbury Browne, a Boston-based conservationist and lawyer, to visit land trust leaders throughout the country. He discovered that they had no organized means to communicate and learn from each others’ experience. His work and counsel led the Lincoln Institute to carry out a national survey of the 400 known local and regional land conservation organizations at the time and to sponsor a national meeting for 40 representatives in October 1981. As a result of that meeting, the Land Trust Exchange was incorporated and initiated activity in July 1982. This year, as the Land Trust Alliance, the organization is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

LTA has become a major presence in the conservation community, and the Lincoln Institute continues to support its networking goals. For example, the Lincoln Institute sponsors the annual Kingsbury Browne Fellowship, which supports research, writing, and mentoring by outstanding individuals whose vision and creativity have contributed to land conservation and the land trust community. The Lincoln Institute also participates in LTA’s annual Rally and has supported selected projects, such as the 2010 National Land Trust Census Report that summarizes the land conservation and organizational activities of the 1,760 known land trusts at the time of the survey.

The Lincoln Institute has also played a key role over the past few years in developing a practitioners’ network on large landscape conservation, bringing together those working on projects at a regional scale, such as the Crown of the Continent, an 18-millionacre area spanning the US–Canadian border including portions of Montana, Alberta, and British Columbia. Still in its formative stages, this international network provides a semiannual forum to exchange information and best practices, examine emerging policy initiatives, and advance the theory and practice of large landscape conservation.

In a similar initiative, the Lincoln Institute supports the National Community Land Trust Network, formally organized in 2006. Community land trusts (CLTs) are local nonprofit organizations that own land and provide housing whose affordability is preserved permanently. While CLTs have existed for more than 30 years, coordination and communication among them was limited until the national network was established. With about 200 member CLTs in 2012, the network provides training, supports research, and disseminates guidelines and good practice to its members.

The Lincoln Institute maintains a role in the network’s training program, the Community Land Trust Academy, which offers courses, conferences, and other activities ranging from a general introduction for new residents and staff members to sessions on standard legal documents, financing, and city-CLT partnerships. The Lincoln Institute published The Community Land Trust Reader (2010), a compendium of articles on the historical background and current practices of the international CLT movement, edited by John Emmeus Davis, former dean of the Academy. In addition, the Lincoln Institute sponsors research disseminated in working papers and analytic work, including a 2007 survey of CLTs in the United States.

Information about these conservation and community land trust networks and their related programs and publications is available on the Lincoln Institute website at www.lincolninst.edu.

Twenty-three states offer an incentive to preserve open space by providing preferential property tax assessment of qualifying parcels (table 1, p. 15). These property tax reductions can be considered expenditures in that they reduce revenue available for other uses in the interest of protecting the many amenities and environmental benefits of undeveloped land.

Programs vary widely from state to state, but all preferential assessment programs for open space must define the type and size of qualified parcels; permissible uses; certification requirements; assessment methods; enrollment term lengths; and penalties, if any, for removing a parcel from preferential status. Several states offer more than one program, each with its own qualification requirements. This article considers these differences, offers examples of how the tax expenditure is calculated, and describes potential societal benefits and costs of such programs.

Determining Eligibility for Preferential Assessment

States define eligibility in many different ways, but the requirements are usually relatively easy to meet. A parcel might qualify simply by being undeveloped. Several states allow landscaped land to qualify provided the building density doesn’t exceed established limits. Washington, for example, allows land to qualify if it meets at least one of eleven very general requirements, including the protection of streams or water supplies, conservation or enhancement of natural or scenic resources, preservation of visual quality along roads, or enhancement of recreational opportunities.

While these criteria are very general, states may raise the bar by placing additional requirements on landowners. Some states require landowners to create and seek state approval for a property management plan that improves benefits for local wildlife. Vermont stipulates that a qualified conservation organization must own and manage the open space. One of two Texas programs requires landowners to provide land and wildlife management to propagate a breeding, migrating, or wintering population of indigenous wild animals for human use, including food, medicine, or recreation.

Several states offer preferential assessment to properties that have attained federal status as open space. For example, parcels restricted by a conservation easement that meets the IRS requirements for a charitable donation automatically qualify for preferential assessment in Illinois and Oregon. Ohio will qualify only parcels under contract to one of four USDA programs (Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Wetlands Reserve Program, and Grassland Preserve Program).

Parcels may have to meet minimum size requirements as well. The most common minimum is ten contiguous acres, though some programs allow properties as small as two acres, and several have no stated requirements. A few states limit the total acreage that any individual landowner may enroll. Tennessee, for example, limits eligibility to 1,500 acres per owner per county, including agricultural land, forest, and open space combined. The stated use of the property may influence its acceptability; several states specifically prohibit commercial property, including golf courses. At least two states, however, have programs specifically designed for golf courses and other commercial properties that provide outdoor recreational opportunities.

State Versus Local Criteria

State governments typically authorize preferential assessment programs and the criteria for inclusion. Six states allow local or county government officials to determine criteria by authorizing a program and requiring only that parcels be “included within a plan for preservation approved by state or local planning agencies” (Chervin, Gibson, and Green 2009, 8), for example, or by requiring that the appropriate governing body accepts the property via resolution. States with this requirement include California, Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, and Oregon. It is then up to local or county officials to choose the criteria for qualification, in some cases naming specific parcels. In other cases, the assessor’s office determines the eligibility, based on the characteristics of the property and whether it meets the criteria.

This approach allows local governments to control the amount of the expenditure in their jurisdiction and tailor the program to protect the specific qualities most important to the area. For example, officials in a predominantly agricultural environment may prefer to use tax expenditures on forests or wetlands, while open fields might prove most valuable in a more urban setting.

Calculating the Value of the Tax Expenditure

Open space preferential assessment programs typically use one of three methods to determine the property’s assessed value. Nine states value open space as if it were enrolled in the state’s program for agriculture or forestry, even though the land isn’t used for either activity. Nine other states instruct assessors to value the property considering only its current use, excluding the value of development rights (i.e., the market value as if its future use were permanently restricted to its current use). Four states instruct the assessor to determine the fair market value as if it were not in the program and then apply a statutory formula to determine the preferential assessed value. Illinois has three programs for preferential assessment of open space, which vary by the criteria for eligibility; all offer statutory reductions that range between 75 percent and 85 percent. Nevada applies a lower statutory reduction of 26 percent.

States occasionally choose to define maximum or minimum values per acre for open space parcels. For example, Maryland set a statewide value of $187.50 per acre for 2009. Washington allows local governments to determine a use value for their region, depending on a public benefit rating system; if no such system exists, open space land may receive an assessment no lower than the lowest agricultural valuation in the county. Massachusetts calculates the preferential value as use value, not to exceed 25 percent of fair market value.

Program Duration and Penalties for Early Withdrawal

Many programs provide for automatic annual renewal unless the landowner chooses to withdraw from the program. In some cases, length of contract is predetermined, most frequently for ten years, which generally carries forward upon the sale of the property unless the new property owner alters the use and violates the terms of the program. Landowners pay a penalty for withdrawing from the program in order to alter land use, or for altering it without notification. Such penalties tend to equal the value of the tax expenditure received for a specified number of years prior to the current year, plus interest on that expenditure. Several states either charge 10 percent of the fair market value when use of the parcel changes, or charge a conveyance or transfer tax when a parcel in the program is sold.

If an owner withdraws a parcel from the program after a minimum number of years, however, the state may reduce or even eliminate penalties. For example, Vermont charges owners 20 percent of fair market value for withdrawing the property in the first decade and 10 percent for withdrawing after more than 10 years. Rhode Island exacts 10 percent of the new fair market value for removing a property after 6 years, but that penalty declines until it terminates, 16 years after enrollment.

Economic Benefits of Open Space Preservation

The large literature discussing the effect of environmental amenities on surrounding property values suggests that preventing development on a parcel will raise the value of neighboring parcels. The studies find complicating factors, however, that make it difficult to predict changes in value for specific regions. One study in Maryland, for example, finds that open space programs have very different effects on the value of property in three different counties, probably due at least in part to variations in the amount of open space present (Geoghegan, Lynch, and Bucholtz 2003). Numerous other studies indicate that the value of open space for individual homeowners declines with distance from the protected parcel (Chamblee, et al. 2011). The type of habitat or green space is also likely to be influential; one analysis finds that the presence of broad-leaved trees in a neighborhood is associated with positive values, but the presence of spruce trees has a negative effect on property values (Garrod and Willis 1992). An analysis of home prices in Tucson, Arizona, finds a preference for homes in areas with green space including native riparian habitat (Bark, et al. 2009; 2011).

Public access to privately owned open space for recreation or educational purposes would also be likely to provide substantial local benefits in many cases. States rarely require public access as a condition for the tax expenditure, but Maine and New Hampshire both encourage it by offering an additional reduction in assessed value of 25 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

Protected open space can also reduce growth in the demand for municipally provided services and forestall negative effects of development, such as heavy traffic or overcrowded schools, which would likely impose a heavier tax liability on current residents. A growing literature on cost of community services indicates that the property taxes paid on developed land are often insufficient to cover the cost of services created to support that development, while open space frequently generates tax revenues well in excess of the cost of services expended on the property. The American Farmland Trust, reporting results from 151 studies covering counties and municipalities in 25 states, finds that the owners of working and open land frequently pay taxes above or even twice the cost of services received on those properties, while residential property owners typically pay less than the cost of services received (Farmland Information Center 2010).

Findings like these suggest that preferential assessment can be justified on the grounds of fairness, because the owners of open space may be subsidizing services sent to owners of developed property. However, the fact that most programs require a long-term agreement and include penalties for early conversion indicates that the goal is not fairness, but preventing development for a specified period.

Unfortunately, there is very little literature evaluating whether preferential assessment programs prevent future development on parcels that aren’t under permanent protection such as an easement. Much of the existing evidence is based on studies of farmland protection programs rather than evaluations of the impact of property tax expenditures on open space. Two studies of Tennessee’s Greenbelt Program evaluated a survey of woodland owners enrolled in the program and found little support for the hypothesis that preferential assessment reduced the likelihood of development on these parcels (Brockett, Gottfried, and Evans 2003; Williams, et al. 2004).

It’s easier to evaluate land under long-term or permanent protection of either a perpetual conservation easement or a long-term preferential assessment contract with substantial penalties for withdrawal. In those cases, it’s possible to reliably predict the continued presence of open space; unfortunately, these protection agreements may predate the preferential assessment or be otherwise uninfluenced by it.

Costs of Preferential Assessment for Open Space

In addition to the tax expenditure itself, these programs may incur several other potential costs. Programs that require an approved conservation plan, for example, might generate a particularly challenging expense. While a state agency could develop and approve such a plan, it will be costly to ensure that conditions of the plan are met.

Program enforcement requires evaluating not only changes in a property’s market value but also changes in its use. If open space is used to graze livestock, for example, this new use might protect the undeveloped condition of the property but still reduce the environmental benefits.

Additionally, evidence suggests that in some instances open space preservation can lower property values by shifting development patterns, typically by resulting in the development of nearby properties (Irwin and Bockstael 2004; McDonald, et al. 2007). If preferential assessment prevents development on particular parcels, that development may shift to other parcels in ways that increase sprawl. If a leapfrog pattern of development occurs because a program prevented development on a parcel-by-parcel basis, the negative effects, such as higher infrastructure costs, could overwhelm any public benefits from the program.

Given the voluntary nature of these programs and resulting changes in development patterns, a worst-case scenario is that lower-quality parcels might receive the preferential assessment, increasing development pressure on parcels that generate greater public benefits. On the one hand, local government approval might reduce this problem by allowing individuals who know the area best to choose the parcels that most deserve protection. On the other hand, it might inspire local officials to protect open space in their jurisdiction, pushing development into other communities and creating undesirable development patterns at the regional level. It is also important to mention that preferential assessment of open space to some degree creates a split-rate system with a higher rate on developed land, particularly on improvements to the land—an issue that concerns many property tax scholars and may also significantly affect land use patterns.

Finally, the value of the public benefits is not static; it may increase or decrease depending on the condition of the property and surrounding area. The changes may be uncorrelated, or even negatively correlated, with future changes in assessed value. For example, more intense development pressure might increase the benefit of preserving a large parcel as open space; or it might decrease the benefit of preserving a small “island” parcel. Twenty-five acres of open space in the middle of a town can greatly benefit a community, but, if 24 of those acres are developed, it will likely diminish the environmental benefits of the remaining acre. Both scenarios, however, are likely to increase tax savings from preferential assessment, as development pressure drives up local property values.

These factors indicate that, while preferential assessment does offer landowners an incentive to preserve public benefits, the amount of the incentive may under-correct or even over-correct for the benefit being created. This will result in an inherently inefficient program, though such programs may still result in significant net benefits compared to having no program at all.

Distributional Consequences

Property tax expenditures to protect open space will have distributional consequences. Most immediately, the program would redistribute the tax burden onto other property owners in the same tax districts, as governments change the mill rate in order to maintain budgeted revenue. Owners of developed properties will now constitute a larger share of the tax base and will need to pay a greater fraction of the total tax bill as a result.

Since preferential assessment programs are primarily designed to maintain existing open space, enrolled parcels continue to generate benefits, but those benefits don’t necessarily increase. Thus the public benefits should be expected to continue to accrue as before. Local residents alone will benefit from scenic views and the foregone external costs of development, while residents and nonresidents alike may benefit from protecting watersheds or habitat for endangered species (Anderson and West 2006). Benefits may be expected to increase, however, if the program requires owners to improve the value of the open space by activity such as habitat restoration.

Several studies indicate that the effects of open space on surrounding property values depend critically on the type of protection and its ability to prevent development in the future. For example, land acquired as a park or forest preserve, or land placed under a conservation easement, has a much more positive effect on neighboring property values than open space that is not permanently protected (Geoghegan 2002). Enrollment in a preferential assessment program might have little or no effect on surrounding property values if the protection is perceived to be temporary, resulting in either permanent reductions in revenue or permanently higher tax rates on the non-enrolled parcels.

Calculating the Fiscal Cost of Preferential Assessment Expenditures

The methodology for calculating the tax expenditure resulting from the preferential assessment of open space is straightforward. The property owner will see a reduced tax burden based on the difference between the assessment without the program and the preferential assessment. This reduction in assessed value can lower tax revenue due to a reduced base. Alternatively, the lost revenue could be recouped by shifting the burden onto other property owners by increasing the tax rate. A combination of both outcomes is also possible. Oregon reports both the loss and the shift in their tax expenditure report (table 2), which listed exemption values of $126 million in fiscal year 2009–10 for the three open space programs. The estimated revenue loss over two fiscal years is $3.2 million, while the estimated revenue shift during that period is $0.7 million.

Data is inconsistent from state to state, which makes it difficult to estimate the revenue effects of preferential assessment. The aggregate data presented for Oregon is much more useful than what many other states present. States that do not calculate property tax expenditures frequently do not make such data available; at best, they usually offer aggregate figures that combine the programs for agriculture, forestry, and open space. Table 2 also indicates the relative scope of open space in that context. The exemption values for private forestry were over $5 billion, and the exemption values for farmland and farm home sites were $14.1 billion. The three conservation programs combined represent approximately one-half of one percent of the total exemption value, and less than one percent of the revenue lost or shifted.

Such calculations also depend on other effects that may be very difficult to observe. It will be impossible to determine the extent to which revenue shifted, without detailed information about local government’s ability to respond by changing the mill rate. In that case, the estimate will account for only foregone revenue. It will also be necessary to ignore the program’s possible positive property value effects on neighboring parcels.

Conclusion

Designing a preferential assessment program for open space requires careful consideration. While land with limited development does provide amenities and environmental benefits under many circumstances, the value of those benefits may vary dramatically according to local conditions. If the program’s goal is primarily to provide local, rather than regional, benefits, one set of criteria for the entire state is unlikely to maximize benefits. Local determination of the enrollment criteria may provide the flexibility necessary to react to those varying conditions, whereas state-level criteria are probably necessary to protect regional resources such as watersheds.

The shortage of empirical work in this area makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of existing programs. If the goal is genuinely to forestall development on certain parcels, program design should consider the length of contract and penalty for early conversion. Short-term delays in development will primarily benefit the owners of open space. For a program to succeed, the open space must generate significant community benefits in the form of either long-term environmental protection or higher property values for other residents of the area. Higher eligibility requirements for inclusion in the program should reduce the amount of acreage enrolled; however, the number of acres should not be the program’s primary goal unless legislators intend it solely as a means to reduce local development. Significant enrollment in the program could have substantial fiscal implications for local jurisdictions, especially if broad criteria and low conversion penalties make it easy for landowners to enroll and then develop the property later. Program design must ensure a maximum of public benefit in exchange for the fiscal effects.

This article was adapted from the Lincoln Institute working paper, “Preferential Assessment for Open Space”: https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/2281_1620_Sundberg_WP13JS1.pdf.

About the Author

Jeffrey O. Sundberg is the James S. Kemper Foundation Professor of Liberal Arts and Business and Professor of Economics at Lake Forest College. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. His recent research interests include the efficiency of state and federal tax incentives for conservation easement donations and preferential assessment programs for open space. He has also served on the board of a land trust in Lake County, Illinois, serving as board president for four years. Contact: jsundber@mx.lakeforest.edu.

Resources

Anderson, Soren and Sarah West. 2006. Open space, residential property values, and spatial context. Regional Science and Urban Economics 36: 773–789.

Bark, R. H., D. E. Osgood, B. G Colby, and E. Halper. 2011. How Do Homebuyers Value Different Types of Green Space? Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 36(3): 395–415.

Bark, R. H., D. E. Osgood, B. G. Colby, G. Katz, and J. Stromberg. 2009. Habitat preservation and restoration: Do homebuyers have preferences for quality habitat? Ecological Economics 68(5): 1465–1475.

Brockett, C. D., R. R. Gottfried, and J. P. Evans. 2003. The Use of State Tax Incentives to Promote Forest Preservation on Private Lands in Tennessee: An Evaluation of Their Equity and Effectiveness Impacts. Politics and Policy 31(2): 252–281.

Chamblee, John F., Peter F. Colwell, Carolyn A. Dehring, and Craig A. Depken. 2011. The Effect of Conservation Activity on Surrounding Land Prices. Land Economics 87(3): 453–472.

Chervin, Stan, Teresa Gibson, and Harry Green. 2009. Greenbelt Revisited. Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. http://www.tn.gov/tacir/PDF_FILES/Taxes/greenbeltrevisited.pdf.

Farmland Information Center, American Farmland Trust. 2010. Fact Sheet: Cost of Community Services Studies. http://www.farmland.org/documents/Cost-of-Community-Services-08-2010.pdf.

Garrod, Guy, and Ken Willis. 1992. The environmental economic impact of woodland: a two-stage hedonic price model of the amenity value of forestry in Britain. Applied Economics 24: 715–728.

Geoghegan, Jacqueline, Lori Lynch, and Shawn Bucholtz. 2003. Capitalization of Open Spaces into Housing Values and the Residential Property Tax Revenue Impacts of Agricultural Easement Programs. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 32(1): 33–45.

Geoghegan, Jacqueline. 2002. The Value of Open Spaces in Residential Land Use. Land Use Policy 19(1): 91–98.

Irwin, Elana G. and Nancy E. Bockstael. 2004. Land Use Externalities, Open Space Preservation, and Urban Sprawl. Regional Science and Urban Economics 34:705–725.

The Sun Belt grew at spectacular rates in the late twentieth century, and among western U.S. cities Phoenix and its metropolitan region led the pack. The Census Bureau reports that between 1990 and 2000 Maricopa County was the fastest growing county in the nation at 44.8 percent, increasing from 2,122,101 to 3,072,149 people. The county is the fourth largest in the nation in terms of total population. During the 1990s, the city of Phoenix topped one million people and became the sixth largest U.S. city. Its spatial expanse has eclipsed that of the city of Los Angeles. According to the Phoenix Planning Department’s data, the region is growing by about 63,000 residents per year and requires about 23,000 new housing units to meet the demand. Statewide, the population is growing by more than 2,000 residents per week, and the number of people in the state is expected to double in the next 20 years.

The weather, relatively affordable housing and abundant jobs attract a diverse array of newcomers, but increased population has numerous social and environmental consequences. Debate rages about the impacts of growth locally and nationally: Is it good? Is it deleterious? Can it be sustained? At what cost? Who benefits? Who suffers?

A group of Arizona State University (ASU) faculty has recognized that these phenomena represent an opportunity for both research and public service in this fast-growing urban environmental laboratory. Furthermore, knowledge gleaned from such inquiries could lead to smarter growth and more livable places in the future. This notion provides the intellectual foundation for a project named Greater Phoenix 2100 (GP 2100), which seeks to provide data and analysis to the region’s decision makers to help them make wise choices about the future.

Greater Phoenix 2100 Workshops

The Lincoln Institute helped ASU launch GP 2100 through workshops in April 2001 that brought together ASU faculty and staff, community leaders, national participants from institutions such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Research Council, and four distinguished speakers who stimulated debate and discussion. The panelists were ecologist and author Dan Botkin, professor emeritus of the University of California-Santa Barbara; Michael Crow, an authority on science policy and executive vice provost at Columbia University; political scientist Helen Ingram, formerly director of the Arizona Water Resources Research Center and now professor of human ecology at the University of California-Irvine; and Bob Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association.

They observed that for the Phoenix metropolitan region to continue to prosper, three overlapping spheres of influence must be considered: the creation of knowledge capital, the enhancement of social capital, and the preservation of natural capital.

The GP 2100 workshop panelists and other participants suggested that ASU should become the convener for discussions on growth, as well as the data bank for computer-stored geographical information about these intersecting, mutually dependent spheres. As a result, ASU should create various scenarios for the future in a “Sim Phoenix” format and a “Decision Theater” that would be a physical and a virtual place where academic and community leaders could probe the consequences of possible actions.

Databases and Audiences

Still in its early stages, ASU’s GP 2100 seeks to coordinate federal, state and academic information programs relating to the environment of the region. The project will be linked with similar studies in other metropolitan areas and global city regions (Simmonds and Hack 2000). GP 2100 will answer questions that people care about by providing objective, scientifically based information using state-of-the-art forecasting and decision tools and theories. Coupled with the Central Arizona/Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project (CAP LTER) supported by the National Science Foundation, GP 2100 has the potential to launch a network of similar undertakings nationally and internationally.

GP 2100 will develop and present a wide variety of scientific and technical data on the past, present and possible futures of the Phoenix metropolitan region. The project builds on the premise that knowledge can be used to create better lives for future generations. GP 2100 will provide learning and research experiences to six major groups of people.

• Regional decision makers and community leaders. Many activities, including community visioning exercises and open space ballot initiatives, point to an acute need for regional leadership. Regional decision makers have identified the need for sound, long-term environmental information.
• The general public. GP 2100 will generate considerable interest within the metropolitan Phoenix community. According to several opinion polls, the public is deeply concerned about growth, environmental quality, and the livability of their neighborhoods.
• Middle- and high-school students and teachers. The project will offer engaging learning opportunities for students and teachers about scientific and decision-making processes. The multiscale aspect of the project will enable teachers to illustrate how specific neighborhoods are connected to regional systems.
• ASU faculty. GP 2100 will be an umbrella and a catalyst for researchers studying the urban ecologies of the region. It will provide the opportunity to explore the integration of scientific information, the examination of new technologies for representation and visualization, and a platform for advancing modeling and decision theory.
• ASU students. Both undergraduate and graduate students will be engaged in GP 2100’s unique multidisciplinary studies that will contribute to an improved quality of life in the region.
• Future generations. The century-long approach means that there will be several generations of audiences.

Goals and Benefits

The goal of GP 2100 is to make the best possible scientific and technical information available in ways that will enable wise, knowledge-based decision-making that can shape the region during the next 100 years. This time frame presents a purposefully longer-term view of the metropolitan region than has previously been developed. While short-term visioning is limited by immediate considerations, a century-long perspective requires the incorporation of mutigenerational concerns and changes in technology. A 100-year time frame also allows for evaluation of impacts of such geologically common events as droughts, major floods and gradual climate changes. In short, GP 2100 will be a strong scientific resource for consideration of the region’s long-term prospects and for creating the kind of future its residents want.

Two types of benefits will flow from the project. The first relates to the future quality of life in the region. An underlying assumption of GP 2100 is that better information will lead to wiser decision-making that will, in turn, result in healthier, more livable communities. Metropolitan Phoenix is expected to double from 3 to 6 million people in the next 20 or 30 years. Meanwhile, the global population will increase from 6 to 9 billion people and will become more urban. Such growth poses many challenges relating to land use, transportation, open space, biodiviersity, urban design, recreation, employment, equity, air quality, water quality and quantity, and the overall quality of life of city regions. The GP 2100 effort will be beneficial to those who are addressing these concerns in Phoenix by providing a prototype of how science-based tools and a regional perspective can better inform long-term decision-making. By viewing the Phoenix region as an urban environmental laboratory, the lessons learned will have implications for the broader scientific and policy communities.

GP 2100 will also be an asset for ASU researchers and students, who will have the opportunity to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams and will have access to state-of-the-art GIS and visualization technologies. New and emerging theories in urban and landscape ecology, decision science, land use and environmental modeling, and biocomplexity will be explored.

Special Features

Several linked products are envisioned to flow from GP 2100. Existing data can be coalesced into a dynamic warehouse of continuously updated regional information. Such a data repository can be presented to the public through an Urban eAtlas, which will be made available in electronic and more conventional forms to provide documentation of existing conditions and enable the construction of future scenarios. The digital version will be available on-line so it may be continuously accessed and updated.

The data archives and Urban eAtlas will contribute to a third major product: Sim Phoenix, an interactive computer game that can help researchers, citizens and decision makers visualize the consequences of “what if” scenarios. Sim Phoenix is a step toward the creation of an even more ambitious visualization project: a Decision Theater where local leaders, citizens, students and researchers can explore future options for the region. The Decision Theater will be a physical space in which scientific data, group dynamics and interactive computer technology are used to develop simulations of the region’s futures and considerations of their consequences. The simulations and their representations will evolve with new computational and representational technologies as well as with new scientific information.

GP 2100 will complement and augment existing long-term monitoring activities being conducted at ASU, such as the CAP LTER project, one of only two such urban LTER sites in the nation. Launching a satellite in cooperation with NASA is one monitoring possibility. This “Phoenix-Sat” would pass over the region twice daily, enabling diurnal measurements of such dynamic parameters as traffic, air quality, soil moisture and construction. It is possible that the Phoenix-Sat could be part of a larger international remote-sensing program for urban resource monitoring. Tools such as the data archives, Urban eAtlas, Sim Phoenix, the Decision Theater and Phoenix-Sat will enable scholars and decision makers alike to probe the major issues that metropolitan areas like Phoenix will face in the coming century. As a result, problems may be foreseen and avoided and opportunities pursued with vigor.

Faculty in the life, physical and social sciences at Arizona State University are currently compiling a comprehensive suite of information about the region. Planners, policy analysts and educators also could identify a series of key response variables and parameters for a Decision Theater. Computer scientists could program this complex information so that it can be displayed in both two- and three-dimensional formats, as well as animated views illustrating changes through time. The data could be automatically updated from dynamic government and university databases, from hundreds of sensors throughout the metropolitan region, and from orbiting satellites.

In this first-of-its-kind Decision Theater, high quality audio and visual presentation systems will include a 180-degree screen, which provides an immersive, synthetic environment along with comfortable ergonomics. This arrangement enables decision makers and researchers to come together to explore, debate and analyze options for the future. The Decision Theater is capable of high-resolution stereoscopic viewing using shuttered glasses. A visitor can have her or his viewing position tracked (”head-tracking”), giving the impression of truly walking within the data and data results, pondering the possible landscapes of the future from different angles. It could be associated with an innovative Planetary Imaging Faculty set up jointly by ASU and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as dance and visual representation projects from ASU’s Institute for Studies in the Arts. While real-time interaction with data and models in the Decision Theater is engrossing, a comparably rich on-line experience is also possible through the use of web-based multimedia, text, data download and upload, and modeling tools. The virtual Decision Theater allows a participant to interact with a Sim Phoenix-like game.

How will the Decision Theater be implemented? Four interactive parameters appear especially crucial for modeling the future: water availability, air quality, open space and land use. ASU and its community and government partners already possess an enormous storehouse of data on these parameters, but the challenge is to combine the data in meaningful ways. To this end, the Greater Phoenix 2100 team, in conjunction with the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey, is now developing a water availability prototype that would use the hydrologic cycle to model regional water availability using factors of precipitation, supply, evaporation and demand to illustrate water futures both graphically and spatially.

A Model for Other Metropolitan Regions

Generations of citizens and scholars will benefit from Greater Phoenix 2100. The project will result in products that will help community and business leaders make wiser decisions. It will assist local, state, and federal officials in planning and designing programs and policies. The project will aid teachers and students in their understanding of natural and social processes. Greater Phoenix 2100 presents uniquely complex targets for technological, scientific and policy analysis advancements. It will produce and facilitate interaction with massive, typically disparate, datasets. Because its major components are easily transferable to other urban regions, the project can provide a model for other places interested in pursuing similar initiatives. In this century, some two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Greater Phoenix 2100 has far-reaching implications concerning the application of knowledge capital to regional and urban decision-making in order to maximize social capital while maintaining the natural capital of the metropolitan region.

Frederick Steiner, an internationally recognized expert on environmental planning, is dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He was formerly professor and director of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Arizona State University.

Reference

Simmonds, Roger and Gary Hack, editors. 2000. Global City Regions: Their Emerging Forms. London: Spon Press.

Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.

El Instituto Lincoln está colaborando en Argentina con la ciudad de Córdoba en un proyecto de gran importancia para cambiar las formas de abordar la planificación física de la ciudad, así como los instrumentos que se usan para lograrla. Córdoba representa un caso particularmente interesante por su ubicación estratégica en el centro del área de desarrollo del Mercosur.

La primera fase del proyecto fue un seminario llevado a cabo el pasado abril titulado “Hacia una gestión urbana integrada: Implementación de un plan estratégico para la ciudad de Córdoba”, cuyo objetivo principal fue congregar a los “actores” principales en Córdoba para analizar y debatir las metas de planificación y los instrumentos en el contexto de desarrollos nuevos en la gestión urbana.

El seminario contó con las ponencias de expertos internacionales y discusiones entre funcionarios municipales, promotores inmobiliarios, intereses comerciales y de negocios, organizaciones no gubernamentales y profesionales del urbanismo. El papel del Instituto Lincoln fue de gran importancia ya que facilitó un foro para que los participantes locales se reunieran por primera vez para hablar de dificultades urbanísticas y problemas de desarrollo, y para dar inicio al proceso de establecer políticas de administración y procedimientos nuevos.

De las discusiones surgieron tres temas principales. El primero, tuvo que ver con decidir el orden de prioridad de la tierra a ser urbanizada, con un interés particular en el acceso equitativo a la tierra, infraestructura y vivienda para los sectores populares, así como mecanismos apropiados para llevar a cabo una planificación urbana integrada a nivel regional. El segundo tema, estuvo enfocado en el impacto ambiental y fiscal de los grandes establecimientos comerciales en estructuras urbanas existentes, distritos históricos y barrios residenciales. El tercer tema se concentró en varios actores y sectores involucrados en el desarrollo industrial de Córdoba, prestando atención a la distribución de la industria, las limitaciones de infraestructura y los costos sociales y ambientales.

Además de dar a los participantes cordobeses una perspectiva amplia sobre problemas de gestión urbana en otras ciudades, el seminario generó dos puntos de importancia: 1) que la planificación para el desarrollo no sólo se trata de regulación o de control del uso de la tierra, sino que las políticas tributarias y fiscales afectan con igual importancia los valores de la tierra; y 2) que los funcionarios locales deben aprender a evaluar los costos y beneficios de los proyectos urbanísticos para poder tener relaciones comerciales efectivas con promotores inmobiliarios del sector privado.

El seminario ya ha tenido impactos específicos en actividades comerciales de trabajo conjunto en el centro histórico y en programas de gestión mejorados para proporcionar una infraestructura y servicios nuevos al mismo tiempo que se reducen los déficits. Además, el programa animó a los participantes a reconocer la importancia de la planificación estratégica a largo plazo para trazar las indicaciones generales sobre cambios de política y para comprender los efectos de tipos particulares de desarrollo en el medio físico y social.

El Instituto Lincoln continúa trabajando con funcionarios municipales para ayudar a desarrollar nuevos paradigmas de gestión que puedan sostener alianzas público-privadas, así como mejores técnicas de análisis y planificación. Los programas de seguimiento ayudarán a gestores de políticas y promotores inmobiliarios privados (que operan tanto en mercados formales como informales) a comprender mejor el funcionamiento de los mercados de tierra urbanos y las consecuencias de cambios de políticas para el desarrollo urbano.

El próximo curso sobre “Comportamiento del mercado inmobiliario en Cordoba: Implicaciones para la estructura urbana” explorará investigaciones sobre los mercados formales en Córdoba, haciendo énfasis en los efectos de las políticas económicas y las intervenciones del gobierno. A este curso lo seguirá un seminario regional donde la experiencia se compartirá con los participantes de por lo menos otros tres países. Simultáneamente, el Instituto Lincoln está desarrollando junto con funcionarios de la ciudad de Córdoba un programa de entrenamiento dirigido a un amplio espectro de funcionarios locales, regionales y promotores inmobiliarios, que se concentra en la administración general, la planificación urbana y la preparación e implementación de proyectos.

Douglas Keare es docente visitante del Instituto Lincoln. Tiene una amplia experiencia en planificación estratégica para ciudades grandes en países en desarrollo a través de investigaciones previas y dirección de proyectos en el Banco Mundial y el Instituto para el Desarrollo Internacional de la Universidad de Harvard. Ricardo Vanella es director del Departamento Desarrollo Económico de la ciudad de Córdoba.

The case for thinking and acting regionally has been made in this country for well over 100 years. After surveying the West in 1890, John Wesley Powell published an essay titled “Institutions for the Arid Lands,” in which he articulated his vision that the most appropriate institutions for governing western resources are commonwealths defined by watersheds. He reasoned that “there is a body of interdependent and unified interests and values, all collected in [a] hydrographic basin, and all segregated by well-defined boundary lines from the rest of the world. The people in such a district have common interests, common rights, and common duties, and must necessarily work together for common purposes” (Powell 1890, 114).

Powell’s prescription to organize around watersheds was largely ignored in the formative years of the settlement and development of the West (Stegner 1953). His vision of watershed democracies, however, is part of a larger story of how American citizens and communities have attempted to govern public affairs on the basis of regions. Some 30 years after Powell’s writing, Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye and others created the Regional Planning Association of America in 1923 to focus largely on cities and municipal regions, and to a lesser extent on rural and wilderness landscapes. Although the history of regionalism is characterized by a mix of successes and failures, there is renewed interest throughout North America in addressing land use, natural resource and environmental problems on a regional basis (see Derthick 1974; Seltzer 2000; Foster 2001).

Today, regional initiatives emerge in response to a growing number of land use and related issues that transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries and often involve business and nonprofit organizations. These issues are most often framed as a crisis or threat, and less so as an opportunity: sprawl across city, county and even state boundaries; water supply for growing communities; water quality protection; wildlife habitat; management of traffic corridors; economic development; and taxation. Effective solutions require people to work across boundaries (jurisdictions, sectors and even disciplines) on a regional scale that corresponds to the challenge or opportunity, as in the New York–New Jersey Highlands region.

Existing institutions, however, rarely have the legitimacy and credibility to convene the plurality of stakeholders interested in or affected by these regional issues. In response, policy makers will occasionally mandate some form of regional collaboration as the most logical way to address trans-boundary issues. Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), for example, are required to develop regional transportation plans in order to secure access to federal transportation dollars. Some landscape-based efforts, such as the Adirondack Park Commission and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, also fall into this category. In these types of cases, policy makers mandate regional collaboration when it is apparent that responding within jurisdictional boundaries is ineffective or threatens the integrity of key resources central to community identity and prospects.

When policy makers are slow to act, or fail to act, stakeholders may become frustrated and ultimately realize that if anything is going to happen citizens need to step forward, with or without government participation. Thus, regional initiatives emerge as much from the bottom up as the top down. When people inhabiting a common place develop a shared recognition that acting together is the best way to address a regional crisis, threat or opportunity, or simply to achieve economies of scale, we see regional initiatives arise more organically, bubbling up from a shared sense of destiny or fate.

In light of the growing interest in acting regionally, this article offers a framework to help organize our thinking about regionalism, and to begin to identify and promote best practices for regional collaboration. No single model or approach will solve all regional problems. By looking at regional efforts around the country, however, it is possible to identify a common set of goals and principles for initiating, designing and sustaining regional efforts.

Shortly before his death, John W. Gardner, a long-time advocate for regional approaches to solving public problems, argued that there can be “no more regionalism for its own sake. We now need pragmatic regionalism with a purpose” (Parr et al. 2002, 3). While the specific objectives of regional initiatives vary, the overarching purpose of most regional initiatives is to integrate three goals (see Figure 1).

Regional Leadership

To achieve these goals, regional initiatives require a certain type of leadership. In contrast to exercising authority by taking unilateral action (a command-and-control model of leadership), people who initiate regional efforts cross jurisdictions, sectors, disciplines and cultures to forge alliances with diverse interests and viewpoints. These “regional stewards” invite people to take ownership of a shared vision and values, and they work hard to bridge differences and nourish networks of relationships.

Regional stewards share power and mobilize people, ideas and resources. They also provide integrity and credibility, and show a high tolerance for complexity, uncertainty and change. They emphasize dialogue and build relationships by respecting the diversity of ideas and viewpoints. Respect builds trust, which in turn fosters communication, understanding and eventually agreement.

Regional stewards tend to be committed to the long-term well-being of a particular place. They apply the same entrepreneurial spirit and persistence to solving regional challenges that business entrepreneurs apply in building a business; they are civic entrepreneurs. They see the need for more connected regional approaches to address social, economic and environmental issues; they are integrators. They build support from leaders, citizens, interest groups and policy makers toward a shared vision; they are coalition builders. Regional stewards hold themselves and each other accountable to achieve tangible results and sustained outcomes.

Regional stewards may be local elected or appointed officials, university or college professors, local business executives, program officers at philanthropic foundations, staff or board members of nonprofit organizations, and community activists. Regardless of their background or station in life, they share a common belief in the need to work across boundaries to accomplish the goals of regional stewardship (Parr et al. 2002).

Principles for Regional Collaboration

To foster livable communities, vibrant economies and healthy environments through regional collaboration, we have distilled seven principles from the literature and our own experiences. These principles are not necessarily new, but they embody practices that, when used in a regional context, create the conditions for successful collaboration.

1. Make the Case. Working across boundaries is tough. There is tremendous inertia in existing political arrangements, so the reasons for working regionally must be clear and compelling. Regional collaboration emerges when a core group of leaders recognizes a crisis, threat or opportunity that is not likely to be adequately addressed through existing institutional arrangements. Depending on the unique needs and interests of a region, initiatives might be organized to achieve one or more objectives (see Figure 2). Far from being mutually exclusive, these objectives reinforce one another and suggest a natural progression from knowledge- and community-building to advocacy and governance.
2. Mobilize and Engage Key Participants. To be effective, regional initiatives must engage the right people. If the objective is to advocate for a particular interest or outcome, a different group of people will be required than if the objective is to build agreement on a regional vision or resolve a multiparty dispute among people with different viewpoints. In the latter types of situations, the regional forums should be as inclusive as possible, seeking people who are interested in and affected by the issue, those needed to implement any potential recommendation (i.e., those with authority), and those who might undermine the process or outcome if not included.
3. Define the Region Based on People’s Interests. Regions vary in size and shape. Some are defined by a sense of place while others address a key function or purpose, such as a watershed, transportation corridor or ecosystem. How people define a region naturally flows from their interests and concerns. This variation in scale suggests that regionalism is at once a unifying theme and an adaptive concept. However it is defined, the region must engage the hearts and minds of people and appeal to shared interests. The precise physical boundaries of a region are often less important than the process of clarifying the core area of interest. Boundaries can be soft and flexible, adaptable to changing needs and interests.
4. Foster Mutual Learning. Regional efforts often begin by providing opportunities to learn about the region and how to think and act across boundaries. Building this common understanding fosters a sense of regional identity, and often the will to act. Regional forums should enable participants to jointly develop and rely on the best available information regardless of the source, thereby creating a greater sense of ownership in the region’s story. Regional efforts should consider a variety of scenarios and options to shape the future of the region, and all participants should have an equal opportunity to share views and information.
5. Forge Collaborative Decisions. Since most regional initiatives do not have authority per se, they must create coalitions and forge collaborative decisions to foster social change and shape public policy. Collaboration is a social learning process where people share knowledge, ideas and experiences through cooperative, face-to-face interaction. The premise of collaboration is that if the right people come together in constructive ways with good information they will produce effective, sustainable solutions to the challenges and opportunities they face. Genuine collaboration occurs when people listen to each other, consider the rationales or interests behind competing viewpoints, and seek solutions that integrate as many interests as possible. Collaborative decision making may or may not result in consensus or unanimous agreement, but it allows participants to create effective coalitions to get things done.
6. Take Strategic Action. The objectives of a regional collaboration should determine what people do. Experience suggests that early successes help build momentum and trust. It is important to develop the capacity to (1) communicate your message, make it relevant and compelling, and use multiple strategies to inform, educate and mobilize people (e.g., media, public events, publications, Web sites); (2) link your effort to established decision-making systems by seeking access to power rather than power itself; and (3) monitor, evaluate and adapt by developing indicators of performance and clarifying who will do what, when and how.

   Being strategic and deciding what to do require an understanding of how regional action supplements efforts at local, state and even national levels. The desired outcomes for a region are often contingent upon many seemingly disconnected decisions. Regional strategies need to recognize these contingencies up front, and create opportunities to build bridges, coordinate actions and do things that otherwise would not get done.

7. Sustain Regional Action and Institutionalize Regional Efforts. Assuming there is a need to sustain a regional partnership, the key challenge is to keep stakeholders engaged and to recruit more leaders. Since the region is no one’s community, building a sense of regional identity, responding to the needs and interests of partners, and capturing and sharing accomplishments are critical to sustain any regional effort. To be effective, regional initiatives should be both idealistic and opportunistic. People’s attention will naturally devolve to more established, usually local, institutions if the mission of the regional effort is not consistently and continuously reviewed, revised, renewed and adapted to address new information and opportunities.

   Regional stewards should also explore the value of integrating regional efforts into existing institutions or designing new ones. Partners need to identify and develop the capacities to sustain the regional initiatives: people, resources (e.g., money and information) and organizational structure. Given the source and diversity of regional initiatives, it is not surprising that different organizational models have emerged to meet particular challenges.

Figure 2.

Objectives of Regional Initiatives

Build knowledge and understanding

• Conduct research
• Acquire information

Build community

• Inform and educate citizens and leaders
• Promote mutual understanding
• Shape public values
• Stimulate conversation
• Foster a common sense of place

Share resources

Solve specific problems

• Provide input and advice
• Advocate for a particular interest or outcome
• Resolve disputes

Govern

• Make and enforce decisions.

Source: McKinney et al. 2002.

Tools for Regional Collaboration

To foster effective regional initiatives and support regional stewards, the Lincoln Institute offers the two-day skill-building course Regional Collaboration, usually in the spring. The Institute also convenes Regional Collaboration Clinics in selected regions, where we work with diverse groups of people to address the regional challenges and opportunities they face. Recently, we completed clinics in the New York–New Jersey Highlands and the Delaware River Basin, both regions experiencing tremendous growth and development.

The Alliance for Regional Stewardship is in the process of creating RegionLink, an online consultative network for regional practitioners.

Our approach to regional collaboration is experimental. We are interested in working with and learning from people involved at different regional scales and on different issues. Please contact us to share your story and suggest how we might improve the framework presented here to better reflect the practice of regional stewardship.

Matthew McKinney is director of the Public Policy Research Institute, The University of Montana, Helena

John Parr is executive director of the Alliance for Regional Stewardship, Denver, Colorado.

Ethan Seltzer is chair of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.

A longer version of this article, including case studies, is available from the authors.

References

Derthick, Martha. 1974. Between nation and state: Regional organizations of the United States. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Foster, Kathryn A. 2001. Regionalism on purpose. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

McKinney, Matthew, et al. 2002. Regionalism in the West: An inventory and assessment. Public land and resources law review, 101–191. Missoula: The University of Montana School of Law.

Parr, John, et al. 2002. The practice of stewardship: Developing leadership for regional action. Denver, CO: Alliance for Regional Stewardship, March.

Powell, John Wesley. 1890. Institutions for the arid lands. The Century Magazine (May-June): 111–116.

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Emerging concerns about climate change impacts along with changing preferences for housing options are shaping the debate over growth patterns and sustainability. Climate modeling experts expect Arizona’s Sun Corridor to become hotter, drier, and more prone to extreme weather events. In a region where summer temperatures top 110°, annual precipitation is only 9 to 10 inches, and flood events already can be extreme, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change impacts will be of paramount importance. The response will require significantly changing prevalent land use planning and development patterns in the region.