This article reviews the Western State Planning Leadership Retreat, in which state planners from 13 western states have participated. The retreats provide a forum for state-level planners to compare their experiences, learn from each other’s successes and failures, and build a common base of experience for land use planning in their states and across the region. Rather than promote a particular approach to land use planning and growth management, the retreats encourage planners to explore a range of land use planning strategies for responding to growth and land use issues in the West. This article summarizes what we learned during the first two retreats in 2000 and 2001.

Forces and trends of land use planning. The West is changing and there are many differences in the states’ approach to land use planning. New forces and trends are redefining the region’s quality of life, communities, and landscapes—directly influencing how we approach land use planning and growth management. Within these trends, western state planners recognize a variety of common challenges—pockets of explosive population growth, sprawl, drought, out-of-date legislation, a lack of funding, and a lack of public and political support for planning, and changing the way development occurs.

Major themes related to land use planning and growth in the West;

Why plan? How can we build public and political support for planning? Historically, land use planning was motivated by a concern to promote orderly development of the landscape, preserve some open spaces, and provide consistency among developments. These continue to be important objectives, but they are insufficient for building public and political support.

What is the role of state government? State programs should support local land use planning efforts, and should try to engage the “big players,” such as transportation departments, to work with local jurisdictions and maintain their state’s economic competitiveness by encouraging local communities to improve their quality of life through infill, redevelopment, and preserving the natural environment.

How can regional approaches to land use planning complement state actions? Regionalism allows multiple jurisdictions to share common resources and manage joint services, such as water treatment facilities and roads. Regional approaches are gaining momentum, but they also create new challenges.

Foster effective planning and growth management through collaboration. Collaboration can be defined many ways, but most planners agree with the premise that if you bring together the right people with good information they will create effective, sustainable solutions to their shared problems. Collaboration, when done correctly, allows the people most affected by land use planning decisions to drive the decisions.

How do we measure success? In 1998, the Arizona legislature passed the Growing Smarter Act, which was amended in 2000, and created a Growing Smarter Commission. The act reformed land use planning and zoning policies and required more public participation in local land use planning. This brings us full circle to our first theme—Why are we planning?

The Three Cs of Planning—three recommendations emerge from the western state planners’ retreats that can be implemented throughout the country. First, identify the most compelling reason to plan in your community; second, rely on collaborative approaches; third, foster regional connections.

“This [the West] is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”

Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water (Penguin Books 1980, 38)

During the past two years, state planners in 13 western states have met in the Western State Planning Leadership Retreat, an annual event sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Western Consensus Council. Cosponsors include the Western Governors’ Association, the Council of State Governments–WEST, and the Western Planners’ Association. The retreats provide a forum for state-level planners to compare their experiences, learn from each other’s successes and failures, and build a common base of experience for planning in their states and across the region. Rather than promote a particular approach to planning and growth management, the retreats encourage planners to explore a range of strategies for responding to growth and land use issues in the West. This article summarizes what we have learned during the first two retreats in 2000 and 2001.

Forces and Trends

The West is changing. New forces and trends are redefining the region’s quality of life, communities and landscapes, directly influencing how we approach land use planning and growth management. One force that sets the West apart from other regions of the country is the overwhelming presence of the landscape. The West has more land and fewer people than any other region, yet is also very urbanized. More people live in urban centers than in rural communities.

The dominance of land in the politics and public policy of the West is due in part to the large amount of land governed by federal and tribal entities (see Figure 1). More than 90 percent of all federal land in the U.S. lies in Alaska and the 11 westernmost contiguous states. The U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manage most of the West’s geography and significantly influence the politics of land use decisions. Indian tribes govern one-fifth of the interior West and are key players in managing water, fish and wildlife.

The West is also the fastest growing region of the country (see Figure 2). The five fastest-growing states of the 1990s were Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Between 1990 and 1998, the region’s cities grew by 25 percent and its rural areas by 18 percent, both significantly higher rates than elsewhere in the U.S. As western demographics diversify, the political geography has grown remarkably homogeneous. Following the 2000 elections, Republicans held three-quarters of the congressional districts in the interior West (see Figure 3) and all governorships except the coastal states of California, Oregon and Washington.

Within these trends, western state planners recognize a variety of common challenges—pockets of explosive population growth, sprawl, drought, out-of-date legislation, a lack of funding, and a lack of public and political support for planning and changing the way development occurs in the West. They also point out many differences in their states’ approaches to planning. Oregon and Hawaii have long-standing statewide land use planning efforts, but planning in Nevada is a recent phenomenon, limited mainly to the Las Vegas and Reno areas. Vast federal holdings in Nevada, Idaho and Utah dictate land use management more than in other states, and Arizona and New Mexico share planning responsibilities with many sovereign tribal governments. Alaska and Wyoming—with small populations and little or no growth—do very little planning.

Major Themes

Based on the first two retreats, we have identified six major themes related to planning and growth in the West.

Why plan? How can we build public and political support for planning? Historically, planning was motivated by a concern to promote orderly development of the landscape, preserve some open spaces, and provide consistency among developments. These continue to be important objectives, but they are insufficient for building public and political support. Particularly during economic recession, planning takes a back seat—the public can focus on only so many problems at once. Today, the most compelling argument for planning is that it can be a vehicle to promote economic development and sustain the quality of life. People move to the West and create jobs because they like the quality of life in the region, and planners need to tap into this motivation.

In Utah, for example, quality of life is an economic imperative, so state planners tie their work to enhancing quality of life rather than to limiting or directing growth. It is used to integrate economic vitality and environmental protection. Several years ago, business leaders and others created Envision Utah, a private-public partnership. Participants use visualization techniques and aerial photos, mapping growth as it might occur without planning, and then again under planned cluster developments with greenbelts and community centers. These “alternative futures” scenarios help citizens picture the changes that are coming and the alternatives for guiding those changes in their communities. As Utah’s state planner says, “Growth will happen, and our job is to preserve quality. That way, when growth slows, we will still have a high quality of life.”

Kent Briggs, executive director for the Council of State Governments–WEST (a regional association for state legislators), and Jim Souby, executive director of the Western Governors’ Association, acknowledge the difficulty of nurturing public and political support for growth management in the West. They agree that political power shifts quickly from one party to the other, and yet is a lagging indicator of cultural, demographic and economic change. Governors and legislators might be more convinced to support land use planning, they say, by using visualization techniques to help them understand the costs of existing patterns of development, and to picture the desired future of our communities and landscapes.

How much planning is enough, and who should be in the driver’s seat? Arizona and Colorado have smart growth programs designed to help communities plan for growth and preserve open space. In the November 2000 elections, citizen initiatives in both states introduced some of the nation’s most stringent planning requirements, but both initiatives failed by a 70 to 30 percent vote, suggesting that citizens want to maintain flexibility and freedom—and local control—when it comes to planning and growth management. The story is similar in Hawaii, where business profitability—not zoning maps—directs land use. In May 2001, Hawaii’s governor vetoed a smart growth initiative because it was perceived as being too environmental and would limit developers’ ability to convert agricultural lands.

This emphasis on home rule or local control is supported by a recent survey of citizens in Montana, conducted by the Montana Association of Realtors. In the survey, 67 percent of respondents said that city or county governments should have the power to make land use decisions, while 60 percent opposed increasing state involvement in managing growth-related problems.

In Oregon, citizens narrowly passed Measure 7, an initiative requiring state and local governments to pay private property owners for any regulations that restrict the use or reduce the value of real property. While the impacts and constitutionality of this initiative are still being debated, it sends a strong message to planners in a state that has had one of the most progressive land use and growth management programs for 25 years. The message, according to Oregon’s state planner, is to not rest on your successes, and to keep citizens and communities engaged in an ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of land use planning. He also stressed the need to balance preservation with appropriate development, emphasizing that “good planning doesn’t just place limits on growth and development.”

What is the role of state government? Douglas Porter, keynote speaker at the first retreat and a nationally known consultant on land use and growth policy, says that one of the most important state roles is to offset the lack of will to plan at the local level. He says that state programs should support local planning efforts, and should try to engage the “big players,” such as transportation departments, to work with local jurisdictions. Porter also suggests that state governments can maintain their state’s economic competitiveness by encouraging local communities to improve their quality of life through infill, redevelopment, and preserving the natural environment.

Oregon’s state government attracted $20 million in federal funding to help communities overhaul zoning ordinances and remove obstacles to mixed uses. Colorado created an Office of Smart Growth to provide technical assistance on comprehensive planning; document best practices for planning and development; maintain a list of qualified mediators for land use disputes; and provide grants for regional efforts in high growth areas. In Arizona, Montana and New Mexico, state planning offices provide a range of technical services to assist communities, such as clarifying state laws, promoting public participation, and fostering intergovernmental coordination.

Jim Souby suggests that one of the most effective roles of state government is to promote market-based strategies and tax incentives. “Tax what you don’t like, subsidize what you do like,” Souby says. Other incentives might include cost sharing and state investment strategies—similar to Maryland and Oregon—to drive development in a positive direction.

How can regional approaches to land use planning complement state actions? Regionalism allows multiple jurisdictions to share common resources and manage joint services, such as water treatment facilities and roads. In Washington, citizens recently rejected the top-down smart growth model popularized in Florida due to concerns over home rule and private property rights. In response, the state legislature approved a system of regional planning boards that instill some statewide consistency while allowing for regional and local differences.

Nevada, despite double-digit growth in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, does not have a state planning office. However, the legislature mandated Washoe County (home of Reno and Sparks) to create a regional planning commission to address growth issues jointly rather than in a piecemeal manner. Key municipal and county officials in Clark County (Las Vegas) formed their planning coalition voluntarily—compelled to cooperate by the highest growth rate in the nation. This coalition recently presented the state legislature with a regional plan that emphasizes resolving growth issues locally rather than at the state level.

In New Mexico, the city and county of Santa Fe each recently updated their comprehensive land use plans. The plans were fine, except that they were stand-alones prepared with no coordination. Citizens demanded better integration of planning efforts and pushed for a new regional planning authority. Within 18 months, citizens and officials developed a joint land use plan for the five-mile zone around the city, and the regional authority is now developing zoning districts and an annexation plan. In Idaho, city and county officials in Boise voluntarily created the Treasure Valley Partnership as a forum to discuss policies for controlling sprawl, and to coordinate the delivery of services. They are also reviewing the possibility of light rail development.

Regional approaches are gaining momentum, but they also create new challenges. For example, the city of Reno has been reluctant to join the neighboring city of Sparks and Washoe County in revising their regional plan. With no enforcement or penalty at the state level, the other jurisdictions can do little to encourage Reno’s involvement. Likewise, New Mexico has no policy framework for regional planning and thus no guidelines on how to share taxing authority, land use decision making and enforcement responsibilities.

Foster effective planning and growth management through collaboration. Collaboration can be defined many ways, but most planners agree with the premise that if you bring together the right people with good information they will create effective, sustainable solutions to their shared problems. Collaborative forums allow local officials to weigh and balance competing viewpoints, and to learn more about the issues at hand. According to Jim Souby, local efforts should incorporate federal land managers because they play such a dominant role in the region’s political geography. Kent Briggs agrees that collaboration, when done correctly, allows the people most affected by land use decisions to drive the decisions. Collaborative processes, when they include all affected interests, can generate enormous political power, even when such efforts do not have any formal authority. While it may be appropriate in some cases to have national or state goals, it is ultimately up to the people who live in the communities and watersheds of the West to determine their future, according to Briggs.

How do we measure success? In 1998, the Arizona legislature passed the Growing Smarter Act, which was amended in 2000, and created a Growing Smarter Commission. The act reformed land use planning and zoning policies and required more public participation in local planning. The commission recommended that the state should monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of land use planning on an ongoing basis. The governor recently appointed an oversight council to continue this work, but council members say that clear benchmarks are needed against which to evaluate the effectiveness of land use planning—a percentage of open space preserved, for example, or a threshold on new development that triggers tighter growth restrictions. Arizona law, however, simply identifies the issues that must be addressed in comprehensive land use plans. It does not set specific standards or expectations, making meaningful evaluation impossible. This brings us full circle to our first theme—Why are we planning?

The Three Cs of Planning

Three recommendations emerge from the western state planners’ retreats that can be implemented throughout the country.

First, identify the most compelling reason to plan in your community. What are you trying to promote, or prevent? Be explicit about the values driving the planning process. Emphasize the link between quality of life, economic development and land use planning as a way to sustain the economy and the environment. Remember that people must have meaningful reasons to participate constructively in the planning process.

Second, rely on collaborative approaches. Engage the full range of stakeholders, and do it in a meaningful way. A good collaborative process generates a broader understanding of the issues—since more people are sharing information and ideas—and also leads to more durable, widely supported decisions. Collaboration may also be the most effective way to accommodate the needs and interests of local citizens within a regional approach and when the state’s role is limited.

Third, foster regional connections. Recognize that planning is an ongoing process, not a product to be produced and placed on a shelf. Link the present to the future using visualization and alternative futures techniques. Build monitoring and evaluation strategies into plan implementation. Encourage regional approaches that build on a common sense of place and address transboundary issues. Emphasize that regionalism can lead to greater efficiencies and economies of scale by coordinating efforts and sharing resources.

Matthew McKinney is executive director of the Western Consensus Council in Helena, Montana, a nonprofit organization that helps citizens and officials shape effective natural resource and other public policy through inclusive, informed and deliberative public processes. Will Harmon is the communications coordinator for the Western Consensus Council and a freelance writer based in Helena.

References

Center for Resource Management. 1999. The Western Charter: Initiating a Regional Conversation. Boulder, CO: Center for Resource Management.

Kwartler, Michael. 1998. Regulating the good you can’t think of. Urban Design International 3(1):13-21.

Steinitz, Carl and Susan McDowell. 2001. Alternative futures for Monroe County, Pennsylvania: A case study in applying ecological principles, in Applying Ecological Principles to Land Management, edited by Virginia H. Dale and Richard A. Haeuber. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, 165-189.

Swanson, Larry. 1999. The emerging ‘new economy’ of the Rocky Mountain West: Recent change and future expectation. The Rocky Mountain West’s Changing Landscape 1(1):16-27.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2000. Environmental Planning for Communities: A Guide to the Environmental Visioning Process Utilizing a Geographic Information System (GIS). (September).

Like many fast-growing areas across the country, the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky is dealing with two complementary growth management issues:

• How to manage growth that takes place within the 40-year-old urban growth boundary around Lexington and in the smaller cities and towns of the surrounding counties;
• How to best preserve the unique rural character of the countryside beyond urban growth areas.

Civic leadership for this critical planning process is provided by Bluegrass Tomorrow, a non-profit, community-based organization formed in 1989 to ensure that the region’s extraordinary resources-physical, natural and fiscal-are soundly managed for the future. Bluegrass Tomorrow works within the seven-county area for solutions that build a strong and efficient economy, a protected environment and livable communities. The organization accomplishes its goals by promoting regional dialogue and collaborative goal-setting among diverse interests, facilitating public, private and corporate sector cooperation, and developing innovative planning solutions to growth and conservation concerns.

The guiding framework for Bluegrass Tomorrow is the Bluegrass Regional Vision that was developed in 1993 through a broad-based regional planning process. In seeking to maintain a clear definition between town and country, this Vision reflects the region’s legacy of a large urban center (Lexington) surrounded by smaller, distinct cities and towns. These communities are separated and yet connected by a beautiful greenbelt of agricultural land and areas rich in environmental and historic resources.

Smart Growth Choices

Continuing a partnership established in the early 1990s, the Lincoln Institute and Bluegrass Tomorrow cosponsored a conference in October that focused on smart growth choices for the region. The conference was designed to bring together public officials, business interests and concerned citizens to revisit the Regional Vision, discuss why that Vision remains important for good business, good cities and a good environment, and to explore how it is being unraveled by current development pressures. Through a combination of keynote addresses, plenary sessions and interactive workshops, participants learned about smart growth principles and evaluated the appropriateness of various approaches and models to their region.

William Hudnut, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., discussed the characteristics of smart growth, which are also the goals of the Bluegrass Regional Vision:

• Begin with the end in mind and work back from there to plan in advance.
• Use incentives to guide development to areas that make sense.
• Think, plan and act as a region and work out issues through collaboration and teamwork.
• Make the commitment to preserve farmland and open space.
• Demonstrate environmental sensitivity, recognizing that “we borrow the land from our children.”
• Value compact, mixed-use development that supports alternative choices of transportation.
• Provide certainty for developers with less contention.
• Reuse older areas of cities and towns including abandoned lands and obsolete buildings.
• Preserve and reinvest in traditional downtowns and neighborhoods. “You can’t be a suburb of nothing.”
• Create a sense of place and community.

The conference program highlighted three smart growth themes, offered illustrative case studies from other regions in the U.S., and provided opportunities for participant feedback on promising directions and possible obstacles.

Planning and Paying for Infrastructure

The Bluegrass region’s ability to create incentives to promote smart growth practices is often limited because local governments are always in the business of playing “catch up.” This creates a problem because of the need for local government to be able to use public infrastructure to promote development in areas appropriate for growth, away from rural conservation areas, and to help in the purchase of development rights to protect the Bluegrass farmland.

Paul Tischler, a fiscal, economic and planning consultant from Bethesda, Maryland, advocated that government use a capital improvement plan to address this problem. This planning tool allows governments to create a comprehensive approach to current and future needs in one integrated program. It establishes goals for what projects are needed and how and when to pay for them. Peter Pollock of the Boulder, Colorado, Planning Department presented a case study of how his city has implemented a capital improvement program that addresses capital facilities planning and budgeting, equity concerns and linkage of service availability to development approval.

Infill Development

Promotion of more intense development and redevelopment within established cities and towns in the Bluegrass is a critical smart growth issue. It encourages more efficient use of the region’s highly valued Bluegrass farmland and makes better use of existing infrastructure. Too often, however, developers are required to reduce the density of development to respond to neighborhood concerns about incompatibility with the existing community character. As a result, land within urban areas is being used less efficiently, which increases the pressure to convert farmland on the edge of developed areas into future home sites.

To address this problem, Nore Winter, an urban design review consultant in Boulder, Colorado, discussed how communities can make sure that infill and redevelopment enhance the community and the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood. He explained how to avoid “generica” by defining community character and using design guidelines to improve new developments with visual examples that demonstrate the type of development that is preferred. David Rice, executive director of the Norfolk, Virginia, Redevelopment and Housing Authority, shared examples of infill development projects in that city, which has successfully created quality neighborhoods, encouraged community participation and addressed difficult zoning, design and permitting concerns.

Regional Cooperation

The seven central Bluegrass counties constitute a highly integrated region in terms of land use, economy, and natural and cultural resources. Decisions in one county can have a long-term impact on another county. Although Bluegrass Tomorrow has drawn the region together to work on these issues, the current rate of change requires more intensive planning and coordination.

Curtis Johnson, president and chairman of the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities area in Minnesota, explored with conference participants many examples of additional steps that can be taken to promote regional cooperation. The good news for the Bluegrass, Johnson noted in his opening observations, is that unlike some regions of the U.S., the Bluegrass is still able to make important choices. He cautioned, though, that any region has only a few opportunities to get it right, and that there is no magic solution. He also offered several succinct ideas about regionalism: “setting a bigger table, including those who disagree,” “it’s never over,” and “no one is excused.”

Next Steps

Conference participants and local community and political leaders who held a follow-up meeting concluded that the region needs to explore seven action steps to build on the ideas generated by the conference speakers and discussion sessions.

1. Encourage communities to put in place a well-communicated and clearly explained capital improvement plan to help build community confidence that government can meet and pay for the needs of local communities and the region as a whole. The plan should match services to regional growth and build consensus among diverse interest groups about which areas are to be designated as urban and which will remain rural.

2. Promote infill development by using a redevelopment authority to build downtown housing, redevelop old strip centers and explore new projects in overlooked urbanized areas.

3. Develop design guidelines for infill and redevelopment projects that work as a friend, not a foe. The guidelines should be developed in partnership with the neighbors to build confidence in the process, remove fear of the unknown, and set a design framework rather than dictate a particular design style.

4. Use Bluegrass farmland as the niche or “brand identity” when marketing the Bluegrass as a location.

5. Educate the business community, especially the lending community, about the reasons for and benefits of smart growth.

6. Address concerns over economic winners and losers in the region, and undertake economic planning accordingly.

7. Build on collaborative regional efforts now in place and the common sense of place in the Bluegrass to strengthen regional planning efforts. This involves taking care to maximize alliances among groups and to balance strategic long-term planning with specific actions.

What will become of these ideas? If the past is any measure, over the next several months the leaders and citizens of the Bluegrass region will sort out which of these ideas will work best, and they will form the coalitions necessary to make them work. Bluegrass Tomorrow will continue to provide a unique model of private sector leadership on smart growth issues in collaboration with the region’s public officials and community residents.

Jean Scott is executive director of Bluegrass Tomorrow, based in Lexington, Kentucky, and Peter Pollock is director of community planning in Boulder, Colorado, and a former visiting fellow of the Lincoln Institute. Together they developed and organized the conference on Smart Growth for the Bluegrass.

Decentralization of the state and growing business and community involvement in civic affairs are posing new challenges to the development of institutions focused on land policies and their implementation throughout Latin America. Mayors and local councils are assuming new responsibilities in the areas of environmental protection, urban transportation, basic infrastructure, local financing, social services and economic development. At the same time, business and civic organizations are finding new avenues to ensure public attention to their demands through participatory planning, budgeting, co-financing and control at the local level.

Thus, decentralization and democratic participation are gradually building an environment in which public-private alliances can develop joint projects of common interest to both government and individuals. However, many government institutions have a long way to go before they are fully adjusted to their new roles in planning, regulation and evaluation.

Long-entrenched cultures of apathy and citizen distrust of government have to be transformed into mutual confidence capable of mobilizing the best community traditions of the Latin American people. Political and economic patronage and state corruption need to be superseded by political and administrative accountability. Obsolete budget, contract and municipal laws still restrict the capacity of both local governments and civil society to interact creatively through contractual and co-financing arrangements.

The institutional challenges and policy dilemmas currently confronted by the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (MASS) illustrate the transformations occurring throughout the region. After years of civil war, the Salvadorans signed a peace agreement in 1992 that provided the framework for real competition among political parties and stimulated more active participation by business, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community organizations. MASS incorporates several municipalities, some of them led by mayors from opposition parties to the central government. The coordinating body of MASS is the Council of Mayors, which in turn is supported by a Metropolitan Planning Office.

With technical assistance from international NGOs, MASS has prepared a comprehensive development plan. Contemporary urban planning instruments such as macrozoning, multi-rate property tax, value capture for environmental protection, public-private consortiums and land use coefficients are being considered for the implementation of land, development and environmental policies. Indeed, the Salvadorans have the support of several research centers that are familiar with the use and impact of these and other instruments in other parts of the world. Their primary need now is to mobilize public and private metropolitan actors around common policies and to develop shared instruments for their application.

Toward that end, PRISMA, a prominent Salvadoran NGO and urban research center, invited the Lincoln Institute to develop a joint workshop on urban management tools, intergovernmental coordinating mechanisms for metropolitan areas and public-private initiatives for sustainable cities. The workshop, held in San Salvador in October, included high-ranking officers from the central government, mayors, planning officers and other authorities from MASS, and representatives from builders’ and developers’ associations and some cooperative housing institutions and community organizations.

Speakers from the Lincoln Institute presented experiences from Taiwan, The Philippines, Mexico and other Latin American countries that underlined policies and instruments capable of harmonizing the interests of different urban stakeholders and coordinating several layers of government for land use and urban development objectives. The Salvadorans explained their immediate concerns, such as the lack of intergovernmental coordination to protect the urban environment, discontinuities in policy measures, arbitrariness at all levels of government, and legal and administrative uncertainties.

The workshop participants concluded that to foster the new legal and institutional framework sought by MASS the Salvadorans need to expand discussions among other metropolitan actors. They also need to continue to work with institutions such as the Lincoln Institute that have the trust and credibility to present internationally recognized land management policies and can help build consensus among different public and private interests.

Mario Lungo is a researcher at PRISMA, the Salvadoran Program for Development and Environmental Research; Alejandra Mortarini is the Lincoln Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean programs manager; and Fernando Rojas, a lawyer from Colombia, is a visiting fellow of the Institute this year.

My father John C. Lincoln (1866-1959) had a strong code of ethics that played a prominent role in both his practice of business and his ideas about land. In 1895 he founded the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, which became the world’s leading manufacturer of arc welding equipment. He drew his ideas about land from the 1879 book Progress and Poverty, by the American political economist and social philosopher Henry George.

My father’s core ethical principle was to treat people as you would like to be treated. This implied the following precepts:

1) Treat people with absolute fairness. This means all people. In business it includes all the constituents of a company—employees, customers, owners, and the community. In society it means government must treat individuals fairly, and vice versa.

2) Whoever creates something should be entitled to keep it. Receiving the fruits of someone else’s labor—a windfall—often occurs. But for each windfall there is a wipeout—someone doesn’t get all he or she produced. Both the windfall and the wipeout are unethical.

3) People are important. They should be treated with respect and dignity, not as machines or cogs in a wheel.

Ethics in Business

Largely as a result of following these principles, the Lincoln Electric Company has demonstrated superior performance for its entire 100-year history. Many things have to happen to run a business ethically. One of them is making an adequate profit, which benefits the shareholders. But in my opinion, any company and all its constituents are better served if the customer comes first.

At Lincoln Electric, most employees are on piece work. If they produce more, they get more. The company has an annual bonus program, and the kitty for this bonus is composed of the extra profit beyond the returns required to run the business. Running the business includes providing a fair but not excessive dividend to shareholders and investing in new products and production methods. Beyond these costs, employees at Lincoln Electric get to keep any extra profit they produce. Recently bonuses have been about 50 to 60 percent of annual salaries. There are no windfalls, and no wipeouts.

Nowadays, manufacturing is no longer as much the “thing” as it once was. Making Lincoln Electric a successful global company requires more emphasis on company-wide teams. Individual pay is more dependent upon cooperation across departmental lines. This can work just as well as more individual programs of the past, but it is more difficult to manage. Incentives must be tailored to each location where we operate.

Ethics in Land

The heritage of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy stems from my father’s interest in the ideas of Henry George, especially the land value tax. The ethics of this tax concept are parallel to those used at Lincoln Electric.

Someone who works the land should be entitled to keep the fruits of his labor. If he produces more because of increased skill or effort, he should reap a higher reward. However, Henry George said that land is a natural monopoly. Its value is largely created by things unrelated to the actions of the land’s owner, such as population pressure or mineral deposits. The landowner or user has nothing to do with these factors, yet if they cause the land value to increase, the owner gets a windfall.

This ethical dilemma disturbed my father, as it disturbs me. He subscribed to the remedy proposed by Henry George, which is to take as a tax each year the full rental value of land produced by natural or social factors. This would eliminate the windfall. It would still leave for landowners and users the value created by their own investments and labor.

A hundred years ago land was considered one of the three factors of production, along with labor and capital. Land was essential as both a place to work and a source of raw materials. Things are more complex today. A great deal of the economy has to do with telecommunications and computer software, which allow businesses to locate anywhere and use few or inexpensive natural resources. These changes may not negate the basic economic theories of Henry George’s time, but they do make it a bit more difficult to analyze the role of land in the economy.

There are many positive illustrations that ethical business practices lead to economic success. Unfortunately, there are not clearcut illustrations showing that land value taxation produces broad economic benefits. Nevertheless, economic research suggests that land value taxation could encourage the productive and careful use of land. Individuals who used the land in ways that increased its production would be able to keep the full value they had created, and society would keep the value it created.

I believe ethical practices will benefit all sides in any transaction. Ethical land taxation should lead to an improved economy, just as ethical business practices lead to more successful companies. One should get to keep the fruits of one’s labor, but the fruits of speculation or monopolies should accrue to the community as a whole, not to individuals as windfalls. Both the private sector and the public sector would benefit. Good ethics is good business. Good ethics is good for society as well as the economy.

___________________

David C. Lincoln, president of the Lincoln Foundation and former chairman of the Lincoln Institute, presented the annual Founder’s Day lecture on August 1 at Lincoln House. He had served as chairman for the Institute’s first 22 years before stepping down in May 1996. His talk, excerpted here in part, commemorated the 130th anniversary of the birth of his father, John Cromwell Lincoln, the Cleveland, Ohio, industrialist who founded the Lincoln Foundation in 1947.

Throughout North America, there is a growing trend to approach land use, natural resources and environmental problems on a regional basis. Since existing government agencies often lack broad authority, local and environmental leaders are increasingly taking the initiative to address the social, economic and environmental issues of a particular place by reaching across conventional political and jurisdictional boundaries, sectors and disciplines.

Interest in environmental regionalism has ebbed and flowed over the years, but its roots are as ancient as humankind’s first home in Africa’s Rift Valley and the early civilizations of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Regionalism flourished in Europe during the early nineteenth century and emerged in the U.S. in the form of the western explorations by Lewis and Clark and John Wesley Powell. In the 1930s, regional interest in the U.S. surfaced again in the form of Lewis Mumford’s ecological regionalism and the initiatives of the New Deal. After World War II, the U.S. Congress was persuaded to experiment with unifunctional and political forms of regionalism, such as the federal-state river basin and regional commissions. At the turn of the twenty-first century, prompted by dissatisfaction with the growing numbers, scale and complexity of governmental functions, and coincident with the public commitment to civic forms of environmentalism, the stage was set for the current revival of interest in regionalism.

What Is An Environmental Region?

An environmental region usually has some combination of the following attributes:

• a special place that people care about and identify with;
• a named area that “stirs the blood and arouses passion”;
• a place with a unity or homogeneity of some sort;
• an area defined by common system functions;
• a place with a similar context and culture;
• an area with a psychic identity (a “region of the mind”); and/or
• a place with a history (“story”) around which people can convene, organize and plan for what they want and need (C. Foster 2002a).

Examples of these places abound at different scales throughout the U.S.: Chesapeake Bay, the Northeast’s Northern Forest, the Great Plains (popularly termed the Buffalo Commons), the Southwest’s Sonoran Desert, the Rocky Mountains, California’s Great Valley of the Sacramento River, and the Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound. The ambitious “Y2Y” (Yellowstone to Yukon) and Northeastern Landscape projects are designed to secure wildland corridors in crucial regions across the borders of the U.S. and Canada.

But environments need not be large to become good candidates for regional action. For example, a cranberry bog lying in two small Massachusetts towns was the spark for an eventual statewide statute permitting jurisdictions of all sizes to enter into joint powers agreements for environmental purposes. In the Deep South, high-level political negotiations currently preoccupy municipalities, states and federal agencies in the northern portions of the three-state, 20,000-square-mile Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint (ACF) Basin while citizen environmental interests remain focused on the relatively modest, still unspoiled reaches at the southern end of the basin. The famous Quincy Library case in northern California was an initiative prompted by three local citizens, meeting at the town library, to forge a common strategy for nearby national forests. And, on Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound, one of the earliest land management collaborations involved local citizens and jurisdictions serving as surrogates for the National Park Service. In fact, such is the breadth and diversity of regional environmental initiatives across the country that national collaboration expert Julia Wondolleck of the University of Michigan has likened them to snowflakes— none exactly alike.

The Harvard Environmental Regionalism Project

Responding to an apparent resurgence of interest in regionalism throughout the U.S. and Canada, researchers at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the spring of 1998 asked nearly 150 prominent North American regionalists how regions might be used to advance environmental protection, use and management. The survey paralleled a similar New Deal-era inquiry into the possible use of regions for social and economic development and resulted in an outpouring of opinions (C. Foster and Meyer 2000). Some respondents advised that regions are bounded and shaped in response to a number of physiographic, hydrologic and biotic factors, while others noted influences built around a strong human sense of place.

Regions tend to be less distinct at the margins than at the core. In fact, many regions exhibit a kind of fractal, multi-core quality, operating through individual components that are layered, nested and organized hierarchically. But all seem to work best when they address real, politically relevant issues occurring in a “problem-shed” context. Thus, regions should be viewed as conceptual frameworks for analysis and practice, and ways to organize processes and relationships in order to harness capabilities and integrate policies and programs within a given area, rather than as definitive lines on a map.

Although environmental attributes will be prominent and compelling in any environmentally based region, they should not be controlling. More important will be the inhabitants’ own values, perspectives and priorities, which may include a range of environmentally relevant economic, social, political and cultural objectives. Such regions, like the environment itself, will turn out to be dynamic, not static. The best regions will employ a changing mix of largely organic activities supported by the programmatic services of established governmental agencies and political jurisdictions. Their scales must be large enough to encompass the problem or problems to be addressed, but not so large as to lose any prospect of a supportive constituency. The region’s form and administrative structure should be fitted carefully to its proposed programs and functions, and should operate as a viable business organization.

Despite passionate individual adherents for certain kinds of regions (for example, watersheds or ecoregions), no single best type of environmental region seems to fit all circumstances. Each region must reflect its own biological and cultural diversity and represent the needs of both the present and future occupants of the area in question. The survey respondents recommended starting with a sizable, recognizable, organic landscape, preferably one with a coincidence of natural and cultural features, where sufficient regional consciousness already exists to make the area identifiable (and even nameable). Pluralistic and deliberative processes should then be employed to define the required regional entity. In some instances, preexisting governmental authorities (such as the Endangered Species Act) can serve as the spark; in others, environmental functions may simply be added to established regional agencies for planning, transportation, economic development or metropolitan affairs. Whatever form it may take, and whatever its program objectives may turn out to be, the regional organization must not waver from its goal of achieving meaningful, positive and timely change in the state of the environment by either improving its present condition or removing impediments to its proper management, protection and use.

The Harvard researchers concluded that successful environmental regionalists will need a “tool box” of technical and financial assistance delivered to them through one or more “centers of excellence” established to serve on-the-ground networks of practitioners. Responding to that challenge, the Lincoln Institute has been supporting an inquiry and evaluation of the center of excellence concept through a project known as ENREG (environmental regionalism).

The ENREG Project

The project began with the drafting of a white paper, “Fostering Conservation and Environmental Regionalism: A Blueprint for Action,” describing the rationale for and likely attributes of a national environmental regionalism program (C. Foster 2002b). Separate audiences of regional practitioners and organization/agency representatives reviewed and debated the paper during sessions in Salt Lake City in December 2001 and at Lincoln House in Cambridge in April 2002.

After reviewing an extensive inventory and assessment of ongoing regional initiatives (McKinney et al. 2002), the western practitioners agreed that regionalism is by definition an integrative concept, eventually touching a whole circle of social, economic and political, not just environmental, issues. They noted that regionalism was growing in popularity for several reasons: necessity, self-interest, and as a way to design a shared future and avoid a common fate. They listed a number of obstacles and challenges facing regional initiatives in the West, describing such keys to success as new and creative processes, partnerships, coalitions, planned redundancy, and the exercise of a learning, adaptive attitude on the part of regional practitioners. As strategies to support and promote regionalism, they encouraged experimentation with different models, use of Internet tools to foster communications and networks, and the development of training programs for regional practitioners built around actual case experience. While they agreed that a common framework for promoting and supporting regionalism would be helpful, they cautioned against any attempt to institutionalize what was in essence an organic movement (McKinney, Harmon and Fitch 2002).

The eastern group used four case presentations to begin sorting out what regions are for, how they might be founded and used, what role government should be asked to play, and the implications of regionalism in a global sense. In terms of general precepts and strategies, participants were encouraged to be bold, positive, goal-oriented and adaptive. Those seeking to encourage and support regional initiatives should be sure that the right science and data are available at the right time, and that research and documentation do not overlook the crucial role to be played by people in achieving the necessary behavioral/societal changes (Foster 2002a).

Both groups agreed on the need for specialized education and training in regional environmental practice. The westerners urged training in designing regional initiatives, managing regional organizations and undertaking collaborative problem solving. The easterners suggested a curriculum that would start with concepts, principles and history, and then turn to the skill sets and processes needed to build an effective constituency for change. All favored research and documentation into what works in actual practice, what doesn’t, and why.

The Next Steps

Given these encouraging developments, what does the future portend for ENREG and the field of environmental regionalism it is advocating?

First, the Lincoln Institute is developing a short course on practical strategies to help citizens and officials initiate, manage and sustain regional initiatives. It is being designed for people interested in starting and operating regional initiatives or organizations, such as individual activists, local advocacy groups, governmental officials, and business and industry leaders. The course builds on recent work supported by the Lincoln Institute (see K. Foster 2001 and C. Foster 2002) and uses a combination of lectures, case studies and simulations to provide background information and teach practical skills. The first offering of the course is planned in the spring of 2003 for a group of 20 to 30 prospective practitioners and their associated organizations interested in solving environmental problems according to “the natural territory of the problem,” whether that be watersheds, ecosystems, metropolitan areas, or other types of regions. Ideally, the course will provide an opportunity for people from a common region to come together and begin the process of thinking and acting regionally. Future courses may be convened by one or more local organizational cosponsors that will be responsible for the recruitment of practitioners and many of the logistical and organizational arrangements and for working with the Lincoln Institute to provide instructional resources.

Second and closely allied with the short course is an executive seminar for senior regional practitioners who will be invited to share information and learn from one another through a peer exchange process, thereby building and sustaining viable practitioner networks and refining the instructional principles and strategies through the use of experiences drawn from the real world. The first executive seminar will be held in the West in March 2003.

Third, former ENREG national advisor Richard Doege is seeking supplemental funding to establish a national center of excellence on environmental regionalism. His efforts focus initially on case study research and on outreach to Congress, federal and state agencies, and national environmental NGOs. The objective is to develop a constituency for legislation, governmental practices and civic action that can promote sound environmental protection and management through the exercise of regionalism. The case studies are expected to be a critical resource for developing Lincoln’s training curriculum, and the contacts with organizations and agencies will help identify additional venues, targets and cosponsors for future courses. Through his liaison with Congress, Doege has already identified a number of regionalist provisions in important pending legislation. His future outreach efforts will aim to inform Congress and the national environmental community about ENREG’s research findings and help ensure that Lincoln’s curriculum objectives reflect the current status of regionalism in governmental circles.

Finally, the ENREG planners have in mind the ongoing development of curricular materials. For example, the initial elements of theory, skills and practice will be just the first steps toward an entire “library” of subject matter from which course organizers can make their own selections. Some courses may lend themselves to conversion into distance learning modules so that training can proceed either in conventional course settings or through home computers via the Institute’s web-based instructional program, Lincoln Education Online (LEO). This combination of face-to-face courses and distance learning will advance the Institute’s long-term mission of making knowledge comprehensible and accessible to citizens, policy makers and scholars throughout the world, and ENREG will have more than fulfilled the promise perceived by its proponents at the time of its founding just a year ago.

Charles H. W. Foster is adjunct senior research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Harvard University, a former Massachusetts secretary of environmental affairs and a former dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His colleagues in the ENREG inquiry were Matthew J. McKinney, executive director of the Montana and Western Consensus Councils, and former Harvard Loeb Fellow Rebecca Talbott, a career intergovernmental partnership specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.

References

Foster, Charles H.W. 2002a. Conference summary. ENREG Eastern Regionalism Conference (April). Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

_____. 2002b. Fostering conservation and environmental regionalism: A blueprint for action. ENREG working paper (June 30). Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Foster, Charles H.W. and William B. Meyer. 2000. The Harvard Environmental Regionalism Project. Discussion paper 2000-11. Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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

McKinney, Matthew, Will Harmon and Craig Fitch. 2002. Regionalism in the west: A working session with practitioners. (February 25). Helena: Montana Consensus Council.

McKinney, Matthew et al. 2002. Regionalism in the west: An inventory and assessment. Public Land and Resources Law Review. Missoula: University of Montana School of Law.

ENREG National Advisory Board

Robert L. Bendick, Jr., Southeastern Division vice president for The Nature Conservancy, Florida; former New York deputy commissioner for natural resources and director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Richard L. Doege, Esq., Specialist in environmental economics and public policy; advisor to Congress in the areas of energy and the environment, Washington, DC; former business executive and legislative counsel.

Marion R. Fremont-Smith, Esq., Senior counsel at Choate, Hall and Stewart, Boston, and senior research fellow at the Kennedy School’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations; former Massachusetts assistant attorney general in charge of the Division of Public Charities.

DeWitt John, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Bowdoin College, Maine; former director of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Center for the Economy and the Environment.

Chester M. Joy, Esq., Senior analyst for natural resources and the environment at the U.S. General Accounting Office, Washington, DC.

Ethan Seltzer, Director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University, Oregon; former land use supervisor for Portland Metro.

The implementation of any national planning program on a regional or local scale can be a challenge, even under the best circumstances. Colombia faces many social, political and economic issues that could easily have derailed the expansion of its major planning initiative—the national cadastral program. Some of these issues relate to its decentralized government, changing local public administrations, unstable economy and pervasive issues relating to poverty, the drug trade and international intervention. In spite of this situation, Bogotá’s Administrative Department for the District Cadastre (DACD) is gradually being recognized as a success story for developing countries in Latin America and beyond.

While legal conveyance, land policy and planning have been significant aspects of cadastres historically, fiscal management has been the primary focus in Bogotá for both its citizens and the business sector. The assessment administration process includes the maintenance of a database that receives information from the divisions that develop the econometric model, geographic information systems (GIS), building codes and enforcement, cartography, socioeconomic analysis of homogeneous sectors, land registration and zoning. As noted in the previous article, the numbers of incorporated (formación catastral) and updated (actualización catastral) properties have increased significantly (see Figure 1).

The large volume of parcels and improvements has been managed in such a short time by a deliberate and comprehensive administrative plan. The mandated public participation process did not compromise the efficiency with which the updates and property validation were completed. Within the last fiscal year, the econometric model took into consideration typical assessment variables but also considered a key element in the Bogotá cadastre, the “public value estimate.” According to Law 44 of 1990, a public comment and review process is used to update and maintain each property record card. The property owner or occupant provides an estimate of the property value and its depreciation or appreciation as required by the Unified Property Tax Reform Act. This legislation seeks to simplify the administration of taxes on land and avoid the possibility of taxing the same factors twice. Reliance on the public to provide the most current information on property conditions is important, but verification is also required. Thus, a fleet of professionally trained assessors has conducted inspections of all properties now recorded within the cadastral system. The public has been particularly forthcoming with information on improvements to vacant land, since the tax rate on land is higher than the rate on land with improvements. This integrated planning approach has encouraged community investment by limiting speculation.

The use of GIS has been key to department-wide integration and evaluation of property reviews, system updates and overall program administration. IGAC is in the process of developing an ArcCadastre program in coordination with the University of Bogotá. The goal is to link all of the regional cadastres to the national database. Within Bogotá a central GIS provides the cadastral managers with a powerful database that includes an interactive and multilevel inventory used during the property tax abatement process. The GIS has recently been expanded to allow for public searches of historic property record information along with parcel-level real estate listing data for all neighborhoods. The intended use of GIS, and the increase in the number of public terminals, will provide further access to the cadastral system. In the interim, the DACD Web site is a creative educational tool that keeps the public informed while managing this monumental process.

The Bogotá cadastre has made innovative and tangible progress in the creation, development and maintenance of a cadastral system considered by many to be a theoretical impossibility. The vision and tenacity of the public administrators, private industry and citizens have helped to build a cadastre that should meet or exceed the goals set by FIG’s Cadastre 2014 (Van der Molen 2003). This plan calls for a cadastre to have “inclusive rights and restrictions to land within map registers, comprehensive cadastre map models, seamless collaboration between public and private sectors and a cadastre that is cost recovering.” Given its political, administrative, financial, technical and practical challenges, the Bogotá cadastre has been able to turn a dream into an innovative reality.

Michelle Thompson is a real estate and research consultant teaching geographic information systems at the Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning. She is also a faculty associate of the Lincoln Institute and she participated in the November 2003 conference on cadastres in Bogotá.

References

Bogotá’s Administrative Department for the District Cadastre (DACD): http://www.catastrobogota.gov.co/

Van der Molen, Paul. 2003. The future cadastres: Cadastres after 2014. FIG Working Week 2003, Paris, France (April 13-17). Available at http://www.eurocadastre.org/pdf/vandermolen2.pdf

Lawrence Susskind is the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and president of the Consensus Building Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Columbia University and received his Masters of City Planning and his Ph.D. in Urban Planning from MIT. As current head of the Environmental Policy Group in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, he teaches courses on international environmental treaty negotiation, public sector dispute resolution and environmental planning. He also holds a joint appointment at Harvard University as visiting professor of Law and director of the Public Disputes Program at the interuniversity Program on Negotiation, which he helped to found. Susskind has published many books and reports and held many visiting appointments and guest lectureships. He is a faculty associate of the Lincoln Institute.

Land Lines: How did you become interested in land use mediation?

Lawrence Susskind: Land use planners are supposed to ensure that the public is involved in all growth management decisions. Yet, most efforts to ensure such public participation lead to protracted political battles. Within the planning profession it is not clear how competing conceptions of appropriate land uses ought to be reconciled. Since the early 1970s I have been trying to introduce the concept of mediation as well as other conflict management tools into the lexicon of professional planners. In my view, in the absence of consensus building strategies of some kind, most communities are doomed to use resources inefficiently, unfairly and unwisely. I got interested in land use mediation as a way of helping the planning profession do a better job.

LL: What types of land use disputes are most difficult to resolve?

LS: Land use disputes that revolve around values or identity are the most difficult to resolve. When values (as opposed to economic interests) are at stake, people often feel that their identity is threatened and in such situations they are rarely open to considering the views of others. For example, proposed changes in land use that would eliminate agriculture as a way of life are not likely to be accepted, even if financial compensation is offered to the landowners involved.

LL: When did you start collaborating with the Lincoln Institute?

LS: My ties to the Lincoln Institute go back a long time. When Arlo Woolery was executive director in the late 1970s, we worked together on a multiyear effort to analyze the impacts of the Property Tax Limitation Law (Proposition 2 1/2) in Massachusetts and on the state’s Growth Policy Development Act. Two decades later, in 1997, I began working with Rosalind Greenstein and later Armando Carbonell, co-chairs of the Institute’s Department of Planning and Development, on a series of research projects that evolved into the training programs on land use mediation that we (LILP and CBI) currently offer together.

LL: Explain a little more about CBI.

LS: The Consensus Building Institute is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1993 to provide consensus building services to clients involved in complex disputes. Building on the “mutual gains” approach to negotiation developed at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, CBI offers conflict management assistance, negotiation training, dispute system design services and evaluative research to public agencies, corporate clients and nongovernmental agencies on five continents.

Our staff now includes a dozen full-time professionals, mostly based in Cambridge, and a network of more than 30 experienced affiliates around the world. We have become known as expert public and environmental dispute mediators and have helped to resolve complex disputes related to the siting of controversial facilities, the setting of public health and safety standards, the formulation and implementation of development plans and projects, and conflicts among racial and ethnic groups.

LL: When did the joint Lincoln and CBI training programs begin?

LS: After several years of careful analysis of land use mediation efforts throughout the United States, CBI developed a curriculum with Lincoln Institute for public officials and planners, and that course has been offered since 1999 at a number of locations. During the first few years we offered only a basic course designed to familiarize participants with assisted negotiation as a method to resolve land use disputes, and then we expanded our offerings to include more detailed skill building for experienced mediators and practitioners. Today we offer a full range of courses at multiple locations around the country.

LL: Who are the primary participants in these introductory and advanced courses?

LS: We are trying to reach three different audiences. First, we have identified and invited local elected and appointed officials who preside over land development disputes and administer land use regulatory systems at the local, regional and state levels. They need to know that there are techniques they can use to help resolve land use disputes before they escalate.

Second, we are trying to attract real estate developers and their attorneys so they know how to participate effectively in dispute resolution efforts when they are offered or suggested by public officials. Third, we have a special interest in attracting professionals of all kinds who want to learn how to be better facilitators, particularly of multiparty land use dialogues that involve complex technical dilemmas.

LL: What are the key goals and lessons of these programs?

LS: The introductory course offers a quick overview of the reasons that land use disputes seem to escalate so quickly and often end up in court. We then introduce the basic principles and tools of dispute resolution and show how they can head off such escalation. They are presented in a very interactive way using gaming and simulations. Participants are given a number of hands-on opportunities to apply what they are learning in hypothetical situations and to bring their own cases before the group. We spend some time talking about techniques for overcoming resistance to the use of mediation and other consensus building strategies.

The advanced course is aimed at experienced mediators or planners and lawyers who think they might want to become mediators. It assumes that the participants have mastered the material presented in the introductory course and moves to a set of dilemmas at the next level, including methods of handling science-intensive disputes through the use of joint fact finding. We also review key theoretical debates, such as managing unequal power relationships in a mediation context.

LL: How do you incorporate both theory and practice into the curriculum?

LS: We expect many of the participants to bring their own stories about land use disputes in which they have been intimately involved. We model in real time how the theory we are teaching can be applied in their cases. We also try to ground all of our theoretical presentations in detailed case accounts of actual practice. Finally, as mentioned above, we use role playing simulations. Students can’t just sit back and take notes. They have to wrestle with the application of the ideas we are presenting.

LL: What other projects have you undertaken with the Institute?

LS: About a year ago, in May 2004, I joined Institute President Jim Brown at a Lincoln-sponsored seminar in Cuba on the problems of restoring and redeveloping Havana Harbor. Energy production and inadequate attention to pollution control have spoiled one of the most beautiful harbors in this hemisphere. Some of the many different committees and groups concerned with economic development, environmental cleanup, restoration of the harbor ecology, historic preservation of Old Havana, and enhanced tourism are seeking advice on strategies for balancing these (sometimes) competing objectives.

CBI is beginning to develop a new joint course with the Lincoln Institute and some of its partners involved in local economic development efforts around the country. We believe conflict resolution tools and negotiation skills can be of great use in neighborhood development disputes, not just growth management conflicts in the suburbs. With Roz Greenstein CBI is creating a new set of training programs for community-based organizations that we plan to offer for the first time next summer.

Another new initiative is a collaborative Web site that highlights recent research by the Lincoln Institute and CBI, as well as timely news articles, background material on consensus building, and links to related programs and publications. One section of the site will provide an interactive platform that will permit hundreds of alumni of our joint courses to remain in touch with each other and share their mediation experiences. This “virtual learning community” will be a valuable resource for public- and private-sector stakeholders involved in land use disputes (even if they haven’t taken the course).

LL: What is the outlook for future joint programs?

LS: I believe our ongoing CBI–Lincoln Institute partnership holds incredible promise. We have conducted an Institute-sponsored study on the use of consensus building to resolve land reform disputes in Latin America and hope to expand on that work, as well as to address land issues facing China and the newly independent states of Eastern Europe. The Institute is already involved in research and training programs in these regions, and land use disputes are at the core of many of the challenges facing national and local policy makers.

The Lincoln Institute is an ideal partner for CBI. We both care about applied research, theory building and sharing new knowledge through educational programs of all kinds. We both measure our success in terms of real improvements on the ground, and we share interests in both domestic and international arenas.

Margaret Dewar is the Emil Lorch Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. She directs the Detroit Community Partnership Center through which University of Michigan faculty and students work with community-based organizations and city agencies on community-identified neighborhood issues. Dewar is also faculty director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning, whose mission is to involve faculty, students, staff, and community partners in learning together through community service and civic participation in a diverse democratic society. She and her students have worked on brownfield redevelopment with numerous organizations in Detroit and Flint.

Dewar’s research is concerned with American government effectiveness in intervening in microeconomic systems to deal with economic distress such as troubled industries, declining regions, distressed cities, and poverty. She has written books and articles on industrial policy, rural economic development programs, and urban revitalization. Her current research focuses on ways to address the barriers to equitable redevelopment of older industrial cities. She is writing about systems for moving tax-reverted property to new uses, the role of place-committed coalitions in redevelopment of brownfields, and indicators of early neighborhood decline and revitalization that can facilitate public intervention.

Dewar has a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of City Planning from Harvard University. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College.

Land Lines: How did you become involved in and concerned about brownfield redevelopment?

Margaret Dewar: I had done quite a lot of research on the effects of state and local economic development incentives on business location and expansion decisions. I also had taught courses where students worked on plans for urban redevelopment with nonprofit organizations in Detroit.

The calls for subsidies for brownfield redevelopment grew louder in the mid-1990s as states reformed their laws about cleanup requirements and liability. Given my background in economic development and urban redevelopment, I thought those calls sounded inauthentic. The campaigns for cleanup subsidies were essentially claiming that if the subsidies were provided, redevelopment of contaminated property would occur, implying that the only barrier to land reuse was the dirty dirt.

However, urban redevelopment is a very complex process that involves the assembly of land owned by many people, relocation of residents, demolition of structures, removal and replacement of infrastructure, and adherence to or release from regulatory restrictions and requirements—to name a few of the issues. Contamination could not be the only barrier, and, I thought, it was not even likely to be the most important one.

Further, state and local incentives for economic development rarely change business location and expansion decisions. I suspected that brownfield incentives would have a similar effect. Therefore, I started to do research on the determinants of brownfield redevelopment to place this kind of development in the broader urban redevelopment context.

Land Lines: How has your brownfield research evolved over the last decade?

Margaret Dewar: As I watched community development corporations (CDCs) in Detroit struggle with redevelopment, I became interested in whether place-committed coalitions were more or less effective in brownfield redevelopment than other kinds of developers.

Place-committed coalitions are the alliances of CDCs, nonprofit housing corporations, neighborhood organizations, and determined residents who are going to stay in place, no matter what. Unlike many other developers or businesses, they will not move to the suburbs because development is easier and more profitable there. They are often the only developers interested in the poorest neighborhoods, and any hope for a better physical environment in those places rests with them. Unlike private developers, they are not seeking especially profitable redevelopment projects; if they can break even, much of the return on their investment is seen in the creation of a better neighborhood.

When place-committed coalitions succeed in redevelopment, they may create market conditions that are attractive to private developers and therefore spur further redevelopment, or they may demonstrate market potential through bellwether projects. As a result, nonprofit developers are especially important in making urban redevelopment succeed.

However, I found that these coalitions were rarely successful in brownfield redevelopment, although development on contaminated land did not seem particularly different from other kinds of redevelopment. Now most of my own research projects and quite a few of the student projects I supervise are concerned with factors that lead to positive reuse of abandoned property in cities, especially reuse by nonprofit developers.

Land Lines: How do you involve your students in this work?

Margaret Dewar: I get many research ideas from working with CDCs, nonprofit housing corporations, and public agencies on plans for brownfield reuse, and I am able to bring these ideas into planning practice on specific projects. Twice each year I teach a course where advanced urban planning students develop plans with organizations working on strengthening their city neighborhoods and help advance the organizations’ efforts.

For example, my students and I worked with the Genesee County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the Genesee County Land Bank to inventory brownfields in Flint, Michigan. We also helped to prioritize sites for attention based the goals of the BRA and the land bank, which are now following up on the recommendations in the plan with a neighborhood nonprofit and a group of diverse property owners.

Another team of students worked with a neighborhood nonprofit organization in southwest Detroit to identify brownfields and determine which sites have the greatest priority for reuse. Although the staff praised the plan, the organization has not been able to act on the recommendations. The contrast in these two experiences, along with the literature on determinants of nonprofit developers’ success, suggests numerous hypotheses about what helps and hinders the reuse of brownfield sites in such situations.

Land Lines: What is your most recent project with the Lincoln Institute?

Margaret Dewar: With Kris Wernstedt at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, I am looking at some of these hypotheses about why CBOs are successful or not in reusing vacant, abandoned, and contaminated property. Kris is looking at the work of CBOs in Baltimore, Portland, and Denver, and I am studying their reuse of such property in Detroit, Cleveland, and Flint. Because the demand for land in my set of three cities is similar, the comparison holds the market constant and promises to reveal institutional, political, and legal factors that are important in CBOs’ results.

The three midwestern cities differ in the strength of their nonprofit development sectors. Cleveland has an active network of nonprofit developers that have constructed thousands of units of housing over the last 15 years. Detroit has a maturing nonprofit development sector that is growing in its capacity to do projects, but Flint has very little such activity.

These differences can help reveal factors that matter and the ways they matter in redevelopment success. For instance, a commonly cited force in the success of Cleveland’s nonprofit developers is the commitment of foundations to provide funding for redevelopment. However, Flint also has foundations with large amounts of resources committed to that city. What are the differences in how the foundations in each city work that might help explain these differences in nonprofit development activity and effectiveness?

Land Lines: How can CBOs be most effective in brownfields redevelopment?

Margaret Dewar: Kris Wernstedt and I pose four groups of hypotheses or framing perspectives in our research on CBOs’ effectiveness in redeveloping brownfields. First, the special features of CBOs—their shortage of funds, small number of professional staff, lack of skills for redevelopment, and other issues—may interfere with implementing successful projects to reuse vacant, abandoned, and/or contaminated sites. CBO staff may especially lack the background to take on projects that involve contaminated sites.

Second, legal and political issues may interfere with the transfer of tax-reverted property to nonprofit developers for redevelopment projects, even though this land is essential for projects to go forward.

Third, weak local institutional settings may leave CBOs without adequate political or financial support for undertaking projects to reuse vacant, abandoned, and/or contaminated properties. Local government, financial institutions, foundations, and intermediaries may not provide sufficient backing to help CBOs over the substantial hurdles.

Fourth, federal and state legal and regulatory structures and financing provisions for contaminated sites in particular may interfere with CDCs’ efforts to reuse such property.

Another factor is that the demand for land in different cities affects the approach and efficacy of CBOs in redeveloping that land. In cities or neighborhoods with strong market demand, CBOs may have little opportunity to obtain such property for redevelopment because they are competing with private developers. On the other hand, in cities with weak demand for land, CBOs may struggle to find tenants or buyers for redeveloped property.

Land Lines: How is your work with the Lincoln Institute helping to broaden the scope of brownfield research?

Margaret Dewar: I continue to believe that contamination is rarely the determining factor in whether land can be reused or not, especially now that cleanup standards and liability risks have changed. By placing contamination in the larger context of the redevelopment of vacant, abandoned, and contaminated property in cities, we gain a better understanding of the complexity of redevelopment in general and of the kinds of changes that would help CBOs be more effective in remaking cities in ways that can improve the quality of life in distressed areas.

Faculty Profile of Carla J. Robinson

As a city grows in size and building density, improvements to the land supporting the new development are usually part of the growth process. However, the combination of demand for additional construction sites and the limited amount of physical land available for development often results in land price increases.

This land scarcity is caused by three primary factors: the ability of landowners to retain serviced land from the market (attributed to a concentration of land ownership and legal and other institutional constraints); difficulties in accessing areas not yet prepared for occupation due to a lack of infrastructure; and restrictions imposed by zoning. Each of these factors has its own dynamics, but they are not necessarily present at the same time. Such is the case in Brazilian cities, particularly São Paulo, where these restrictive factors do not always operate in the same way with regard to land price.

For example, building regulations may reduce the land price of individual plots, but increase the overall price when the regulations affect all plots and thus restrict housing supply. A large stock of vacant land controlled by a few owners can cause price increases, while the lack of accessibility can result in lower prices. Land price also depends on the nature of the land regulation. As the city grows, the greater demand for buildable urban land generally results in added values if the existing infrastructure supports a more intense occupation of land and the zoning regulations (or changes thereto) also permit higher building density.

To examine these issues, we must consider first how the investment in infrastructure that provides or intensifies the means of access and use of land is financed; and second how the benefits and costs from the land improvements are distributed. Generally the cost of public services (e.g., streets, bridges, sewers, lighting, water) is paid with public funds, whereas the improvement or added value to the land created by the public investment in infrastructure, with few exceptions, is reaped by the owners of the improved property entirely free of charge.

Increases in property value also may result from simple changes in the use of land that is already accessible, for example when land previously considered rural is redefined as urban. Changes in potential densities due to new zoning regulations can create great benefits for the affected properties, although in this case as in the previous one future pressure on the infrastructure will require substantial public investment.

The Legal Framework

Owners of improved property in Brazil, as in most countries, traditionally appropriated the added value generated by public sector investment and zoning changes. The notion that owners should not be the only beneficiaries of such improvements was introduced in Brazil gradually during the 1970s, and this principle was incorporated in articles 182 and 183 of the 1988 Federal Constitution. These articles were subsequently regulated by Federal Law No. 10,257 of 2001, also known as the Urban Development Act or City Statute (Estatuto da Cidade).

Since 1988 urban development has been a matter of federal law. In practice, the federal legis-lation ratified the principle of the social function of urban land ownership and the separation of the right to own land from the right to build. Based on the 2001 act, the City of São Paulo approved its Strategic Master Plan in 2002 and Land Use Law 13,885 in 2004. These laws introduced the mechanism of Charges for Additional Building Rights (Outoga Onerosa do Direito de Construir–OODC), established minimum, basic, and maximum coefficients of land use (or floor area ratios), and limited the supply of buildable area. These tools, utilized together, enabled the municipality to improve land management efficiency, promote socially desirable outcomes, and increase revenues.

The minimum coefficient or floor area ratio (FAR) refers to the minimum use expected from a plot to comply with its social function; the basic FAR refers to the buildable area that any owner has the right to develop by virtue of ownership; and the maximum FAR is the amount of development that could be supported by the existing in-frastructure and zoning regulations. The charges associated with the OODC are imposed on the difference between the maximum FAR and the basic FAR of a plot.

The Administration of Building Rights

The OODC is the monetary compensation paid by those who receive new building rights (buildable area) from the government. This development con-cession (provided by articles 28, 29, 30, and 31 of Federal Law 10,257 of 2001 and defined in articles 209 to 216 of the 2002 Strategic Master Plan) is one of the regulatory instruments used to administer building rights in the city, except in areas designated for large-scale urban operations that use a special legal instrument to encourage public-private interventions (Biderman, Sandroni, and Smolka 2006).

The basic FAR of land use established in 2004 varies between 1 and 2, depending on the area of the city considered. The maximum FAR can be 1, 2, 2.5, or 4, also depending on the area. In some urban areas these new regulations reduced building rights by establishing a basic FAR of 1 for land that had been designated 2 or more under prior legislation. In parallel, the municipality of São Paulo used the OODC to extend the building potential or the maximum FAR up to 4 on land that previously could be developed up to only 1 or 2.

As a result, in certain areas where the FAR was reduced from 2 to 1, developers could submit projects using the former FAR 2, or even the maximum FAR 3 or 4, as long as they paid the government for the additional buildable area corresponding to the difference between the basic FAR and the FAR used in the project. This instrument favors developers, assuming they find the charges cost-effective, because it allows them to build up to FAR 4 in areas where formerly the maximum was FAR 2. Typical landowners do not always find this tool advantageous, however, since the building potential of their land may be reduced and a charge may be imposed on what they previously perceived as a right to build, free of any charges.

Landowners of small lots and low-density housing may not notice what they could be losing when the FAR is changed because they typically view their property as combining the land, building, and other improvements. It is difficult to separate the value of land from that of improvements, so an eventual land value decrease is not perceived immediately. Furthermore, the expansion of the real estate market in São Paulo coincided with the approval of this new legislation in 2004, and the overall increase in land prices may have compensated the eventual price decline associated with changes in FAR. It is also necessary to note that the expansion of government credit for house financing since 2006 contributed to an increase in demand for land and consequently the rise of land prices.

For the developers, the increase in FAR to 4 in areas where the maximum had been 1 or 2 constituted a favorable situation. They could invest more capital in land and make more profitable undertakings, thus compensating for the extra payment they made for the difference between the basic and the maximum FAR. Gradually, developers were convinced that it was better to pay this land value increment to the government than to private owners because the government converted the payments into improvements that frequently benefited the developers’ projects.

The 2002 Strategic Master Plan and Law 13,885 of 2004 also limited the supply of residential and nonresidential building potential in all city districts by establishing a total additional buildable area of 9,769 million square meters (m2): 6,919 million m2 for residential use and 2,850 million m2 for nonresidential use (table 1). This potential did not include the buildable areas inside the perimeter of São Paulo’s 13 urban operations. The additional areas were distributed among the 91 out of 96 city districts, excluding five environmentally protected areas. This definition and demarcation of the potential building stock introduced a new element to the real estate market.

Once the maximum building area was known, developers anticipated land scarcity in those districts where the supply was low and the real estate dynamic high, thus unleashing a trend in higher land prices. The lack of buildable area, in turn, lead to pressures from real estate developers for the government to increase the supply—that is, to change the building area limits in some districts during the 2007 revision of the master plan—but their efforts were not successful. By October 2010 the land supply had been exhausted, or was very close to it, for residential use in 17 districts and for nonresidential uses in 5 districts (figure 1).

Planning and Social Interest Factors

The formula to calculate the OODC charge adopted in São Paulo’s 2002 Strategic Master Plan takes into account planning and social interest factors in addition to the characteristics of the parcel and the actual economic benefit allocated to the property as a result of the OODC.

The planning factor is an instrument that seeks to encourage or discourage higher densities in certain areas, depending on the existing infrastructure, especially public transport and mass transit. The planning factor is also used to obtain greater financial compensation from the sale of building rights for businesses in improved areas of the city, as the coefficient varies according to whether the land use is residential or nonresidential.

The social interest factor establishes exemptions or reductions in the financial charge, depending on the type of activity to be developed on the parcel. The coefficient ranges from zero to one and is applicable to a variety of activities. For example, the coefficient for affordable or social housing is zero, which means that developers of this type of housing do not pay compensation for additional building rights. Similarly, nonprofit hospitals, schools, health and infant care clinics, cultural facilities, sports and leisure institutions, and houses of worship have a coefficient of zero.

These factors act as incentives for desirable social outcomes, since the smaller the planning and social interest factor coefficients applicable to a given area, the smaller the charge to be paid, and the greater the incentive for projects to be developed in the area.

Revenue Impact and Allocation of Funds

Total revenues from OODC payments reached R$650 million (US$325 million) in approximately five years, in spite of the global financial crisis that constricted credit by end of the period (table 2). These funds are deposited into the Urban Development Fund (FUNDURB), which was created to implement plans and projects in urban and environmental areas, or other interventions contemplated in the 2002 master plan.

As of September 2008, the number of projects approved to be financed by FUNDURB included 15 linear parks (R$42.5 million), sidewalk and street improvements (R$21.2 million), drainage and sanitation (R$108 million), community facilities (R$ 21.1 million), regularization of informal settlements (R$50 million), and restoration of culture heritage buildings (R$37 million).

Concluding Remarks

After the City of São Paulo approved the 2002 Strategic Master Plan, the principle of development concessions and buildable land was applied throughout its territory. When a real estate project exceeds the basic FAR and the developer wants to build up to a maximum of 4, payment of financial charges to the government is required. Since the OODC was introduced, revenues have increased annually. One should keep in mind that these revenues are net of the more than US$1 billion generated from 2 of the city’s 13 Urban Operations (Faria Lima and Agua Espraiada) where major zoning and density changes are occurring (Biderman, Sandroni, and Smolka 2006). In those areas the new building rights are priced through the auction of CEPACs, and the revenues must be invested in the area corresponding to the urban operation instead of going to the FUNDURB fund to benefit the city as a whole (Sandroni 2010).

The charge for building rights in São Paulo does not seem to have affected the profitability of developers. On the contrary, increasing the maximum FAR to 4 in some areas of the city contributed to enhancing the developers’ rates of return. However, setting a maximum reserve for building rights seems to have caused an upward trend in land prices, especially in districts where the supply of buildable area is low. In some districts developers proceeded to deplete the supply of residential building rights quickly. This type of response will probably intensify in the future, thus putting pressure on the city government to raise the maximum stock of buildable area and/or the maximum FAR. If this happens, there is a risk that the motivation to increase municipal revenue may outweigh urban planning criteria and the limitations of infrastructure, especially public transportation and mass transit.

Moreover, the flow of financial compensation will not be continuous. Unlike property tax revenues that recur annually, revenues from the sale of building rights will fade in time as the additional building potential is exhausted. In some sectors of the city the supply of buildable area has already been depleted, and the city has achieved its defined goal for building density. However, future changes in the master plan may provide greater building potential for these areas, depending on technical recommendations and the political conditions for the change to take place.

In sum, the application of the principle of the social function of property, embedded in the 2002 Strategic Master Plan for São Paulo, enabled the enactment of municipal legislation that clearly separates the right of ownership from the right to build. As a result, the traditional notion of all-encompassing property rights is no longer sustained, and land ownership cannot override the public interest or take precedence over the social function of property. Consequently, existing building rights can be reduced without landowners being entitled to monetary compensation simply because their hopes have been dashed.

About the Author

Paulo Henrique Sandroni is an economist who served as director of urban planning and public transportation for the City of São Paulo from 1988 to 1993, and for a short period he served the federal government as vice-minister of administration. He has published articles and books on economics, including a dictionary considered a primary reference on economics in Brazil. Sandroni is also a professor at the Economics and Business School at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, a private consultant on urban development and transportation issues, and a lecturer in programs sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

References

Biderman, Ciro, Paulo Sandroni, and Martim O. Smolka. 2006. Large-scale urban interventions: The case of Faria Lima in São Paulo. Land Lines 18(2): 8–13.

Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo, Secretaria de Financas. www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/financas

Sandroni, Paulo. 2010. A new financial instrument of value capture in São Paulo: Certificates of additional construction potential. In Municipal revenues and land policies, Gregory K. Ingram and Yu-Hung Hong, eds., 218–236. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.