Northfield’s greenbelt

New urban cow

“How to protect America’s countryside from sprawl” got my attention because of the word countryside – a very British term – and because it’s not the rural side of the boundary which gets the attention, usually, but the development pattern inside cities.  Still, the “how” in the article is really just a list:

There are strategies available for helping to maintain and strengthen rural landscapes and working lands, and slowing the loss of farms and farmers, forest and other resource lands…these can include “use value” taxation, purchase/transfer of development rights, assisting local farms with agricultural economic development such as direct farm-to-market programs, urban purchasing agreements, ecosystem services markets, right-to-farm laws and, crucially, extra low density zoning.  Promoting conservation easements can also be important.  Newly emerging strategies such as putting rural land to 21st-century nonpolluting uses with wind farms and biomass generation may also be promising in some areas.

To help with thinking about how we protect the countryside, we need to be able to express the value of open space, green infrastructure, agricultural land, and natural resources in economic terms and in measurable improvements to air quality, water quality, and, of course, quality of life.

Part of this, of course, is anticipating objections from the folks who don’t want to be told what to do with their private property.   If land was like an apartment building, where each parcel was completely separate from its neighbor with wall-like barriers at the property lines ensuring nothing would drift across into the neighboring property, then I’d agree.  I’d completely agree if each parcel was completely self-sufficient.  As it is, private property shares (and pays for) public resources like streets and pipes, as well as natural resources light, air, water, trees, etc.  Because we do share resources and share the financial burden  for them, I’d say we have to balance private property/public good to make our community as economically sustainable as possible.

Which is where I get back to the smart growth idea of knowing the value of open space to help create some additional incentive to increase density and put more taxpayers per acre (or foot of pipe) so we each pay less.  And I get back to England, too.

England, a country with many people but not much land – the UK is a bit smaller than Oregon but Oregon has about 3.8 million people and the UK has over 60 million – created greenbelts around major metropolitan areas in the 1950s (London’s greenbelt dates to the 1930s) to “stop urban sprawl and the merging of settlements, preserve the character of historic towns and encourage development to locate within existing built up areas.”  Now, facing a housing shortage (of millions of homes), England has been revisiting its greenbelt planning policy which has the potential to dramatically reshape the countryside.  I’m waiting to see what happens.

For Northfield, I think about the four townships surrounding the city as our de facto greenbelt, at least for now.  Waterford and Bridgewater townships have been clear about maintaining their rural character and perhaps we could help them do it because it would make good sense for the city, too.  As in Kaid Benfield‘s piece, the “how we do it” part is still undeveloped, so to speak.