Maryland

Authors: David Newburn and Jeffrey Ferris

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Synopsis: This study analyzes the effect of a downzoning policy on both the rate and density of residential development using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach. Spatially explicit panel data on subdivisions are exploited to estimate average treatment effects for downzoned areas. Our results indicate that although downzoning does not significantly alter the rate of development, it does strongly affect the density of development. The lower density in agricultural zoning relative to the residential control area is only partly attributable to downzoning because, as our DID results indicate, it is important to control for baseline differences that exist prior to policy adoption.

Authors: Jeffrey Ferris and David Newburn

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Synopsis: We analyze the effects of a unique forest conservation regulation on residential development and assess the additionality in forest cover due to this regulation. We combine panel data on forest cover change from satellite imagery and parcel-level modeling on residential development, including residential subdivisions occurring before and after regulation adoption. Our results indicate that after introducing the regulation, there was a 22% increase in forest cover within subdivisions relative to the amount without the regulation. The heterogeneous effects of this regulation suggest that forest cover increased on average for parcels with lower levels of existing forest cover. However, parcels with the highest levels of forest cover continue to have significant decreases in forest cover, despite the regulation, thereby resulting in fragmentation in regions with the most intact forest cover.

Authors: Chengri Ding, Yi Niu, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap

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Synopsis: Previous research provides evidence that jobs and firms in U.S. metropolitan areas are concentrated in economic centers, creating a polycentric urban form. Previous research also suggests that firms realize localization economies when they locate near other firms in the same industry and urbanization economies when they locate near firms in other industries. In this article, we tie these concepts together in an exploration of the spatial distribution of employment in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Our analysis suggests that the spatial distribution of employment in Maryland is characterized by the existence of concentrated employment centers that create a polycentric urban form. What is more, we find these centers provide both urbanization and localization economies as well as unspecified locational advantages.

Authors: Liu, Chao, Sevgi Erdogan, Ting Ma, and Frederick W. Ducca

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Synopsis: The state of Maryland aims to double its transit ridership by the end of 2020. The Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) has been used to analyze different policy options at a system-wide level. Direct ridership models (DRM) estimate ridership as a function of station environment and transit service features rather than using mode√¢¬Ä¬êchoice results from large√¢¬Ä¬êscale traditional models. They have been particularly favored for estimating the benefits of smart growth policies such as Transit Oriented Development (TOD) on transit ridership and can can be used as complementary to the traditional four-step models for analyzing smart growth scenarios at a local level and can provide valuable information that a system level analysis cannot provide. In this study, we developed DRMs of rail transit stations, namely light rail, commuter rail, Baltimore metro, and Washington D.C. metro for the state of Maryland. Data for 117 rail stations were gathered from a variety of sources and categorized by transit service characteristics, station built environment features and social-demographic variables. The results suggest that impacts of built environment show differences for light rail and commuter rail. For light rail stations, employment at half-mile buffer areas, service level, feeder bus connectivity, station location in the CBD, distance to the nearest station, and terminal stations are significant factors affecting ridership. For commuter rail stations only feeder bus connection is found to be significant. The policy implications of the results are discussed.

Authors: Ding, Chuan, Chao Liu, Yaoyu Lin, and Yaowu Wang

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Synopsis: The empirical data were selected from Washington-Baltimore Regional Household Travel Survey in 2007-2008, including all the trips from home to workplace during the morning hours. The model parameters were estimated using the simultaneous estimation approach and the integrated model turns out to be superior to the traditional multinomial logit (MNL) model accounting for the impact of employer attitudes towards green commuting. The direct and indirect effects of socio-demographic attributes and employer attitudes towards green commuting were estimated. Through the structural equation modelling with mediating variable, this approach confirmed the intermediary nature of car ownership in the choice process.

Authors: Dawkins, Casey and R. Moeckel

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Synopsis: Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been promoted by planners and policy advocates as asolution to a variety of urban problems, including automobile traffic congestion, air pollution,and urban poverty. This paper addresses the question: How do TOD-based affordable housing policies influence the intra-urban location of low income households over time? This paper examined historical descriptive evidence along with land use forecasts generated by the Simple Integrated Land-Use Orchestrator (SILO) land use model to examine the impact of housing policies on patterns of sorting byincome within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The historical evidence suggests that inmost decades when Metro stations were opened, census tracts near transit stations saw higherincreases in median household income than other census tracts. We also find evidence thatincome growth around stations constructed in the 1970s and 1980s persisted over time, whileincome growth around stations constructed during the 1990s was largest in the following decade.Consistent with other studies (Kahn 2007), we interpret these findings as evidence that somedegree of transit-induced gentrification has been occurring in the Washington, D.C. region.¬†

Authors: Avin, Uri, Timothy F. Welch, Gerrit Knaap, Fred Ducca, Sabyasachee Mishra, Yuchen Cui, and Sevgi Erd

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Synopsis: Urban form studies have generally used regional density vs. sprawl land use scenarios to assess travel behavior outcomes. The more nuanced but nonetheless important allocation of jobs and housing and their relationship to each other as a factor in travel behavior has received much lessattention. That relationship is explored in this statewide urban form study for Maryland. This is a state where county land use has a long tradition of growth management, but one whose regional and statewide implications have not been evaluated. How does a continuation of the County level smart growth regime play out statewide compared to other scenarios of job and housing distribution that are driven by higher driving costs or transit oriented development goals or localzoning rather than local policy-driven projections? Answers are provided through the application of a statewide travel demand model, the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM).The findings suggest that the debate should move beyond walkability, density and compact growth and towards a more productive dialog about how we organize whole cities and regions.

Authors: Iseki, Hiroyuki and Robert P. Jones

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Synopsis: Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is commonly adopted in regional transit plans as a tool to achieve economic growth, sustainable land use patterns, and pedestrian-friendly communities.Some critics, however, have questioned TOD as an agent for net job creation. While someresearch¬†has used case studies and agglomerated regional datasets to examine changes in employment near transit with positive results, there is a paucity of literature examining the relationship between rail stations and employment by industry at the transit station level.This is a descriptive study that seeks to address three key questions about the effects of station proximity: 1) What is the overall distribution of firms in relation to metro station locations? 2) What industries, if any, are more likely to locate near transit stations? 3) Does anew transit station result in a net gain of firms within the station proximity and for the region ordoes it merely redistribute existing firms? This study applies GISs to examine the NationalEstablishment Time Series (NETS) dataset within the region comprising Washington DC,Montgomery, and Prince George's Counties in Maryland. The NETS dataset contains longitudinal and cross-sectional firm-level data for the years 1990 - 2010, which allow us to look at changes in the number of firms within relatively small geographic areas around Metro stations, several of which were constructed during the 21-year period. The NETS dataset also providesfirm-level relocation information for the same time period to assess firm movement within and outside of the study area as they relate to transit stations.First, we identify firms within station buffers and conduct a location quotient analysis.Second, we conduct a spatial analysis of firm locations over time, applying choropleth maps, descriptive spatial statistics, and hot spots analysis. Third, we plan to apply a space-time cluster analysis that visualizes the distribution of spatial- temporal data, taking into account the time dimension, and enables us to identify clusters of events constrained by both space and time.Finally, using NETS firm relocation data for the period of 1990 to 2010, we conduct an analysis of firm locations before and after each relocation. The analysis is conducted for all industries asa group and a few specific industries that show a strong presence in the region, including finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) industries, which have been found to predominate in dense economic centers.This study contributes to the literature on the effect of transit investment and TOD on economic development, particularly addressing the question of net effects for locations beyond the immediate station area, which is an important implication from a regional planning perspective.

Authors: Ting Ma, Eli Knaap, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap

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Synopsis: Transit oriented development (TOD) is a widely accepted policy objective of many jurisdictions in the United States. There is both anecdotal and empirical evidence to suggest that the vitality of TODs and the transit boardings from any TOD depends significantly on the extent of retail development in the transit station area. We focus in this paper, on the determinants of retail location in two counties, MontgomeryCounty and Prince George‚Äôs County, Maryland, with a particular focus on the influence of proximity torail transit stations. We used data from two counties in the Washington DC suburbs to constructmeasures of transit and retail accessibility and constructed an econometric model to estimate the relationship between urban contextual factors and retail firm locations. The results from our analysis provide empirical support for the notion that retail firms are attracted to locations with high levels of transit accessibility. By extension, these findings suggest that investments in transit‚Äîparticularly fixed rail transit‚Äîmay be an effective method for stimulating retail development in metropolitan areas.¬†

Authors: Hiroyuki Iseki

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Synopsis: This study develops an analytical method to obtain toll rates for thirteen vehicle classes for seventoll facilities in Maryland, taking into account various social costs of driving automobiles. Themodel is comprised of two parts: (1) an equilibrium model to obtain non-peak period tolls thatincorporates capital and maintenance costs of toll facilities, vehicle emission costs, andoperating/maintenance costs incurred to vehicles due to uneven road surface, and (2) a model toestimate optimal congestion tolls for three facilities that currently experience congestion. Themodels are not a simple forward-moving model, but instead take into account the feedbackeffects of revised toll rates on traffic volume and social costs of driving.The analysis results show some expected results in the estimated tolls and their effects on vehicle traffic, toll revenue, emission, and ESAL. While congestion tolls clearly show positiveeffects across three facilities, results related to estimated non-peak period tolls and their effects are not consistent across all facilities, depending on the relative magnitude of each social cost factor as well as the relative levels of current tolls. Results from the sensitivity analysis generally support the main results. These results reveal a lack of clear pattern in the current toll structure in relation to vehicle classes among facilities, and indicate possible cross-subsidies among facilities as well as among vehicle classes. Further research is warranted in order toachieve road pricing schemes that are more efficient and equitable.

Authors: Wang, Yaowu, Chuan Ding, Chao Liu, and Binglei Xie

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Synopsis: Freight mode choice is a critical part in modeling freight demand. Due to limited freight data, considerably less research has been conducted on freight mode choice than that in passenger demand analysis. This paper investigates unobserved factors influencing freight mode choices, including truck and rail. Revealed preference data is collected from Freight Analysis Framework database and aggregated to be used in this study. Binary probit and logit models are developed to compare the modal behavior and to verify the differences of mode choice behavior among the three zones in Maryland. Different factors which are significantly influencing the freight mode choice can be found for the shipments originated from these zones. Identifying these factors may help the freight modelers to establish and calibrate better freight demand models for Maryland, and can help the policy makers to take actions to reduce highway congestion and air pollution which is caused by trucks

Authors: Chao Liu, , Eli Knaap, Gerrit Knaap

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Synopsis: The "Sustainable neighborhoods" has become widely proposed objective of urban planners, scholars, and local government agencies. However, after decades of discussion, there is still no consensus on the definition of sustainable neighborhoods (Sawicki and Flynn, 1996; Dluhy and Swartz 2006; Song and Knaap,2007; Galster 2010). To gain new information on this issue, this paper develops a quantitative method for classifying neighborhood types. It starts by measuring a set of more than 100 neighborhood sustainable indicators. The initial set of indicators includes education, housing, neighborhood quality and social capital, neighborhood environment and health, employment and transportation. Data are gathered from various sources, including the National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) data inventory, U.S. Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), many government agencies and private vendors. GIS mapping is used to visualize and identify variations in neighborhood attributes at the most detailed level (e.g census tracts). Factor analysis is then used to reduce the number of indicators to a small set of dimensions that capture essential differences in neighborhood types in terms of social, economic, and environmental dimensions. These factors loadings are used as inputs to a cluster analysis to identify unique neighborhood types. Finally, different types of neighborhoods are visualized using a GIS tool for further evaluation.The proposed quantitative analysis will help illustrate variations in neighborhood types and their spatial patterns in the Baltimore metropolitan region. This framework offers new insights on what is a sustainable neighborhood.

Authors: Casey Dawkins, Jason Sartori, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap (2012)

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Synopsis: This study presents a summary of stakeholder perspectives on the effectiveness of Maryland's Priority Funding Areas and barriers to growth within PFAs. It relies upon responses to a telephone survey of forty-seven representatives from three key stakeholder groups' planners, policy advocates and consultants, and developers.

Authors: Jason Sartori, Terry Moore, and Gerrit Knaap (2011)

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Synopsis: Maryland is often referred to as the birthplace of smart growth, a movement in land use planning that contributed to what is now referred to as sustainability planning, sustainable development, and sustainable communities. Maryland adopted a Smart Growth Program in 1997 with the primary purposes being to use incentives to (1) direct growth into areas already developed and having public facilities, and (2) reduce the conversion of farm, forest, and resource land to urban uses.

Authors: Sabyasachee Mishra, Xin Ye, Fred Ducca, and Gerrit Knaap (2011)

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Synopsis: The Maryland-Washington, DC region has been experiencing significant land-use changes and changes in local and regional travel patterns due to increasing growth and sprawl. The region‚Äôs highway and transit networks regularly experience severe congestion levels. Before proceeding with plans to build new transportation infrastructure to address this expanding demand for travel, a critical question is how future land use will affect the regional transportation system. This article investigates how an integrated land-use and transportation model can address this question. A base year and two horizon-year land use-transport scenarios are analyzed. The horizon-year scenarios are: (1) business as usual (BAU) and (2) high gasoline prices (HGP). The scenarios developed through the land-use model are derived from a three-stage top-down approach: (a) at the state level, (b) at the county level, and (c) at the statewide modeling zone (SMZ) level that reflects economic impacts on the region. The transportation model, the Maryland Statewide Transport Model (MSTM), is an integrated land use-transportation model, capable of reflecting development and travel patterns in the region. The model includes all of Maryland, Washington, DC, and Delaware, and portions of southern Pennsylvania, northern Virginia, New Jersey, and West Virginia. The neighboring states are included to reflect the entering, exiting, and through trips in the region. The MSTM is a four-step travel-demand model with input provided by the alternative land-use scenarios, designed to produce link-level assignment results for four daily time periods, nineteen trip purposes, and eleven modes of travel. This article presents preliminary results of the land use-transportation model. The long-distance passenger and commodity-travel models are at the development stage and are not included in the results. The analyses of the land use-transport scenarios reveal insights to the region's travel patterns in terms of the congestion level and the shift of travel as per land-use changes. The model is a useful tool for analyzing future land-use and transportation impacts in the region.

Authors: Charles Towe and Chad Lawley (2010)

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Synopsis: In this paper, we examine a highly localized contagion effect of foreclosures and find strong evidence that social interactions influence the decision to foreclose. We utilize a hazard model and a unique spatially explicit dataset documenting parcel level residential foreclosures in Maryland for the years 2006 through 2009. We combine these data with tax and assessment data, loan data, Census, and unemployment data. These data allow us to control for important factors influencing the likelihood of foreclosure within a given community, including the prevalence of subprime loans and the distribution of socioeconomic characteristics. Additionally, we use the tax data to construct variables describing individual homes, surrounding homes, and community. These variables include structural characteristics of houses, their price history, and length of ownership.

Authors: Bernadette Hanlon, Marie Howland, and Michael McGuire (2010)

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Synopsis: This paper uses a logit model to estimate whether and to what extent Maryland's Priority Funding Area (PFA) program steers urban growth to locations inside targeted growth area boundaries of an ex-urban county in the outer suburbs of the Washington, D.C. region. The results of our model indicate that the size of an agricultural parcel, its distance from urban parcels, its proximity to highways, the quality of the land for agriculture, and the location in or outside of PFAs influence the probability an agricultural parcel will remain in agriculture or be converted to urban use. We find that some of the areas experiencing the greatest market pressure for development are located outside PFAs and, although Maryland's incentive-based strategy reduces the likelihood a parcel outside a PFA will transition to urban use, this policy is not one hundred percent effective.

Authors: Steven A. Gabriel,  Jose A. Faria, and Glenn E. Moglen (2010)

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Synopsis: In this paper we describe a multiobjective optimization model of "Smart Growth" applied to land development in Montgomery County, Maryland. The term "Smart Growth" is generally meant to describe those land development strategies which do not result in urban sprawl, however the term is somewhat open to interpretation. The multiobjective aspects arise when considering the conflicting interests of the various stakeholders involved: the government planner, the environmentalist, the conservationist, and the land developer. We present a formulation, which employs linear and convex quadratic objective functions for the stakeholders that are subject to polyhedral and binary constraints. As such, the resulting optimization problems are convex, quadratic mixed integer programs which are known to be NP-complete (Mansini and Speranza, 1999). We report numerical results with this model and present these results using a geographic information system (GIS).

Authors: Nikhil Kaza, Gerrit Knaap, and Kelly Clifton (2009)

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Synopsis: This paper illustrates the use of scenarios in land use, environmental and transportation planning in and around the State of Maryland. Different assumptions about futures result in different patterns of growth with differential impacts on particular sectors of the economy. Such different patterns require formulation of contingent plans as well as robust plans. In this paper, we illustrate the quantitative modelling methodology of loosely linked economic demographic, transportation and other impact assessment models in constructing two scenarios; one of which represented the best possible guess about the continuation of the future and other involving rapid changes to energy prices and Federal spending. We illustrate the spatial development outcomes and the transportation and environmental plans that are necessary to deal with these different outcomes. Further, we illustrate that different planned actions have different efficacies in different futures and thus multiple futures should be carefully considered. Finally, we illustrate the notions of contingent plans and robust plans.

Authors: Rebecca Lewis, Gerrit Knaap, and Jungyul Sohn (2009)

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Synopsis: Problem: In 1997, the State of Maryland adopted a bold new approach to growth management based on a novel instrument: priority funding areas (PFAs). PFAs contain growth by directing state spending to areas designated by local governments and reviewed by the state government. Despite widespread acclaim and subsequent imitation, little is known about whether PFAs effectively contain urban growth.

Authors: Nikhil Kaza, Gerrit Knaap, and Douglas Meade (2008)

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Synopsis: This paper illustrates the application of various forecasting methodologies in constructing multiple scenarios for the state of Maryland using Long term Inter Industry Forecasting Tool that tracks inter-industry outputs at a macro scale, and State Employment Model that disaggregates these outputs to the states. We then use accessibility, land availability and observed relationships of employment categories to distribute employment at a county level. In this paper, we identify the possible advantages and pitfalls of using large scale economic models to drive employment forecasts at the county level. This framework allows for simulating the implications of macroeconomic scenarios such as changes in exchange rates and unemployment levels, as well as local land use and transportation policies on local employment and demographics. In particular, we focus on two scenarios as test cases both of which involve very different ideas about how future might unfold and their effects on land use and transportation policy prescriptions. One of the scenarios involves, among others, rises in health care spending over the next few years and the other involves increases in energy prices. As will be shown, they have different spatial effects and suggest different policy actions on the part of various governments.

Authors: John Frece, Jason Sartori, and Rebecca Lewis (2008)

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Synopsis: The Community Legacy program was established in 2001 through a bill introduced by the administration of former Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening as part of the larger Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. The Community Legacy program and its companion effort, the Neighborhood BusinessWorks program, were specifically created to direct state resources to existing community-scale neighborhoods as part of the state‚Äôs broader effort to reverse a decades-long trend of urban disinvestment and abandonment. Considered somewhat unorthodox when they were started, these programs have since become readily accepted by local governments as mainstays of their revitalization strategies.

Authors: Qing Shen, Chao Liu, Joe Liao, Feng Zhang, Chris Dorney (2007)

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Synopsis: This paper presents a study of recent urban growth patterns in the state of Maryland, which is known as a leader in the current smart growth movement. Five research questions are addressed in this study. First, what have been the trends in urban growth and land use in Maryland for the past 30 years? Second, to what extent have recent urban development patterns in Maryland matched the typical characterization of sprawl? Third, how have the intensity of urban land uses and the physical forms of urban growth in this state varied among its counties? Fourth, have the smart growth initiatives, especially the "Smart Growth Area Act", significantly affected urban development patterns? Fifth, does the effectiveness of smart growth initiatives vary significantly across local jurisdictions? To answer these research questions, we measure, analyze, and model urban development patterns in Maryland using land use and land cover (LULC) and demographic data for 1973, 1992, 1997, 2000, and 2002. By calculating several important indicators of urban development patterns, we find that for the past three decades population densities have continued to decrease for the state as a whole. However, this trend has slowed since 1997, when the state implemented the smart growth programs. The land conversion rate has somewhat decreased, which indicates that smart growth initiatives have helped, in a limited way, curtail the growing demand for urban land and residential space. Further, we find that the patterns of urban growth and land use have generally become slightly less fragmented and more continuous since 1997. Additionally, we find significant variations in urban development patterns among local jurisdictions. In general, higher densities, higher levels of compactness, and lower levels of fragmentation are observed in the more urbanized counties. Moreover, by estimating a series of logit models of land conversion, we find that Maryland's "Smart Growth Area Act" has generally increased the probability of land use change from non-urban to urban for areas designated as "Priority Funding Areas." The effectiveness of this program, however, varies significantly across the counties. We discuss the implications of these findings and identify the directions for future research.

Authors: The National Center for Smart Growth (2007)

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Synopsis: At the request of the Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and the University of Maryland's Real Estate Development Program have undertaken an analysis of the federal government's leasing presence in the greater Washington metropolitan region.

Authors: Gerrit Knaap and John Frece (2007)

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Synopsis: Spring of 2007 will mark the 10th anniversary of the passage of Maryland's Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative; an effort designed to discourage sprawl development, foster more compact communities, protect the best remaining farms and open space in the state, and save taxpayers from the growing cost of providing services and infrastructure to serve far-flung development. Almost before its various provisions took effect in 1997 and 1998, the Maryland initiative generated interest and acclaim across the country. It received numerous awards and became the principal legacy of the program's primary architect, former Governor Parris N. Glen- dening. Governors in other states, such as New Jersey, Colorado and Massachusetts, instituted their own "smart growth" proposals, often modeled after portions of the Maryland program. Even the popularity and wide usage of the now omnipresent phrase "smart growth" can be attributed in large part to the Maryland program.But, what has been the effect of Maryland's Smart Growth pro- gram? Looking at it some ten years later, has it worked? Did it accomplish what it was designed to do? What have been the strengths and weaknesses of the Maryland approach, and how can lessons from the Maryland experience be used to offer a new set of policymakers in Maryland, as well as elsewhere in the nation, practical suggestions on how to make smart growth smarter?

Authors: Gerrit Knaap and Rebecca Lewis (2007)

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Synopsis: In 1997, the Maryland General Assembly enacted the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation initiative, an attempt by state government to use the state budget to concentrate urban development in certain areas. The primary vehicle for this approach was embodied in the Smart Growth Areas Act, which required that all "growth-related" funding by state agencies occur in locally designated "Priority Funding Areas" (PFAs) that met certain state criteria. The intent of the Act was to restrict state spending so it became easier for local governments and private developers to concentrate urban development within the PFAs, while at the same time, discourage development outside PFAs.

Authors: The National Center for Smart Growth (2007)

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Synopsis: At the request of the Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education and the University of Maryland's Real Estate Development Program have undertaken an analysis of the federal government's leasing presence in the greater Washington metropolitan region.

Authors: Antonio M. Bento (2006)

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Synopsis: During the last decade, the state of Maryland was one of the fastest growing states in the United States. In response, the state has implemented an aggressive "smart growth" initiative. One of the most popular smart growth policies, adopted by several counties in the state of Maryland, is an Adequate Public Facility Ordinance (APFOs). An APFO is a spatially delineated land use control that aims to prevent development from occurring in areas where certain public services are overcrowded. An example of an APFO is a standard on elementary school capacity which limits the amount of new development at the school district level. Despite their extensive use, very little is known about the effects of these policies.The purpose of this report is to answer the following three questions:

Authors: Gerrit Knaap (2006)

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Synopsis: Presented at "Planning Reform in the New Century", Washington University Law School, St. Louis, Mo, December, 2004In the days following the 2004 presidential election there was much consternation in Democratic circles. George Bush won again; the Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate; and the Republican majority seemed to have grown in depth and strength. Pundits and progressives were already wondering--could the Democrats ever recapture the hearts of an American public now apparently obsessed with security, morality, and personal charm.Among academic and professional planners there was similar concern. Although John Kerry had never been a champion of smart growth, it was clear that the prospects for smarter growth were far greater in an administration headed by Kerry than one headed by Bush. Smart growth had not fully disappeared in the federal agenda in the first Bush administration, but the momentum had clearly waned. Further, the discussion in the planning chat-rooms and list serves focused on the blue and red maps, which made clear that Republicans dominated not only the central and southern states but also the rural and suburban areas of most every state in the union. The subject line of one long conversation on the PLANET list serve was "sprawling Republicans" which conveyed the alarm: the new American majority was deeply rooted in urban sprawl.In the wake of these political events, it is reasonable to ask: can smart growth survive another term of President Bush? If so, what must be done to regain the momentum and capture the favor of an ever-growing conservative majority? In this period of national reflection, therefore, I consider the state of smart growth and its prospects for the near- term future. I start with a brief history of its evolution, continue with an examination of recent trends, and follow with an assessment of whether smart growth will change those trends. I conclude with recommendations for how smart growth might adapt to the new political realities.

Authors: The National Center for Smart Growth (2006)

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Synopsis: The purpose of this study is to examine the implementation and effects of APFOs and the relationship between APFOs and Maryland's Smart Growth policy. Thirteen counties and 12 incorporated municipalities in Maryland have enacted ordinances designed to assure that infrastructure necessary to support proposed new development is built concurrently with, or prior to, that new development. These Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances, or APFOs as they are commonly called, are designed to assure that public schools, roads, sewers, water for fire fighting, police and rescue response times and/or other infrastructure or services are "adequate" to support proposed new development. APFOs are timing devices that can be a useful tool for managing urban growth. When properly used, they can help ensure that needed facilities and services are available for new development and can signal to planners and elected officials what types of infrastructure, in which particular growth areas, are in need of additional capital improvement spending. They are intended to provide the rationale for prioritizing infrastructure investment decisions. As of April 2005, 13 counties and 12 municipalities had implemented APFO ordinances. In terms of categories of services included in the 12 county APFOs, all cover schools and roads. While two counties limit their APFOs to those two service categories, nine others include water and sewage capacity; three include water for fire suppression in rural areas, two include police/fire/rescue services; and one includes recreation. Not only do categories of services included in the APFOs vary, but so do a) the standards used to gauge adequacy, and b) the approaches taken by the counties when a development proposal is judged as leading to service or facility inadequacy. Moreover, APFO standards in a given jurisdiction can and do change over time as local elected officials respond to the concerns of constituents, other stakeholders and changing public policy objectives.This study finds that APFOs in Maryland are often poorly linked to capital improvement plans, and moratoria can last for indefinite periods of time. Further, the consequences of APFOs in Maryland are often unintended and their effects frequently contrary to the broader land use policies of the state. In many counties that employ APFOs, they have become the dominant planning tool rather than just one of many tools a county might use to manage its growth.When roads, schools or other infrastructure are judged to be insufficient to meet the standards established within APFOs, the result is often a moratorium on building until the infrastructure is ready to come on line. Often, the only way these moratoria can only be lifted is through the payment of impact fees by developers. These fees are, in turn, passed through to new home buyers. While this practice is justified by some observers as being consistent with the "benefit standard" (i.e., those who benefit from a particular service or facility should be the ones to pay for it), it ignores the benefits that accrue to the community from new development. Another perspective is that it places a disproportionate burden for the cost of new infrastructure on new home buyers. Under the latter perspective, if new development is consistent with a jurisdiction's comprehensive plan, then it is appropriate for the funding for needed services and services be borne by the jurisdiction as a whole.The study also finds that APFOs are applied in ways that often deflect development away from the very areas designated for growth in county comprehensive plans to rural areas never intended for growth, to neighboring counties, or even to adjacent states. An analysis of the effects of APFOs on housing in Harford, Howard, and Montgomery counties found that over a three-year period, APFOs deflected as much as 10 percent of the new home development that otherwise would have been built within the PFAs of those counties. It is likely that the cumulative effect is that the amount of housing available in those counties is reduced, housing prices are inflated, and the growth simply moves elsewhere.APFO consistency with a local comprehensive plan is possible only if adequate funding is allocated to provide necessary infrastructure in the plan's designated areas. That, however, is often not the case. In short, APFOs appear to be fueling the same pattern of development the state's Smart Growth policy is intended to curtail. This result appears to be at odds with both the intent underlying the enactment of local Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances and the land use goals of the state.

Authors: John Frece (2006)

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Synopsis: "Reality Check Plus's was the name given to a series of growth visioning exercises that were held in four different regions in Maryland in late spring 2006. The events were designed to help elected officials, government leaders, business executives, civic organizations, environmentalists and everyday Marylanders become more aware of the level and pace of growth that is projected to come to Maryland by 2030 ‚ and to ask them think about the potential challenges and consequences Marylanders will face as a result of such dramatic change. It also was designed to encourage citizens and elected officials to think about ways to address growth issues on a regional or even statewide basis.

Authors: Frece, John (ed.) (2006)

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Synopsis: This Guidebook provided participants background information necessary to make informed decisions at the Reality Check Plus exercise. It contains detailed information about statewide and regional trends in population, housing, employment, environmental challenges and a range of other issues. Reality Check Plus participants were encouraged to read it prior to the exercise and bring it with them that day.

Authors: Feng Zhang, Kelly J. Clifton, Qing Shen (2005)

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Synopsis: This paper presents an empirical examination of the relationship between information and communications technology (ICT) and travel. The primary research objective is to examine the effects of several indicators of ICT usage on three measures of travel outcomes. The ICT indicators include the frequency of Internet use, the number of mobile phones, and the presence of a telephone at home for business purposes. The travel outcomes examined are vehicle miles traveled (VMT), total daily trips, and daily walking trips. Using the 2001 national household travel survey (NHTS) data for Baltimore metropolitan area, a linear regression model is estimated for VMT and two Poisson regression models are estimated for, respectively, total daily trips and daily walking trips. The empirical results suggest simultaneous existence of substitution and complementarity interactions between ICT and travel, with complementarity as the dominant form. Implications of the research findings are discussed.

Authors: The National Center for Smart Growth (2005)

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Synopsis: This report examines the relationship between local APFOs and Smart Growth implementation in Maryland. The overall purpose of the study is to determine whether, the degree to which, and reasons why, APFOs complement or frustrate development in Maryland's Priority Funding Areas. This report addresses the issue through case studies of six (6) of the 13 counties in Maryland that have implemented APFOs. The six counties are located in north central Maryland, and include Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, Howard and Queen Anne's. The case studies involved a) analysis of each jurisdiction's APFO and its impact fee or excise tax policies (if any), and the APFO's relationship to the local comprehensive plan; and b) interviews with county planners and with building industry professionals familiar with the county's APFO.

Authors: The National Center for Smart Growth (2005)

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Synopsis: This report examines the relationship between local APFOs and Smart Growth implementation in Maryland. The overall purpose of the study is to determine whether, the degree to which, and reasons why, APFOs complement or frustrate development in Maryland's Priority Funding Areas. This report addresses that issue through case studies of six (6) of the 13 counties in Maryland that have implemented APFOs. The six counties include Calvert, Charles, Frederick, Montgomery, Prince George's and St. Mary's. The case studies involved a) analysis of each jurisdiction's APFO and its impact fee or excise tax policies (if any), and the APFO's relationship to the local comprehensive plan; and b) interviews with county planners and with building industry professionals familiar with the county's APFO.

Authors: Reid Ewing and Richard J. Kuzmyak (2005)

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Synopsis: An Expert Land Use Panel was used to forecast the land use impacts of a major highway project in the Washington, DC area, the Inter-County Connector. What makes this panel noteworthy is the fact that a subgroup of panelists, convinced that the accessibility impacts of the highway were not being adequately considered by the majority, developed a simple land use allocation model which they then used to produce independent forecasts. This allows us to compare more intuitive and ad hoc forecasts based only on expert opinion with those based on a formal land use allocation model. At least in this case, the two differed sufficiently to suggest that the two processes are not mere substitutes for one another. This prompts us to recommend that subsequent panels be fed accessibility data early in the process to inform their intuitive judgments, and that simple land use allocation models be considered as a complement to expert opinion.

Authors: Claire A. Jantz, Scott J. Goetz, Patrick A. Jantz, and Brian Melchior (2005)

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Synopsis: The contemporary pattern of urban development in industrialized countries is increasingly taking the form of low density, decentralized residential and commercial development. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which is located within the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, dispersed development patterns have been linked to habitat fragmentation and declining water quality. Our objectives were to document how this urbanization process has expanded throughout the watershed and to explore how lands comprising the natural resource base, particularly forests, have been replaced by a matrix of the built environment.

Authors: Alberto Longo and Anna Alberini (2005)

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Synopsis: Using the hedonic pricing approach, we investigate how the information released on public registries of contaminated and potentially contaminated sites affects nearby commercial and industrial properties in Baltimore, Maryland. We find that commercial and industrial properties are virtually unaffected by proximity to a site with a history of contamination. Knowing that the site is no longer considered contaminated does not have a rebound effect on property prices either.We also find that urban economic development policies, such as Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Zones, have little effect on property values. In sum, brownfield properties in Baltimore are not particularly attractive investments for developers, and there is little potential for self-sustaining cleanup based on appropriate fiscal incentives, such as Tax Increment Financing. It is doubtful that "one size fits all" measures to encourage the cleanup of contaminated sites can be successful in this context.

Authors: Glenn Moglen (2005)

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Synopsis: This paper presents a GIS-based program called GISHydro2000. This tool was developed by the author and is used extensively by state government and private consultants in the development of predictions for flood behavior in the state of Maryland. This paper presents a demonstration of the program's overall functionality and underlying spatial database. An actual example watershed will be analyzed to illustrate how GISHydro2000 works and the tools it provides.

Authors: Glenn Moglen, Karen Nelson, Margaret Palmer, et al. (2005)

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Synopsis: Urbanization in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is having dramatic impacts on the streams and rivers that feed the Bay. Increasing imperviousness has led to higher peak flows and lower base flows. The movement of pollutants and other materials to receiving waters has increased and stream water temperatures have risen. These changes alter the structure and functioning of reivers, streams, and associated riparian corridors and result in changes in ecosystem services.We define a hydrologic disturbance index that indicates varying degrees of disturbance on a reach-by-reach basis, dependent on the aggregate amount of urbanization upstream of each reach. For current conditions this index is more variable than for future conditions, because current land use in the study watershed is more variable, containing mixtures of urban, agricultural, and forested land. In contrast, future land use is projected to be more uniformly urban, leading to a less variable but greater overall degree of hydrologic disturbance.Two effects of urbanization on fish are explored through ecological modeling: effects of stream bed disturbance on food availability and effects of stream temperature on spawning. We tabulate food availability as a function of bed-mobility for 30 different fish species. We show that additional stress occurs with additional urbanization of the watershed. We show that the urban-related increase in stream temperatures may cause several warm-water species to gain opportunities to spawn in some cases. However, combining food availability and spawning day availability into a single index reveals highly stressful conditions for all fish species under the fully developed scenario.

Authors: Shengling Chang, Ping Sung, and Aimee LaMontagne (2004)

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Synopsis: The research investigates how Asian and Latino immigrants' prior urban experiences can inform the future planning and growth of suburban communities in Maryland. The investigation of Maryland immigrants' various built environment (dwelling, landscape, neighborhood, transportation mode) preferences will result in a set of ecologically appropriate and culturally sensitive design guidelines that will help shape the future of the rapidly growing suburban communities.

Authors: Kelly J. Clifton, Gary Davies, William G. Allen, and Noah Radford (2004)

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Synopsis: Pedestrian safety is emerging as a major area of concern for MPO's and planning agencies. Typically, pedestrian safety has been analyzed by either examining the absolute number of pedestrian crashes at a location, or computing an exposure rate from the number of crashes and the traffic volume. A more desirable measure would be an exposure rate based on the pedestrian volume, but it has not proven feasible to obtain pedestrian flow volumes on a wide area basis to support this analysis. This report describes a pedestrian flow modeling process that was developed under the sponsorship of the Maryland DOT and the University of Maryland National Center for Smart Growth. The process provides micro-scale daily pedestrian flows on all sidewalks and crosswalks in a substantial coverage area. Two test cases were analyzed: an urban scenario comprising about 10 square miles of downtown Baltimore, and a suburban scenario comprising about 15 square miles of Langley Park in Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties.

Authors: James Cohen and Gerrit Knaap (2004)

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Synopsis: This report provides an overview of planning and development control at the county level in the United States based on a case-study analysis of two counties in the Washington, DC metropolitan area: Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. The intent is not to provide an in-depth analysis of the differences between these two counties but instead to demonstrate general principles and procedures of county planning in the United States.

Authors: Gerrit Knaap, Jungyul Sohn, John W. Frece and Elisabeth Holler (2003)

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Synopsis: Maryland is a dense and rapidly growing state. For this and other reasons, Maryland has been a national leader in a movement known as smart growth. Smart growth has many objectives, but concentrating urban growth in well defined areas while protecting rural land from development are perhaps its primary goals. Though public support for smart growth continues to rise, so do concerns that policies used to promote smart growth could have adverse effects on land and housing markets. To evaluate these concerns, this study provides information on housing markets and development trends in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.The study finds that housing demand in the nation and in Maryland is strong, as revealed by rising prices and homeownership rates as well as by falling vacancy rates and housing-to-jobs ratios. In general, the housing market in Maryland exhibits trends similar to those in comparable jurisdictions, such as neighboring Virginia. The performance of specific housing markets in Maryland, however, varies widely, with strong growth in the suburbs, variable growth in rural areas and persistent weakness in Baltimore City. Further, in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs, housing prices are rising rapidly while housing starts remain sluggish. Though this study does not prove that housing markets and development trends in Maryland have been adversely affected by land use policies, there is evidence to suggest that state and local constraints on development are contributing to problems of housing affordability and deflecting growth to outlying areas. The result could be more, not less, urban sprawl. Moreover, neither the state government nor most local governments in Maryland currently have adequate policies in place to monitor or address this problem. While the Maryland Smart Growth initiative has been successful in protecting natural areas and agricultural lands from development, it has not had similar success in assuring a steady, future supply of affordable housing. Local governments, meanwhile, appear to have little incentive to address this problem.To address this problem the state needs to assure that local governments address development capacity and housing affordability issues. This does not mean it should eliminate or immediately expand Priority Funding Areas. It does mean that the state should require local governments to include housing elements in their comprehensive plans, provide periodic estimates of housing and employment capacity, and develop modern and publicly accessible data on the location and capacity of developable land. Local governments must be active and willing participants in this process and the Maryland Department of Planning should provide whatever technical assistance may be needed.

Authors: Glenn Moglen, Steven Gabriel, and Jose Faria (2003)

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Synopsis: Increasing awareness about the problems brought on by urban sprawl has led to proactive measures to guide future development. Such efforts have largely been grouped under the term, Smart Growth. Although not widely recognized as such, the smart in Smart Growth implies an optimization of some quantity or objective while undertaking new forms of urban development. To illustrate a formal, quantitative framework for Smart Growth, this study develops definitions of optimal development from the perspectives of four different types of stakeholders: a government planner, a land developer, a hydrologist, and a conservationist subject to certain developmental constraints. Four different objective functions are posed that are consistent with each of these stakeholders‚Äô perspectives. We illustrate the differences in consequences on future development given these different objective functions in a stylized representation for Montgomery County, Maryland. Solutions to Smart Growth from the individual perspectives vary considerably. Trade-off tables are presented which illustrate the consequences experienced by each stakeholder depending on the viewpoint that has been optimized. Although couched in the context of an illustrative example, this study emphasizes the need to apply rigorous, quantitative tools in a meaningful framework to address Smart Growth. The result is a tool that a range of parties can use to plan future development in ways that are environmentally and fiscally responsible and economically viable.

Authors: Jungyul Sohn and Gerrit Knaap (2002)

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Synopsis: The Job Creation Tax Credit (JCTC) program is one of the five major Smart Growth Programs initiated by the State of Maryland in 1996 and amended in 1997. Like other tax credit programs it is intended to create jobs, but it is also a place-based policy in the sense that eligibility is limited to jobs created in Priority Funding Areas (PFAs). This paper examines whether the JCTC program has furthered the goals of smart growth by concentrating job growth within well defined regions of the state. Towards this end, both the number and the relative share of employment inside and outside of the PFAs are compared using three econometric models. The empirical analysis examines employment in five economic sectors ((1) primary, (2) manufacturing, (3) transportation, communication and utilities (T.C.U.), (4) finance, insurance and real estate (F.I.R.E.) and (5) services) over the years (1994 to 1998) using ZIP Code data. The result shows that jobs in the T.C.U. and services industries have responded to the state incentive program while three other sectors have not; the distribution of jobs in the primary sector have grown counter to the state incentive policy and jobs in manufacturing and F.I.R.E. have been unaffected by the program.

Authors: James Cohen and Illana Preuss (2002)

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Synopsis: Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs increasingly are being utilized as land preservation tools in local jurisdictions' growth management strategies. Issues of social justice are embedded in TDR implementation. This article develops a framework for analyzing social equity issues in TDR programs, and applies the framework to the program in Montgomery County, Maryland. While the Montgomery County program has gained a national reputation for protecting large areas of farmland, the social equity analysis finds several shortcomings with that program's design and operation. Recommendations are offered for improving the effectiveness and equity of the program, and these suggestions have implications for other TDR programs.

Authors: Jungyul Sohn (2002)

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Synopsis: This paper examines if information technology has worked towards dispersion or concentration of economic activities in two steps of analysis. The first analysis using locational Gini coefficient and Moran's I focuses on distribution of the urban area as a whole and finds that dispersion was prominent over the years. The second analysis using Gi* statistic as the dependent variable in the regression model, however, shows that the technology has induced more concentration rather than dispersion at an intrametropolitan scale, reflecting that there is a discrepancy in the results of the two analyses depending on the spatial scale of the analysis.

Authors: Marie Howland (2002)

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Synopsis: This study tracks the remediation history and redevelopment on three brownfield sites in Baltimore, Maryland. The sites are Camden Crossing, Highland Marine Terminal, and Crown, Cork, and Seal. The first project, Camden Crossing, promises to turn previously industrial property into a town house development. Highland Marine Terminal and Crown, Cork, and Seal were industrial sites transformed into warehouse space. The proposed residential, Camden Crossing, project has met with continuous impediments and delays, and is now running more than eight years behind schedule. The two industry to warehouse sites can be characterized as successful, with profitable enterprises now operating on both. The factors that appear to compress risk and contribute to successful brownfield redevelopments are continuous industrial use, a strong market for the final use, and quick movement through the Phase I and Phase II testing, Maryland Department of the Environment approvals, and reuse. The continuous industrial use means that cleanup standards are not as stringent as for residential use, thereby speeding cleanup and lowering remdiation costs. Moreover, an uncertain market for the final product increases risk. For example, the warehouse market in Baltimore is much stronger than the residential market. The weak residential market in combination with stringent cleanup standards undermines the profitability of Camden Crossing. Finally, the delays in Camden Crossing have both resulted in and been further aggravated by changes in the Maryland Department of the Environment staff. Over the eight years the project has been under discussion, the Maryland Department of the Environment has revised and made cleanup standards more strict.

Authors: Gerrit Knaap (2002)

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Synopsis: Prepared for Presentation at the International Workshop on Urban Growth Management: New Approaches to Land Management for Sustainable Urban Regions University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 29-31 October 2001Smart growth is a term rising rapidly in use and ambiguity. The origin of the term is uncertain, though some credit Harriet Tregoning, former Director of the Development, Community and Environmental Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and now the smart growth Czar in the cabinet of Maryland‚Äôs Governor Glendening. Even if fiction, this story has a certain allure, since the USEPA and the State of Maryland have done much to make smart growth an agenda item of many states, local governments, and interest groups. Despite its popularity, however, the concept of smart growth remains ephemeral. Much has been written about smart growth in the popular press and newsletters of advocacy organizations, both pro and con, but little has been written about it in the academic literature (early contributions include Burchell et al. 2000, Downs 2001, and Nelson 2001). As the newly appointed Director of Research for the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, it will be my job to do just that -- not just with papers of my own, but with papers written by scholars with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This paper, therefore, represents a first step towards that end. But my goals for this paper are more ambitious; they include the articulation of an agenda for research on smart growth. This is a formidable task, since the ambiguity of the term leaves little in the realm of land use to eliminate as beyond the scope of the subject. To narrow my scope, therefore, I ignore all discussions about what constitutes urban sprawl and whether sprawl, however defined, is good or bad. Instead, I focus my analysis on smart growth policies adopted by the State of Maryland.

Authors: Gerrit Knaap (2002)

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Synopsis: As in many countries around the world, concerns about contemporary urban development patterns and their effects on the natural and social environment are high and rising in the United States. Though these concerns are not new, the recent period of sustained economic growth has led to both rapid urban expansion and falling relative concerns about other problems like crime, unemployment, and government deficits. Urban sprawl is now a major public policy issue (U.S. Office of Technology Assessment 1995, U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) 1999, GAO 2000).

Authors: Lori Lynch and Sabrina Lovell (2002)

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Synopsis: More than 110 state and local governments have implemented agricultural land preservation programs to permanently preserve farmland. Assigning a value to the development rights to determine the cost of acquiring an easement on farm properties is difficult and can be costly. Data was collected on 409 preservation transactions from three Maryland counties and supplemented with farm-level spatial data via GIS. A hedonic price analysis is conducted to determine the marginal return to different farm characteristics using a spatial econometric model to correct for spatial correlation. Parcel characteristics such as distance to city and town, number of acres, prime soils and current land-use explain 80 percent of the variation in easement values. As expected, characteristics perform least well in explaining easement values in transfer of development right programs. This information can help formulate policy decisions and selection criteria to maximize the preservation of the agricultural economy and/or maximize public preferences. A supply curve is constructed using simulations that determine nonparticipant parcels‚Äô easement values. To preserve the remaining eligible acres in the three counties, $167 million would be needed. This method can support programs choosing to use a point system rather than the more costly and difficult-to-apply standard appraisal methods.

Authors: James Cohen (1999)

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Synopsis: As a faculty member in the University of Maryland's Urban Studies and Planning Program, in early 1999 I decided to have my summer, community planning studio course focus on the challenges facing one of Maryland's smaller jurisdictions at it attempted to comply with its planning mandates and grow in a manner consistent with the state's Smart Growth program. The resulting 2 summer studio course, entitled "What's Smart Growth for Perryville?", proved to be a rich learning experience for the students and a valuable resource for the town. This chapter focuses on how the 1999 summer studio course provided smart-growth related technical assistance to the Town of Perryville. It will provide a brief profile of the studio course and of Perryville; discuss how the students approached the study; summarize the major findings and recommendations of the final studio report; critically analyze the degree to which the report has since been utilized by the town; highlight the students‚Äô reactions to the studio experience; and discuss the lessons learned from the studio and the studio's potential transferability.

Authors: Lori Lynch and Sabrina Lovell

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Synopsis: Local and state governmental entities have implemented transfer of development rights (TDR) and purchase of development rights or purchase of agricultural conservation easements (PDR/PACE) programs to permanently preserve farmland throughout the United States (AFT (American Farmland Trust) 2001a; AFT, 2001b; AFT, 2001c). In each of these programs, the sale of development rights results in an easement attached to the title of the land which restricts the current and all future owners from converting the parcel to residential, commercial, or industrial uses. The value of the land in alternative uses affects an owner's willingness to participate in these programs as well as the program costs. Thus, information on the value that the private market places on parcel characteristics is important in determining participation behavior and payment levels. In addition, knowledge of the marginal contributions of different parcel characteristics to both private market prices and easement values can help program administrators decide which easement purchases can maximize society's benefit at the lowest cost.Lynch and Lovell (2002) found that the agricultural land preservation programs in three Maryland counties (Calvert, Howard and Carroll counties) paid higher per acre easement values for farmland close to the nearest employment center, smaller farms, and farms with a high percent of prime soils, and paid lower values for farms with a high percent of cropland. The importance of certain land characteristics on the easement values was affected by the type of agricultural preservation program (TDR or PDR/PACE) that had enrolled the farm. In an analysis of whether or not the easement restrictions affected the preserved parcels‚Äô market price, Nickerson and Lynch (2001) examined private market sales prices for 200 farmland parcels in the same Maryland counties (Howard, Carroll, and Calvert). They found that the private market paid higher prices per acre for farmland close to the nearest employment center, smaller farms, non-forested parcels, and those parcels in Calvert and Howard counties. They found that prime soils were not important in determining the parcel price in the private market. Comparing the results of these two studies, we find both similarities and differences in the effect of different characteristics on easement values and private market prices for agricultural land. This chapter explores these similarities and differences by investigating whether the private land market pays similar values for parcel characteristics or whether the preservation programs design payment schemes that are not market-driven. Analyzing a spatially explicit dataset of 2,592 arm's-length transactions, we also correct for possible spatial correlation that might occur due to the proximity of the observations to one another. We also include parcels that are no longer in an agricultural use. By examining the local market for land, we can determine if the easement value indicated by the supply curve of eligible land to be preserved based on the easement programs‚Äô payments is comparable to the prices received by recently sold local land.

Authors: Rebecca Lewis and Gerrit-Jan Knaap (2012)

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Synopsis: In 1997, Maryland burst into the national spotlight with a package of legislation collectively referred to as smart growth. At its core, the innovative Maryland approach relied on directing state investments in urban infrastructure to Priority Funding Areas while directing state investments in land preservation to rural legacy areas. This article examines the performance of Rural Legacy Areas. Although smart growth in Maryland and the performance of Priority Funding Areas have received considerable attention at the national level, there have been few analyses of the performance of the Rural Legacy Program.