Land Use And Land Non-Use

 

‘Buy land, they’re not making any more of it.’

                                                      —Will Rogers

Will Rogers’s sage advice still applies today, even though it is technically inaccurate. (Go to Hawaii’s big island and look at what the Kilauea volcano is doing to the eastern edge of  Mauna Loa.) If it were not for the recent constrictions of the credit market, we all would be tempted to invest in land somewhere. It is an incredible buyer’s market. In Connecticut, which is among the states with the highest conversion rate of open land to urban and suburban development, those who know a good deal when they see it are just waiting for a green light from the banks. For now, however, pressure on the state’s open land has eased a bit, and Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission has taken advantage of this pause to update its open space regulations to ensure that the land Newtown preserves pays dividends of equal or greater value to the town as its development would. (See story on page C1.)

Newtown’s land use regulations require that at least 15 percent of the area of housing subdivisions be designated as open space, accessible to the public and protected from development in perpetuity. Because good, flat, well-drained land is easier to develop than high, rough terrain, or sodden low-lying areas, the former is often reserved for home construction and the latter is donated as open space. This is not entirely a bad thing. In this area of the country, the sprawl of development poses critical threats to wildlife habitats and water supplies. While some rough or wet land may not have value for picnics, or kite flying, or a pick-up touch football game, it does offer protections to the ecosystem that supports life in all its forms, even the life of humans who like to picnic, fly kites, or play football.

What the new regulations do, however, is give the Planning and Zoning Commission more flexibility to assess what land on a developed property would best serve the objectives of the town in that particular area — water protection, biodiversity, passive recreation — rather than merely accepting whatever land a developer has the least use for. The new regulations also make it harder for the kind of open space gerrymandering that laces long fingers of essentially useless open space through developed areas by requiring a minimum 25-foot width for open space areas.

If administered prudently and proportionately, Newtown’s new open space regulations should benefit both the cause of conservation and property values, which is good news for everyone, developers included. By taking the time and effort to think about how best to relate land use to land non-use, Newtown ends up with the kind of aesthetic and environmental balance that secures its future as a place where people prefer to live. Those benefits disappear when open space disappears. And as we all know, outside of Hawaii they’re not making any more of it.