Land Use

Introduction

Land use is the human use of territory for economic, residential, recreational, conservational, and governmental purposes. The concept of land use is closely intertwined with human community development. Patterns of human development and land use have shaped the environment locally and globally since prehistoric times. Current development patterns, together with features of the natural environment and the consequences of past development activities, determine future development opportunities, and also the need for restoration or enhancement of environmental resources.

The balance of so-called developed and undeveloped land is central to the concerns about the environment in regions heavily impacted by human populations such as major metropolitan areas and adjacent rural areas. Many of the major controversies over land use have arisen in these areas where expanding human communities impinge upon wild and less developed areas. Increasingly in North America, Western Europe, Japan, and other highly industrialized parts of the world, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are planning land use in these urban-rural “interface” zones. The main objective of these plans is to identify and manage the growth of developed areas based on current land uses, development activities, population density, impervious surfaces that cause water runoff, and existing community infrastructure.

Historical Background and Scientific Foundations

Considerations of land use and development planning are most prominent in economically advanced countries. In less industrially developed countries, in spite of what is often a dire need for land use management, land use and development planning is limited or non-existent. Thus, in this article, the emphasis is on land use in advanced economies and particularly in the United States.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres. The major categories of U.S. land uses are forest-use land, 651 million acres (28.8%); grassland pasture and range land, 587 million acres (25.9%); cropland, 442 million acres (19.5%); special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas), 297 million acres (13.1%); miscellaneous other uses, 228 million acres (10.1%); and urban land, 60 million acres (2.6%). Thus, even in the world’s most advanced economy, land use in terms of acreage is overwhelmingly rural in character.

Nevertheless, ongoing development in the United States and in other countries with industrial economies is of growing concern and impinges upon environmentally sensitive regions. This is a particular problem within and on the fringes of major, sprawling metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London. Even outside of these regions in the rural heartland, inappropriate land use and development, particularly in the extraction of natural resources as in deforestation and mining, can have long-lasting and harmful environmental effects. However, in the most rural areas, short of federal or state government intervention, such as when state or national parks and wilderness areas or preserves are created, land use planning is uncommon.

Classification of land use in metropolitan regions tends to denote the concentrations of already developed lands ranging from compact development to lower density rural development. One land use classification used in the New York metropolitan area that is based on the degree of development categorizes areas as Core Developed Areas, Moderate Developed Areas, Suburban Fringe Developed Areas, and Rural Developed Areas.

Housing is one of the major components of land use and development, and is often characterized by a diverse mix of older houses or more traditional dwellings in smaller communities, to more modern housing recently constructed in urban, suburban and (especially in North America) even rural developments at or adjacent to the suburban fringe. Assessing the number of housing units in a region provides a useful gauge of regional and local housing supply and to see where and how quickly new units are being added. This assessment is also a reliable measure of the extent and rate of regional development. Another measure is the proportion of land surface that is impervious to rainwater.

Much land use in metropolitan areas is a mixture of residential and commercial use. Zoning is a common method used by local municipalities in more industrially developed countries to control the balance of these uses. For example, in northern New Jersey, part of the New York metropolitan area (North America’s largest), the majority of the land is zoned as Single-Family Estate, Resource, or Rural Residential. The next most common zone, Institutional/Open Space zones, which include open space, parks, and other civic uses, represents a small

WORDS TO KNOW

DEVELOPMENT: The process by which a multicellular organism is produced from a single cell.

IMPERVIOUS SURFACES: Land surfaces created by human construction that do not allow rainfall to penetrate into the soil and down to aquifers.

SPRAWL: The unregulated and unplanned spread of urban and suburban development in a metropolitan region.

SUSTAINABILITY: Practices that preserve the balance between human needs and the environment, as well as between current and future human requirements.

minority of all zoned land in the region. These zones are usually located within residential zones of higher density. Composite zoning that allows intermingled commercial and residential land use is quite rare in this region, as well as many other parts of metropolitan areas in North America and elsewhere in industrialized countries. This lack of composite development ensures that people must often travel considerable distances to work and shop, which in turn has accentuated dependency on the automobile and the highway system. For example, mixed use zoning in the New Jersey Highlands Region comprises only 1 to 2% of the total land area of nearly a million acres.

Zoning has seldom been used effectively to protect the environment and effectively plan development. Northern New Jersey presents one of the most prominent examples of vast and difficult to control development and complex land use patterns. These patterns have resulted in environmental problems ranging from water supply depletion, air pollution, and severe traffic congestion. Northern New Jersey as a region has one of the highest population densities in the United States. In response to the growing water supply and environmental and pollution problems that have arisen in the region, the New Jersey state legislature enacted a comprehensive land use planning law, The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act (Highlands Act, P.L. 2004, c. 120), on August 10, 2004.

Under this act, the Highlands Council created two major land use categories. The first is called the Planning Area, where concentrated development is encouraged. The lands outside of the Planning Area, which comprise the Preservation Area, are environmentally sensitive areas in which lower density residential zones predominate. A study of the region found that land-use zoning has been an inadequate mechanism for governing land use, and local zoning laws had allocated most non-residential building construction in areas inconsistent with

emerging state development and redevelopment plans. Investigators found that zoning as currently practiced in New Jersey (similarly to many other regions of the United States) does not protect the environment from the effects of urban and suburban sprawl. Current zoning laws in the Highlands Region would allow non-residential development in locations that would require the building of new utilities such as water, natural gas, and telecommunication and electrical systems. On the other hand, some adjustments to existing residential and nonresidential zoning in the region could foster development in urban and suburban areas that already have such services, thus improving the efficiency of existing utilities in served areas and decreasing sprawl.

The realization in many parts of the developed world as well as in some developing countries that current patterns of development are untenable in the long run has increased the willingness of inhabitants of metropolitan areas to consider regional land use planning. Again using New Jersey as an example, the New Jersey Highlands Regional Master Plan proposes that protecting the natural environment is a primary goal in order to

preserve regional water supplies, forests, and farmland. The plan is based on the observation that the development trends of the past cannot be sustained. Attempts are made to curtail “piecemeal, scattered, and inappropriate development,” while preparing for more sustainable development in the future. The main method that the act uses to bring about such change in land use is restricting the amount of land available for development or redevelopment. This places a premium on the efficient use of land in order to provide for community needs, economic growth, and preservation of the regional environment. Under the plan, development activities will be restricted to the planning area mentioned earlier and will be limited in their impacts on environmentally sensitive lands and potential to consume and deplete water supplies or degrade water quality.

The Highlands plan envisions several new, environmentally conscious zoning types including protected, existing community, and conservation zones. Under this new zoning taxonomy, the Protection Zone includes most of the forest, water, and wetlands. The Existing Community Zone includes most of the residential, commercial, and industrial uses, and consists of areas with significant concentrated development in existing communities that have limited environmental constraints due to previous development. These communities may have existing infrastructure that can support development and redevelopment. The Conservation Zone includes most of the region’s agriculture.

Issues and Impacts

The ways in which municipalities, states, and nations plan the physical arrangement or land use of our communities is critical to sustainability. According to the U.S. National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) Smart Communities program, the two major features of land use practices in the United States and elsewhere in industrialized nations over the past several decades have come together to “create haphazard, inefficient, and unsustainable urban sprawl: zoning ordinances that isolate employment locations, shopping and services, and housing locations from each other; and low-density growth planning aimed at creating automobile access to increasing expanses of land.”

These land use patterns, which are shared by cities across the United States and, increasingly, worldwide, have given rise to complex problems created by urban sprawl faced by all—growing traffic congestion and lengthening commute times, air pollution, wasteful energy consumption and greater reliance on petroleum, elimination of open space and wildlife habitat, unfair distribution of economic assets, and the loss of community consciousness. Increasing the sustainability of communities will require a shift from poorly managed sprawl to land use planning that can build and keep up efficient

infrastructure, encourage close-knit neighborhoods and community consciousness, and preserve the environment.

See Also Green Movement; Recreational Use and Environmental Destruction; Sustainable Development

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior. Land Use Planning Handbook. March 11, 2005.

Corzine, John S., Governor and the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council. Highlands Regional Master Plan State of New Jersey: November 2007.

Web Sites

National Center for Appropriate Technology. “Smart Communities Network.” May 31, 2005. http://www.smartcommunities.ncat.org/landuse/lukey.shtml (accessed March 22, 2008).

Kenneth T. LaPensee