Some Questions about Conservation Development

We believe that 'Conservation Development' is an option that should be given serious consideration as we discuss how we are to manage our province's growth. We are a group of people involved in researching and learning about Conservation Development in order to broaden the discussion of options available in the current decision-making process. We are looking at what is being accomplished using these concepts in other regions of North America, and comparing them with our situation here. As part of this process, we have listed some questions, and attempted to answer them. We hope this kind of input will help you in your search for options. Click on the question to see the response.

1. What is a Conservation Development?

2. What problems do they best address?

3. In what context did conservation development arise?

4. How is a Conservation Development created?

5. What are a few examples?

6. What are the controversial aspects to this smart-growth tool?

7. What are the Potentials?

8. How can the knowledge of this concept help us here in Ontario?

9. Where they have been built, what do the land trusts, developers, neighbouring land owners and regulators have to say about them?

10. Which organizations have provided input into this topic?

11. More questions we are asking ourselves?

 

1. What is a Conservation Development?

A conservation development is the result of a process which works to balance conservation values and development values, within a parcel of land. The finished product can be very similar to a golf-course community, but instead of fairways there are greenways, and instead of putting greens there are community greens. A conservation development is usually a residential development, though there are some which incorporate other dimensions as well. A conservation development can be any size, and can be created through the partnership of a number of landowners holding contiguous properties. Were one to visit a conservation development, the main characteristic noticed would be the seeming lack of development of the space. One might also notice a vernacular rural feel, and enjoy the low-impact trails, woodlands and/or meadows and gardens to be found on the site. Conservation development concepts provide us with a tool which can be used during a step in the process of a community determining how it is going to grow. Once a regional map of conservation and development has been drawn up, showing areas to be preserved, areas to allow traditional development, and areas to allow limited development, this map then becomes the Community DNA, determining how the community will grow and develop, a double-helix of environment and economy, woven together into a design for community growth. Conservation development is a tool to be considered for areas designated as Limited Development, usually as adjoining-lands to Fully Restricted sections. Conservation development is a way that Developers, Planners, Communities, Citizens Groups, Land Trusts and Heritage Conservancies can work together to try to preserve what it is about the rural/urban fringe that draws people to want to live there in the first place. It is foremost a design process, whereby at least 50% of the buildable land (not including floodplain, wetlands or steep slopes) in a parcel is kept as commonly-held open space, usually under a conservation or agricultural easement, which restricts development for 999 yrs. The designers usually begin by attempting to include two-thirds of the site's buildable lands as open space, usually settling for 50% or greater by the time the project's drawings are completed. The 'open space' designation can include natural habitat, working farms or agricultural fields, low-maintenance recreational areas such as soccer fields and play areas, woodlands, trail systems etc, but would not include the roads and parking areas or limited-access, high maintenance amenities such as a golf course. Other criteria, including architectural, energy and resource efficiency, sign and lighting ordinances, ecological landscaping etc, can also be addressed using this approach. Through integration with the regional Planning Department, these developments can be laid out so as to connect the open-spaces of numerous such conservation developments together, creating greenways, habitat corridors, riparian or protected-area buffers, or larger agricultural parcels. This process can prove beneficial to all of the parties involved, including those not normally associated with benefiting from the development process, through various techniques employed in these multi-stakeholder partnerships.

2. What problems do they best address?

Conservation developments are a smart-growth tool which may help us to define the question: How are we going to conserve the values that make this region uniquely attractive both to humans and to wildlife, while at the same time recognizing and allowing for the economic values that are also so much a part of this landscape. Maybe, through this form of limited development, a viable farm could stay that way, valued for what it is, instead of being seen as simply land 'to be developed some day'. What if a future government were to make decisions which were contrary to an accepted policy package we all may agree on here in 2002? Land secured under conservation easements is bound under private agreements, and this power far outlasts any governments succession. Because the Ontario Municipal Board is limited to addressing issues involving Planning, a conservation developments easements would be outside of the OMB's jurisdiction. These conservation decisions and subsequent easements are the result of partnerships between private entities, principally a development corporation and a land trust organization. Projects we have been looking at in the US have also included historians, landscape ecologists, foresters, the landowner, and community organizations as part of the design team. If 'limited development' is to be allowed on some sections of the lands in question, and especially if large-lot estate home subdivisions are likely to be the resut, how can we improve on that situation, both economically and ecologically, and showcase these sustainable design alternatives, in order to possibly use this opportunity to initiate consideration of how people think about land use both in this region and in the province in general.

3. In what context did conservation development arise?

Most often cited as the initiator of these concepts is Ebenezer Howard, and the subsequent 'Garden City' movement, around the turn of the century. Ian McHarg's early 1960's text, the highly cited 'Design with Nature', brought a healthy influence from the new science of Ecology into Planning and Engineering. Around the same time, William Whyte wrote his 1959 Life magazine article, 'A Plan to Save Vanishing U.S. Countryside', on clustering homes and applying conservation easements on the remaining open lands. Conservation easements, an important component of conservation development, arose partially due to a mistrust between the US citizenry and their governments, over whether the government, when promising to secure open spaces, was going to be true to it's word. Probably the second most important contextual cause of conservation developments arising was a lack of Regional Planning, and the subsequent reliance on zoning as the sole controlling influence on development. Those involved began to see the way zoning was eliminating traditional people-scaled growth patterns, and wanted to try something more flexible. People saw the attractive results of Englands famous Landscape Architects, creating from a war-ravaged landscape the rural character that exists there today. In New England and the eastern US seaboard, these ideas were transplanted by people like Randall Arendt, who received his training in Britain, and came to America to join The Center for Rural Massachusetts, where the famous book on this subject was written in the early 1980's, 'Dealing with Change in the Connecticut River Valley : A Design Manual for Conservation and Development'. Because in the eastern US, they did not, as we did, accept the British Military system of platting land into the rectilinear 'barbeque-grille' grid system we see here today, they were conceptually freer to divide and connect land parcels with an eye toward the natural features that defined the site before man lay any claim to it. This predisposed them toward making decisions about the land which lay more attuned to the ecology of the site, than our grid-based decisions could ever hope to muster. Thus, in the eastern US especially, the door was already partly open, which helped lead toward the stewardship principles of creative site development we witness there and accross the US today. The 'Estate-Tax' system in the US, requires that at the time a parcel of land is passed on to the next generation, the government steps in and levels a tax against that transfer, calculated as a percentage of the appraised value of the land. This event helps drive the development process, since the heirs may now face a surprisingly large debt, and may only have the parcel of land to help cover that cost. Usually the land ends up in the hands of a developer, the heirs left with the balance of the funds. Allowing limited development was a way to keep lands from entering this process as much as possible. Cedar Springs, a residential conservation development created in 1924 in Burlington Ontario, predates most if not all such North American projects. A plaque at the gatepost, erected in 1936, dedicated to the founder of the community, describes him as "A lover of Nature, Humanity and God". This community and it's principles are still with us today, though the city surrounding it has grown considerably since then.

4. How is a Conservation Development created?

A conservation development is created by people, deciding that because of the high environmental performance possible through this type of development, and given that the site chosen has been designated for either limited or unrestricted development, the economic values potential in the site could be realized, while at the same time something equally valuable to the community could be established, that being the preservation of open-space, wildlife habitat, threatened species habitat, farm lands and watershed protection, enhancement of native species populations and preservation of the rural character of the parcel. A conservation development is created through a partnership, most likely of those who are aware that the current mainstream development pattern is no longer appropriate aesthetically, economically or environmentally. The creative team would be made up of people excited by the challenges and potentials inherent in conservation development, and wanting to apply and forward these concepts and examples in our region, with the hope of successfully enhancing as many of these values as possible, within each project. A conservation development would hopefully not be something wrung out of compromise, but instead be something moulded in the spirit of sharing, learning and working together, seeking areas where all parties can begin the process together, and have their vision and values expand from the experience.

5. What are a few examples?

See Below example.

In the U.S. : The Fields of St Croix, Lake Elmo Minnesota; Dewees Island, Charleston South Carolina; Village Homes, Davis California; Jackson Meadow, St Croix Minnesota; East Lake Commons, Atlanta Georgia -In Canada : Landon Bay East, Gananoque Ontario; Lakewood, Pikes Bay Ontario; Cedar Springs Community Club, Burlington Ontario

6. What are the controversial aspects to this smart-growth tool?

Land trusts contemplating becoming involved in these projects may fear a decline in the height of their moral high-ground, running the risk of being labeled as 'in league with the developers'. Land owners may feel reluctancy toward donations if they perceive of the land trust as being used as a tool of the developers. Conservation development, seen as a set of technical design tools, could be viewed, as were especially individual septic sewage systems in the late 1950's, as a way for developers to overcome the natural physical barriers to growth, and to subsequently sprawl their subdivisions 'all accross the back 40'. ie: If these conservation development developers can achieve such a high environmental performance from their products, then what does that do to our society's grounds for limiting such growth? If we, as a society, turn toward the private sector, in the form of land trust/developer partnerships as a vehicle to preserve lands, are we also therby allowing our governments to lighten themselves of this traditional responsibility? Were these concepts to be taken to extremes, what would this semi-privatization of open space do to our collective concept of shared common values, and the role of things such as public and provincial parks, in our feelings towards this land? Conservation development requires a degree of flexibility from the local and regional regulators, as it's concepts go against the traditional thinking of a separation between zones. Leaving areas of open space within a development can be readily mistaken for leap-frog development, which has been equated with poor planning and suburban sprawl. Traditional thinking concentrates different land uses into monocultures, cordoned off from one other. Conservation developments give us the opportunity to do just the opposite, by mixing the rural with the suburban, creating a truer urban fringe area. If the economic values of the area increase because of these sensitive developments, it may make living there only affordable to the privledged, pricing itself out of it's intended markets. The application of Community Land Trusts may be a solution to this aspect of the issue. Consideration of conservation development may require that we rethink sprawl, looking at it instead of from a physical boundary-size issue viewpoint, to one of consideration of it's detrimental effects, and working toward elimination of them, while still allowing for some growth. Conservation developments ask us to alter our thinking about property ownership, from one of the rights of the individual landowner, to one of more consideration of the values of the surrounding community, human and otherwise. Because no two regions nor even parcels are the same, and conservation development asks us not to apply a cookie-cutter approach to land development, we may have a difficult time assessing whether 'that'll ever work here'. Conservation development must begin from the land itself and therefore, by definition, each project will be unique, making any comparison between them challenging at best.

7. What are the Potentials?

To help integrate Man into his natural surroundings To help integrate land conservation into the development process, not just the planning process. To improve the recognition of land trusts, through potential exposure within the projects created. To provide the opportunity for conservation professionals to work much more closely with development professionals than is currently the case. To provide a way in which land can be placed under conservation easements, without the financial cost of this being borne by the citizenry, and without the land trust having to ask for charity funding and land donations in order to acquire parcels. The protected lands within such developments pay for themselves.

8. How can the knowledge of this concept help us here in Ontario?

By giving us background and examples of some of the different tools being used to address growth problems elsewhere, we can be better equipt to consider these options, should they be proposed in our area. Regions which allow conservation developments are something we can compare ourselves to, especially if we are looking for ways in which preserved lands are being financed.

9. Where they have been built, what do the land trusts, developers,

neighbouring land owners and regulators have to say about them?

Copies of the Land Trust and Developer surveys Conservation Development Alliance of Ontario conducted over the last year are available free for the asking, while more/other surveys have been suggested including surveying adjoining-land owners and local regulators in regions where projects have been built.

10. Which organizations have provided input into this topic?

Heritage Canada Foundation The Trust for Public Lands -Santa Fe Office Chicago Metropolitan Planning Commission The Countryside Program of Northeast Ohio Canadian Urban Institute York Region Planning City of Cary, NC Planning Dept Oakville Greens The Conservation Fund -Great Lakes Office Chesapeake Bay Foundation Massachusetts Audubon Society The Building and Social Housing Foundation, Leichestershire, England. Davey Resource Group Halton Region Planning Dept Credit Valley Ecovillage Center for Watershed Protection Conservation Development Alliance -Chicago Urban Land Institute Rocky Mountain Institute Planning Dept of Onalaska Wisconsin Minnesota Land Trust Lake Forest Open Lands Association.

More questions we are asking ourselves: -

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