Landscape Sensitive Planning: A Benefit/Cost Assessment

Abstract

Planning for urban growth using a landscape and resource sensitive model is compared to conventional planning in a case study town. The landscape sensitive approach minimizes the loss of resource values, yet accommodates urban growth. In the case study, the losses avoided in planning for a 50 percent increase in population, using a landscape sensitive approach as compared to conventional planning, were valued at about $9,000,000, far exceeding the extra cost of landscape sensitive planning, about $70,000. The computer program permits calculation of the extra losses resulting from a community-imposed land use constraint such as prevention of development on prime agricultural land.