A Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) program enables a local government to restrict development activities on privately owned lands by purchasing the landowner’s rights to those activities. The Purchase of Development Rights is an appealing alternative to zoning because it offers landowner compensation concomitant with the imposition of land use restrictions. Experience with this technique of land use management, however, has exposed limitations in its effectiveness resulting from the high costs of acquiring the development rights to eligible properties. Often, PDR program administrators find their budget exhausted before the development rights have been acquired to a sufficient number of properties to satisfactorily achieve the program objectives. As a consequence, administrators are faced with the question of which parcels to include in their purchasing effort. To make the most of their program funds, they want to select the set of properties that will contribute the most towards the program goals, given the cost of acquiring their development rights. In doing so, the administrators are identifying their optimal purchasing strategy. The goal programming model introduced in this study is used as part of an educational process designed to assist administrators in determining which combination of properties constitutes their optimal purchasing strategy. An application of the model is made using the Agricultural Reserve Program, a farmland preservation Purchase of Development Rights program newly adopted by the City of Virginia Beach. By enabling administrators to identify their optimal purchasing strategy, the goal programming model contributes to the cost-control problems associated with Purchase of Development Rights programs because it ensures that, whatever the available budget, administrators are making the most of their revenues by adopting a cost-effective purchasing strategy. / Master of Science