Due to their location on the urban fringe, many historically agricultural counties face development pressure from a spreading urban core. These local communities must contend with often conflicting objectives of providing economic development opportunities while at the same time protecting their county's natural resources. Land conservation policies incentivize landowners to keep land identified as critical environmental resources in their natural state. In this project, we analyze property-level administrative data to evaluate whether land conservation policies and neighbor land use patterns affect the probability of land parcel development. We find some evidence of the contagion effect and that the county's acknowledgment of Priority Conservation areas impacts development motivation. / Master of Science / Communities on the "urban fringe," the transitional area where the town meets the county, are experiencing strong pressures to develop. The population has moved from the city center towards the suburbs for quieter, safer neighborhoods, better schools, and more outdoor amenities. Localities manage this growth while protecting their resources, such as natural land, by implementing conservation policies/preservation guidelines. In this project, we utilize data from Powhatan County to evaluate whether local conservation efforts and land use patterns affect the probability of land development. This is an important topic as local officials work to manage land resources where the development of the county's most valuable land would be difficult, if possible, to reverse.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115621 |
| Date | 30 June 2023 |
| Creators | Rippley, Samantha |
| Contributors | Agricultural and Applied Economics, Chen, Susan Elizabeth, Moeltner, Klaus, Chen, Zhenshan |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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