The rural-urban fringe: Urban growth and the preservation of agricultural lands.

Abstract

The rural-urban fringe is becoming less and less rural. In a process familiar to individuals throughout the North American Midwest, farmland, forest, and the countryside near urban areas are increasingly becoming transformed to resemble the adjacent urban and suburban patterns. Concern that valuable resources are rapidly becoming lost can now be heard with greater frequency and urgency. The very characteristics that make rural areas so valuable and attractive--proximity to open and natural spaces, a sense that the community and the land have an appropriate, compatible, healthy fit--are also the most likely to be destroyed as the rural-urban fringe is developed. In this study, Washtenaw County, Michigan township planning commissioners, farmers and other citizens completed a photo-questionnaire dealing with (1) preferences for various natural and developed settings, (2) the adequacy and satisfaction associated with three cluster housing development scenarios, and (3) land planning issues concerning development and preservation. The results indicate that residents of the rural-urban fringe hold very strong preferences for agricultural and natural settings, and strongly dislike multiple family housing developments devoid of trees. Individuals support the preservation of rural character and show little enthusiasm for economic development strategies designed to increase the population of their community. Participants provided adequacy and satisfaction ratings of three cluster housing developments designed to preserve varying amounts of farmland. Results indicate that cluster housing developments are most acceptable when the site and development have a high degree of compatibility. Individuals living in multiple family housing and those living on relatively small lots found cluster housing developments more acceptable than those living in single family housing, or on relatively large lots. Further research is called for at two scales of observation. At the scale of an individual dwelling, the questions relate to needs residents of the rural-urban fringe have for ownership, privacy and contact with nature. At a larger scale, there is the question of what makes for compatibility between residential site development and adjacent rural land uses.