Public Benefits of Undeveloped Lands on Urban Outskirts: Non-Market Valuation Studies and their Role in Land Use Plans

Over the past three decades, the economics profession has developed methods for estimating the public benefits of green spaces, providing an opportunity to incorporate such information into land-use planning. While federal regulations routinely require such estimates for major regulations, the extent to which they are used in local land use plans is not clear. This paper reviews the literature on public values for lands on urban outskirts, not just to survey their methods or empirical findings, but to evaluate the role they have played--or have the potential to play-- in actual land use plans. Based on interviews with authors and representatives of funding agencies and local land trusts, it appears that academic work has had a mixed reception in the policy world. Reasons for this include a lack of interest in making academic work accessible to policy makers, emphasizing revealed preference methods which are inconsistent with policy priorities related to nonuse values, and emphasis on benefit-cost analyses. Nevertheless, there are examples of success stories that illustrate how such information can play a vital role in the design of conservation policies. Working Paper 07-2

Resolution of Biphasic Binding of the Opioid Antagonist Naltrexone in Brain Membranes

In synaptosomal membranes from rat brain cortex, in the presence of 150 m M NaC1, the opioid antagonist [ 3 H] naltrexone bound to two populations of receptor sites with affinities of 0.27 and 4.3 n M , respectively. Guanosine-5′-(3-thiotriphosphate) had little modulating effect and did not alter the biphasic nature of ligand binding. On the other hand, receptor-selective opioids differentially inhibited the two binding components of [ 3 H] naltrexone. As shown by nonlinear least-squares analysis, the Μ opioids Tyr-D-Ala-Gly-(Me)Phe-Gly-ol or sufentanil abolished high-affinity [ 3 H] naltrexone binding, whereas the Δ-selective ligands [D- Pen 2 , D-Pen 5 ] enkephalin, ICI 174, 864, and oxymorphindole inhibited and eventually eliminated the low-affinity component in a concentration-dependent manner. These results indicate that, in contrast to the guanine nucleotide-sensitive biphasic binding of opioid-alkaloid agonists, the heterogeneity of naltrexone binding in brain membranes reflects ligand interaction with different opioid-receptor types.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66340/1/j.1471-4159.1991.tb08288.x.pd