A Race to Develop: A Competing Risk Examination of the Pattern and Timing of Land Development in an Exurban County

Rural-urban fringe counties (i.e. counties adjacent to other counties with large and growing urban centers) often experience intense development pressure as a result of urban growth and expansion. While growth-initiated development can take many forms, the majority of the development that occurs in these exurban counties is in the form of single-family residential dwellings. Moreover, it is in the form of subdivision developments that range in size from very small two and three lot minor subdivisions to massive multi-phase major subdivisions with hundreds of lots and numerous amenities. In this paper, we focus on the land development patterns in Carroll County, MD, an urban-fringe county in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. metro region. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether a basic set of factors, both constant and time-dependent and acting at different spatial scales, can explain the timing and location of major versus minor subdivision developments in Carroll County. Using a micro-level panel of land parcel conversion, historical land records for subdivision development and ArcGIS software a new dataset was created that traces the entire history of the subdivision process in the county. Datasets were also created that trace the history of land preservation so that we could control for official open space and its interaction with the decision to subdivide through time. Using these data and a number of land use variables created from them from 1993-2007, we apply a competing risks duration model to analyze which factors affect major versus minor subdivision development. Visual inspection as well as a descriptive analysis of a series of landscape metrics based on distance from the metropolitan center reveals a different pattern outcome for small versus large subdivisions with larger developments following more closely to the predictions of the urban economic model. Empirically, we find further evidence that the factors affecting the timing of minor versus major subdivision developments are indeed different. Distance and access to road networks have less of an effect on minor over major developments, while surrounding preservation and the option to preserve have less of an effect on major subdivisions. To make the risk comparison relevant and to focus on areas that have experienced the most fragmentation as a result of residential land conversion as well as the most policy attention, we restrict our analysis to parcels located in minimum density zoning districts.Land Economics/Use,

Spatial Heterogeneity, Accessibility and Zoning: An Empirical Investigation of Leapfrog Development

Using data on subdivision development from 1960 to 2005 in the Baltimore, Maryland region, we develop a new, subdivision-specific measure of leapfrog development. Applying this measure, we find that about 80% of developable land that was more accessible to the urban center than newly built subdivisions remained undeveloped as of 1960. This amount declined by more than 50% over our 45-year study period to 36% in 2005. We compare this pattern with a hypothesized pattern generated by a parameterized intertemporal urban growth model and find that the observed pattern is consistent with urban economic theory, including the implied effects of zoning. Specifically, by fixing the allowable development density, low-density zoning eliminates the incentive to withhold more accessible land and thus reduces leapfrog development, a prediction that we confirm empirically. The results illustrate the efficacy of the urban growth model and the substantial influence of spatially heterogeneous zoning on urban land development patterns

Invisible water, visible impact: How unsustainable groundwater use challenges sustainability of Indian agriculture under climate change

India is one of the world’s largest food producers, making the sustainability of its agricultural system of global significance. Groundwater irrigation underpins India’s agriculture, currently boosting crop production by enough to feed 170 million people. Groundwater overexploitation has led to drastic declines in groundwater levels, threatening to push this vital resource out of reach for millions of small-scale farmers who are the backbone of India’s food security. Historically, losing access to groundwater has decreased agricultural production and increased poverty. We take a multidisciplinary approach to assess climate change challenges facing India’s agricultural system, and to assess the effectiveness of large-scale water infrastructure projects designed to meet these challenges. We find that even in areas that experience climate change induced precipitation increases, expansion of irrigated agriculture will require increasing amounts of unsustainable groundwater. The large proposed national river linking project has limited capacity to alleviate groundwater stress. Thus, without intervention, poverty and food insecurity in rural India is likely to worsen

A Race to Develop: A Competing Risk Examination of the Pattern and Timing of Land Development in an Exurban County

Rural-urban fringe counties (i.e. counties adjacent to other counties with large and growing urban centers) often experience intense development pressure as a result of urban growth and expansion. While growth-initiated development can take many forms, the majority of the development that occurs in these exurban counties is in the form of single-family residential dwellings. Moreover, it is in the form of subdivision developments that range in size from very small two and three lot minor subdivisions to massive multi-phase major subdivisions with hundreds of lots and numerous amenities. In this paper, we focus on the land development patterns in Carroll County, MD, an urban-fringe county in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. metro region. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether a basic set of factors, both constant and time-dependent and acting at different spatial scales, can explain the timing and location of major versus minor subdivision developments in Carroll County. Using a micro-level panel of land parcel conversion, historical land records for subdivision development and ArcGIS software a new dataset was created that traces the entire history of the subdivision process in the county. Datasets were also created that trace the history of land preservation so that we could control for official open space and its interaction with the decision to subdivide through time. Using these data and a number of land use variables created from them from 1993-2007, we apply a competing risks duration model to analyze which factors affect major versus minor subdivision development. Visual inspection as well as a descriptive analysis of a series of landscape metrics based on distance from the metropolitan center reveals a different pattern outcome for small versus large subdivisions with larger developments following more closely to the predictions of the urban economic model. Empirically, we find further evidence that the factors affecting the timing of minor versus major subdivision developments are indeed different. Distance and access to road networks have less of an effect on minor over major developments, while surrounding preservation and the option to preserve have less of an effect on major subdivisions. To make the risk comparison relevant and to focus on areas that have experienced the most fragmentation as a result of residential land conversion as well as the most policy attention, we restrict our analysis to parcels located in minimum density zoning districts

Confronting Price Endogeneity in a Duration Model of Residential Subdivision Development

Spatial equilibrium implies that distant factors are correlated with proximate locations through market mechanisms. Using this logic, we develop a novel approach for handling price endogeneity in reduced-form land use models. We combine a control function approach with a duration model of land development to shed new light on the role of price and supply-side factors that influence subdivision development at a micro level. We find that failure to control for endogeneity results in large differences in estimates of residential land supply price elasticities. Specifically, we find an elasticity of 2.06 compared to 0.67 in a model that ignores potential endogeneity

Water in the Balance: The Impact of Water Infrastructure on Agricultural Adaptation to Rainfall Shocks in India

Investments in water infrastructure remain key to climate change adaptation plans in many countries, and rank high in adaptation costs for developing countries (Narain et al., 2011). In this paper, we use district-level panel data from 1970-2005 across India’s major agricultural states to investigate the role played by subsidized access to electricity, groundwater wells, tank and dam projects in mediating the vulnerabilities associated with monsoonal variation. We focus on wheat, a staple of India’s food supply, as it requires irrigation and represents a significant portion of India’s total agricultural output. Results show that the impact of negative precipitation shocks is significantly dampened when a particular district has access to a more reliable source of irrigation – e.g., access to tubewells helps to dampen the impact of negative precipitation shocks on irrigation decisions associated with wheat, while upstream dams do not significantly contribute to this dampening effect. In contrast, having access to dugwells exacerbates the impact of a fall in monsoon precipitation curtailing irrigation of wheat. Our results suggest that historical agricultural policies that increased access to tubewells and the subsequent electrification of regions naturally endowed with more groundwater have equipped farmers with the ability to withstand monsoonal shocks and fluctuations

Searching for the Urban Fringe: Exploring Spatio-Temporal Variations in the Effect of Distance versus Local Interactions on Residential Land Conversion Using a Conditionally-Parametric Discrete-Time Duration Model

The spatial configuration of land use can have a significant impact on both market and non-market outcomes. One type of land use configuration that has received considerable attention in recent decades - because of its impact on the efficiency of public service provisioning, on environmental quality and on the productivity of agricultural land - is fragmented development. Many theories have been presented to explain these fragmented development patterns including variable densities, competing land uses and heterogeneity in agents' expectations. More recently, a number of authors have hypothesized that it is the reduction in congestion and the increase in open space amenities in exurban areas that have attracted people thus creating an increase in low-density, scattered development. While many of these hypotheses have been addressed empirically, most of the work has looked at these factors separately. In addition, most of the previous work has been conducted using global parametric models, which make it difficult to capture the spatial heterogeneity of the impact of the different factors and the resulting response. To address these shortcomings it is necessary to have micro-level data that can capture the spatio-temporal nature of the land conversion process and can separately identify the most important factors, on both sides of the market, as well as have a modeling technique that can capture the potential for spatial heterogeneity and non-stationarity in the effects of the variables across space. In this paper, we fill this gap in the existing land use literature by combining several unique panel datasets of historical land use change for Carroll County, Maryland with an original nonparametric modeling technique to separately identify the heterogeneous effect of amenities, local congestion and real options prices effects on the exurban land conversion decision. The results from our model show that factors on both sides of the market matter and that these factors are not spatially stationary. We find that much of the fragmented growth pattern observed in our study region can be explained by the differential effect of local land use interactions across space. This result is particularly important for policy makers interested in protecting farmland, reducing public costs and protecting valuable ecosystem services and biodiversity