Montana State University |
Montana State University |
By Carol Flaherty
03/09/00 BOZEMAN, Mont. - If you knew that paving the rural road near your home would speed that area's development, would you put up with the bumps rather than lose the view?
If you directed a 911 or ambulance service, would you locate your ambulances differently if you knew that senior citizens disproportionately buy homes outside of town?
Such growth predictors and trends can be used in practical ways, say several Montana State University researchers who have developed a system that can aid people who need to predict change and plan for their community.
Bruce Maxwell of MSU's Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Jerry Johnson of MSU's Political Science Department, and Richard Aspinall of MSU's Geographical Information Analysis Center are entering information about past growth into a "geographical information system" to help predict future growth.
While not fool-proof, the computerized indicators account for about 75 percent of past growth in communities, says Maxwell. They can predict up to 90 percent of growth when special circumstances apply, such as when surrounding land is likely to stay in the federal Conservation Reserve Program for several years.
Growth is an issue in Montana and throughout the West. Colorado recently had 60 pieces of legislation pending on growth issues and the Montana Legislature is expected to consider such legislation in its next session..
"The concern is nonpartisan," says Johnson.
Montana needs planning, says State Sen. Don Hargrove, R-Belgrade, who sponsored a bill in the last Montana Legislature to help communities save open land they designate for preservation. The bill would have given the owners of such land "development rights," that could be sold to developers in areas designated for growth. The land owner gets a one-time economic benefit, but can keep the land in agricultural production. A legislative joint study committee is studying Hargrove's bill in the interim before the next session.
"If you don't plan, you end up with nothing left. People who oppose planning, I think they aren't really opposing planning, but they're opposing heavy-handed government telling them what to do. That isn't planning. . . . We will have to do whatever we do with incentives and market-based ideas."
"We're really trying to determine what drives change of land use. If you know that, you can have a much greater effectiveness in managing growth," says Maxwell.
Accurate predictions can save local governments money in a variety of ways, says Maxwell. "If I was the director of a 911 emergency service, I'd want to know that retirees disproportionately move onto rural land. It could make a difference in cost of response and on where we should site emergency services."
The program Maxwell, Johnson, Aspinall and Technician Kim Ernstrom work with began with a Northwest Area Foundation project in 1994. It has also been supported by a NASA land use change grant and the MSU Agricultural Experiment Station. However, though the system is becoming ever more useful and sophisticated, funding is limited for new projects.
Basically, a geographic information system or "GIS" like their's relates data to geography. Maps showing land characteristics and land use change over time are a fundamental part of the systems. Though not specifically a part of this planning project, a simple GIS example would be a map of Montana showing which counties have grown in population and which have lost population over time.
For this project, the team is much more likely to do a detailed study of a community or a part of a community. The land use projections are based on current information such as roads and road conditions, distance from streams, land agricultural productivity, landowner age, type of view and practical considerations, such as the time it takes to get to the center of town.
Maps would include geographical information, utility and transport information, transitions in ways agricultural land is worked, and social dimensions, like people's attitudes to growth. Within those categories are more detailed specifications. For instance, distance to roads is important, but people react differently to moving near to a two-lane black-topped road than they do to moving near an interstate highway, so that distinction must be in the computer program as well. Similarly, elevation gives land owners a view, so it predicts development -- up to a point.
"You get increasing development when you have better views, but not the best view, because that would be on top of the mountain," says Aspinall.
Preference for hilltops is a change compared to many years ago, when people avoided them because of wind and winter cold. While that doesn't seem to be the case today, if energy costs changed significantly it might become a factor again.
"We never throw out a predictor," says Maxwell. "Some people put together a data set and only keep the best predictors, but those can change over time and might become predictors again." Caption: The maps below show predicted land use
One of the more eye-opening presentation tools they have uses actual photos and modifies them to show what development options would look like. The team asks area residents what scenes are important to them, and then chooses some of those that the prediction system has identified as areas likely to grow. Then the team modifies the digital view to show hypothetical "futures" given various development options, from typical subdivision to clustered housing or commercial use.
For instance, one photo they used while working on a Gallatin County project was of a rural hillside with a prominent white barn. Since the land by the white barn is close to a forest, has a view, and is open land, the GIS system predicts that it would be prime for development if the landowners were interested. The team modified that scene to show how it might look if traditionally developed or developed using clusters of homes.
Caption: The following two photographs
illustrate
the "what if" capacity of geographical information
systems to aid community planning by letting people
look at hypothetical changes. No changes are planned
to the land shown above. The photo below was created
in a computer by digitally "cutting and pasting" houses
from photos of nearby lots onto the computerized hillside.
Using GIS tools to forecast not just changes, but options, can be instructive on many levels, said Maxwell. For instance, homeowners may love their view, but not particularly appreciate driving behind a slow tractor or the smell of "defrosting" cow manure in the spring. But the GIS system shows that much open space in Montana has been preserved by agriculture.
"Whether people know it or not, agriculture is one of the reasons we have open space," says Maxwell.
Besides the obvious impact of landscape on what people see, the researchers try to include a human attitudes, where possible, though those elements are generally time-consuming to determine.
"We've been trying to figure out how to give the human side of land use a spacial dimension, and then we are trying to place that into a predication model. That is one thing that make our models very different from most others," says Johnson. "My role has been to bring some of the social layers to this project. Why are people doing what they are doing? Why are they moving where they do?"
An ancillary benefit of a community study can be simply people learning more about their neighbors.
"People just don't talk to their neighbors the way they used to. They don't necessarily shop on Main Street. Every time I speak to a community and show them that the newcomers are not that much different than they are, they breathe a sigh of relief."
It can be just as bad or worse in small towns, he adds. In many cases, towns are simply places people sleep while they work in a neighboring city.
On the other hand, some small communities are still relatively cohesive, says Johnson. When the team studied Three Forks in 1995, they found that many new residents worked there as well as slept there.
The team also did a study in 1999 for Gallatin County under a national demonstration program grant, and is in the "talking stage" of working with groups in Park County and Hamilton.
Send questions or comments to Bruce Maxwell and Carol Flaherty, MSU Communications Services, Bozeman, MT 59717: carolf@montana.edu.
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