Assessing vulnerabilities from alternative development patterns

Planners in a rapidly urbanizing area must take into account trade-offs between multiple environmental issues of concern. A 15-county region, centered on Charlotte, North Carolina, is experiencing a boom in growth resulting in both air and water quality concerns. We examine changes to environmental and socio-economic factors across the region for two contrasting alternative future scenarios of land use development. We found that a “compact centers” development, with relatively high density, resulted in improved environmental quality in most counties as a result of lower land consumption. The compact centers development was associated with greater non-point source phosphorus and sediment loads in watersheds that contained urban centers. In contrast, the greater land consumption associated with the medium density development consumed high nutrient-generating agricultural lands, resulting in lower non-point source nitrogen loading to waterways. We also found that compact center development made sense economically in urban areas and reduced expenditures in rural areas. However, compact centers carried the risk of lower tax revenues in rural areas if future values of multi-unit houses were valued at current market rates. By incorporating spatial dynamics in our assessment we provided a means to evaluate future environmental and economic patterns under different alternative growth scenarios across multiple counties. In addition, we found that by conducting our analysis at two different scales (e.g., regional and local), decisions on where to target development and resources could be refined.