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Jeffrey Sundberg is associate professor of economics and business at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois, where he has taught since 1989. He also serves as chair of the College’s interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Program. He earned his B.A. from Carleton College in 1982, and subsequently received an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. His current research examines various aspects of public policy toward land conservation, including tax incentives for conservation easements and factors influencing voter approval for programs to protect open space. In a recent article in Land Economics, he examined membership patterns in land trusts across the country as evidence of private willingness to provide a public good (Sundberg 2006).
Sundberg’s interest in conservation extends to his volunteer activities as well. He currently serves as the vice president of the board of directors for the Liberty Prairie Conservancy, a countywide land trust in Lake County, Illinois, and is a past member of the board of directors of the Chicago Audubon Society. He initiated and directs an ongoing habitat restoration program on the grounds of Lake Forest College. A dedicated birder, he leads bird walks annually for several different organizations and volunteers as a bird-bander every spring.
Land Lines: Conservation easements are a topic of great interest to the Lincoln Institute. What specific aspects of them are you researching?
Jeffrey Sundberg: There has been quite a lot of research on the use of easements as a tool for conservation, and there is a growing interest in various legal aspects of easement policy. However, there has been relatively little work on the economic aspects of easements. The number and value of these incentives have increased over the past 20 years, and so has the number of acres under easement. This has had a largely unmeasured effect on tax collections at the local, state, and federal levels.
In collaboration with Richard Dye, my colleague at Lake Forest College and a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute, I am examining tax incentives for the donation of easements to nonprofit conservation groups and government agencies (Sundberg and Dye 2006). A broad range of incentives exists, and their effects may vary with the income and assets of the property owner, and the state in which the parcel is located.
An analysis of these tax incentives suggests certain conclusions about the type of property owner who is most able to benefit financially from such a donation. These incentives are likely to affect both the number of available easements and the cost to society of accepting the donations. The easement must have conservation value in order to qualify for the tax savings, but there is no benefits test that compares the amount of conservation value to the amount of tax revenue lost.
Land Lines: What are some of your findings?
Jeffrey Sundberg: Numerous publications, including Jeff Pidot’s recent work with the Institute (Pidot 2005), have speculated that under certain circumstances it would be possible for a landowner to receive tax savings that exceed the value of the donated easement. In fact, under certain conditions a taxpayer could receive more than two dollars of tax savings for every dollar of easement donation, even when future tax savings are discounted. The largest single potential benefit often stems from various estate tax reductions that result from the donation of a qualified easement. However, a donation could create a positive net present value even without qualifying for the estate tax benefit. Many states also have substantial incentives of their own in the form of income tax credits, property tax reductions, or both.
These incentives offer both good and bad news for conservation policy. While they certainly make it easier to persuade property owners to donate a conservation easement on their land, they also create an incentive for owners to take efficiency-reducing actions by tailoring their easements to create the maximum tax benefit, rather than the maximum conservation value. In addition, land trusts and other qualified organizations may have to spend time and energy evaluating relatively low-quality easements offered by financially motivated donors, who may be able to expend considerable effort to find a willing holder of an easement.
Land Lines: What are some public policy implications of your work?
Jeffrey Sundberg: It is important to distinguish between federal and state tax incentives in making policy recommendations. Federal incentives consist of tax deductions, which are most valuable to property owners who have substantial tax liabilities and face high marginal tax rates. Many land parcels with significant conservation value are owned by land-rich, low-income individuals who are unable to take any significant advantage of income tax deductions, and who may not be subject to the estate tax. Federal tax incentives offer relatively low benefits to this type of landowner, even with the recent change that allows a longer carry-forward period until those benefits expire.
State incentives typically offer credits that can be used to offset existing income taxes on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The benefit to the donors does not depend on their marginal tax rate, though high-income donors are still more likely to be able to use their credits. Most credits are not “refundable,” which means that a donor must have taxable income to make use of them. Two states currently allow donors to sell their excess credits, which increases the likelihood that they will be able to benefit financially by donating an easement. A move toward credits, rather than deductions, would allow low-income donors to receive more benefits without necessarily reducing the benefits to high-income donors. This should increase the number of high-quality parcels potentially available for conservation.
Our research also studies the possible impact of eliminating the federal estate (or death) tax. In 48 of the 50 states, estate tax savings are the single largest source of potential financial benefits to easement donors, so elimination of the tax could have a significant chilling effect on easement donations across the country.
Programs for the sale of easement credits highlight another area of concern, the potential for fraudulent activity. Needless to say, fraud is costly in terms of lost tax revenue, in the administrative burden it imposes on governments and conservation organizations that must resolve troublesome donations, and most of all in the loss of trust and goodwill for these important programs, which currently enjoy great public support.
Land Lines: How would an economic approach to easements differ from an environmental approach?
Jeffrey Sundberg: An environmental approach might consider conservation benefits in both ecological and human terms, with an eye toward preserving significant benefits for the future. Their existence would be enough to justify creation of the easement, without the need to set a monetary value. This view is similar to current easement policy, where there is no comparison of benefit to cost.
An economic approach would attempt to place a monetary value on those benefits, not because they can be bought and sold, but because this is the only way to make any kind of reasonable comparison between the benefit of the easement and its cost. Without having at least a rough estimate of these figures, it is impossible to ensure that any particular easement creates a net benefit for society. Under most current easement programs, the organization that accepts the easement only has to certify that some conservation value exists; the organization typically has little idea of the actual cost of the tax subsidy to the easement. The primary cost to the organization is likely to be the obligation to monitor and enforce the easement, which may be a widely varying fraction of the total cost of the easement.
Both environmental and economic approaches would agree that different easements will provide differing amounts and types of benefit, suggesting that the tax incentives should be tailored to encourage the donation of easements that provide the most overall value, whether measured in economic or environmental terms.
Land Lines: Are there alternatives to tax incentives for easement donations that might be more efficient?
Jeffrey Sundberg: It’s a little difficult to answer that, since there is so little data available about our current system. We don’t know what the magnitude of the costs have been, so it would be premature to claim that it has been clearly inefficient. What we do know is that the current system does not provide incentives for efficiency.
For example, consider the case of a land trust that accepts an easement that meets or exceeds several of the requirements for qualification; it provides both ecological and human benefits that are significant. However, the land trust does not have any idea of the amount of tax revenue lost as a result of the donation. Depending on various circumstances, including location of the parcel and the income and wealth of the donor, the tax savings might range from thousands to millions of dollars. There is no way to know the net benefit to society, or even if that net benefit is positive. All we can say is that benefits have been created, and costs incurred. Such a system does not create any expectation of efficient behavior. At best, organizations will accept only easements that generate high conservation benefits, with no regard to the actual cost of the tax benefits generated for the donor.
The problem is that other systems, such as requiring that easements be purchased rather than donated, also generate efficiency problems. Given how little we know about the magnitude of the benefits and costs being created, and the difficulty of predicting responses to a new set of incentives, I favor improvements to the existing system rather than beginning a new experiment.
Land Lines: What role do you see for economic analysis in shaping future environmental protection legislation?
Jeffrey Sundberg: Easement policy is like many kinds of environmental protection legislation—it tends to be benefit-based. Economic analysis can point the way to the creation of appropriate incentives that can reduce the cost of achieving those benefits. It can also suggest the kind of benefits that have greater value to society, and which should therefore receive higher priority.
It is not realistic, or desirable, to use economic analysis to evaluate each easement before a donation is accepted. However, economic analysis can be used to create incentives that are compatible with more efficient kinds of donations. For example, most federal incentives, and those of most states, apply equally to any easement that meets one or more of several possible qualifications, including habitat for endangered species or scenic value for local residents. Economic analysis could be used to suggest which qualifications are of the highest value to society, and tax incentives could then be tailored to provide the most payment for the easements likely to offer the greatest benefit.
References
Pidot, Jeff. 2005. Reinventing conservation easements: A critical examination and ideas for reform. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Sundberg, Jeffrey. 2006. Private provision of a public good: Land trust membership. Land Economics 82(3): 353–366.
Sundberg, Jeffrey, and Richard F. Dye. 2006. Tax and property value effects of conservation easements. Working Paper. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
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As the world’s most populous country and its third largest economy, China and its rapid urbanization and development will represent one of the defining trends of the twenty-first century. Over the past 30 years, China has made remarkable economic and social progress, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and catapulting China onto the international stage.
This economic transformation has also involved an institutional transformation as China’s centrally planned economy has moved pragmatically to a broad reliance on market mechanisms. This movement has been especially challenging in the case of land, which for decades was owned by the state or peasant collectives. Progress has been made in urban areas, where the leasehold term of land ownership is now normally 70 years, but in rural areas collective land ownership continues.
Despite its noteworthy accomplishments, China is facing critical land policy issues that will determine the direction of its future economic development and urbanization.
With these diverse issues in mind, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s China Program was inaugurated in 2003 and continues to focus on improving the quality of public debate and decisions concerning land policy and urban development in China through sound research and the leveraging of international experience and expertise.
The China Program has grown considerably in capacity, scope, and geographic footprint, highlighted by the establishment of the joint Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy in October 2007. The Center’s mission is to study land, urban, and fiscal policies and to facilitate education, training, policy analysis, and research. Having this joint facility in Beijing provides the China Program with an ongoing domestic presence that expands the Institute’s networks and resources and brings together government officials, practitioners, and foreign and domestic scholars to engage in dialogue and to share experiences to promote a better understanding of land policy, urbanization, and property taxation in China and around the world.
The China Program has identified six key research areas that are highly relevant to China’s future development and also offer the best opportunities to utilize the Lincoln Institute’s expertise and resources.
Adoption of a Property Tax
China’s 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010) elevated the issue of a property tax onto the official agenda, and pilot property tax projects are currently under way in more than 10 provinces. However, the issue’s sensitive political nature, lingering technical difficulties concerning data and valuation, and continued debate about the exact form of any proposed property tax have slowed implementation and made it unlikely that a broader property tax and related tax policy reforms will be implemented before the 12th Five-Year Plan begins in 2011.
Through close working relationships with the State Administration of Taxation (SAT), the Ministry of Finance (MOF), and the Development Research Center for the State Council (DRC), the China Program has offered a number of educational programs and provided significant intellectual and capacity building support for China’s adoption of a property tax.
For example, in October 2009 representatives of the British Columbia Assessment Office, the Altus Group, and ESRI Canada led a China Program training workshop on property tax implementation and design of computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) systems. More than 50 SAT officials participated, including representatives from each of the property tax pilot cities.
Delegates from the SAT and the Lincoln Institute attended a three-day conference on valuation and mass appraisal at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2009, before traveling to Johannesburg’s valuation office to discuss the challenges of implementing a property tax in that country.
In November 2008, training on technical aspects of property valuation was provided in Beijing by property tax experts from Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Hong Kong for more than 40 administrators and assessors from China’s property tax pilot cities.
Local Public Finance
Fiscal policy reform is a key component in addressing many of the social and economic problems China faces. Restructuring the current tax system and promoting balanced tax and expenditure responsibilities at the local government level is one of the main policy objectives of the Chinese government. The underlying efforts are closely related to the future development of any property tax, a necessary and critical solution to local public finance challenges.
The China Program is focused on issues of fiscal decentralization, public service financing, land-related taxes and fees, regional inequity, intergovernmental finance, and the role of property taxation in a modern public sector finance system. Representative activities have included a January 2009 workshop in Beijing on fiscal policy and economic growth in China with leading fiscal policy scholars and experts, including officials from the MOF, DRC, and SAT.
An international conference held at the Lincoln Institute’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May 2008 focused on local public finance and property taxation. Those proceedings will be edited and published in a Lincoln Institute book in 2010, and the volume will be translated and published in China as well.
Land Policy and Land Management
The revision of China’s Land Management Law has been a sensitive issue over the past several years, as the country struggles to define rural land rights, land expropriation, and the public good. With a new land law revision on the horizon, land-related issues remain at the forefront of China’s policy agenda, particularly issues concerning urban and rural property rights, land expropriation, land use efficiency, land use planning, land conservation, and urban expansion and sprawl.
In June 2009 the China Program co-organized a roundtable discussion on the most recent draft revision of China’s Land Management Law with the Land Law Committee of the China Land Science Society in association with the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR). Experts and prominent scholars from across the political spectrum engaged in direct dialogue and discussion with government officials at MLR who are working on the revision.
The China Program is now compiling and translating several land management laws from a dozen developing and developed countries for use by Chinese officials and scholars. The Program also cosponsored a comprehensive survey of land use and farmland conservation issues in a dozen provinces in China, and is building a database for future research on land management issues.
Urban Planning and Development
Rapid urbanization has led to the explosive growth of Chinese cities and their populations, presenting an enormous challenge in terms of city planning, infrastructure, and transportation. New approaches to urban planning are fundamental to the development and management of cities, as well as a prerequisite to ensuring the efficient use of land and integrated development in China. Efforts also must be made to use land sensibly and to coordinate the spatial layout of urban areas, thereby avoiding rampant and uncontrolled urbanization.
The China Program cooperated with the Chinese Society for Urban Studies and the Urban Planning Society of China, affiliated with the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, in organizing the July 2009 International Forum on Urban Development and Planning, which featured the theme “Harmony and Ecology: Sustainable Cities.”
In cooperation with the Lincoln Institute’s Department of Planning and Urban Form, more than 20 international speakers attended a symposium on megaregions and spatial planning practice worldwide, held in Beijing in October 2008.
Affordable Housing
Housing policy, and in particular affordable housing, is becoming an important focus for China’s policy makers during this period of rapid urbanization. With upwards of 15 million new urban residents expected annually over the next decade, the growth in the supply of affordable housing is an immediate concern. In addition to a one-year joint policy research project with the DRC, the China Program is conducting original research in the field of housing policy and introducing international experience to China’s policy makers and the academic community.
For example, in July 2009 the China Program organized a symposium on low-income housing policy in China to provide a platform for international and domestic scholars and government officials from DRC, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the People’s Bank of China to engage in dialogue and discussion. Papers from the symposium will be published in an edited volume for distribution in China. The China Program also hosted an international conference entitled Housing Policy and Housing Markets in China in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May 2009, and is preparing an edited conference volume for publication in both English and Chinese.
Environmental Challenges
With international attention focusing on recent climate negotiations in Copenhagen, there is a pressing need for timely research on low-carbon development and the complex linkages between land, transportation, and urban and environmental policies in China and globally. The China Program is leading research on environmental taxation in China from a global perspective and developing a database of environmental tax statistics.
The Program organized a roundtable on green cities at Peking University in September 2009, which drew strong interest from domestic and international academics and signaled the need for further study of environmental policy issues in the future. And in May 2008, the Program, joined by Loeb Fellows from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Chinese policy makers and academics, held a roundtable discussion at Peking University that addressed urban transformation and sustainability.
Building Capacity to Address the Issues
Since its inception the China Program has been committed to enhancing the capacity of both current policy makers and academics and researchers whose analysis and opinions will influence China’s future policies and reforms. This educational emphasis continues with the establishment of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center, which has become an important platform for reaching and engaging students and scholars at Peking University and other academic institutions through training programs, fellowships, lecture series, online education, and research publications.
Training the Trainers
This annual program aims to enhance the capacity and awareness of scholars throughout China regarding urban economics, planning, public finance, and related land policy issues. The courses target university faculty and professional researchers, as well as select government officials, with the goal to increase competence through intensive professional seminars on issues related to land policy in China. More than 70 participants on average attend each two-week training program. Leading experts in their fields from around the world offer the participants an invaluable international perspective. The China Program’s recently launched online education platform seeks to build on previous training programs and to move progressively toward more specialized trainings.
Fellowships
The China Program awards several types of fellowships to international and Chinese scholars and graduate students working on Chinese land and urban policy. Two or three international fellowships are awarded annually to leading scholars and professional researchers based at universities around the globe. In addition to producing important research on issues ranging from the spatial structure of megacities to household carbon emissions in Chinese cities, the international fellowship is an invaluable tool to increase scholarly dialogue between China and the world. These fellows are an integral component of the China Program’s other activities, such as teaching at Training the Trainers programs, reviewing other fellowship proposals, and speaking at seminars.
Fellowships for Chinese graduate students and junior researchers are administered through the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center to bring young scholars into Chinese land and urban policy studies. Approximately 15 dissertation fellowships are awarded to aspiring scholars annually, while an additional 6 or 8 research fellowships help strengthen the capacity of scholars based in China’s leading institutions.
The China Program’s in-country presence at the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center also facilitates interactions among the fellows, including the provision of constructive feedback on their ongoing research. All fellows are invited to Beijing for a mid-term progress report, where they share their initial research findings with peers and a panel of international experts. This event has proven to be an effective way to help domestic junior scholars and graduate students build research skills and promote studies of urban and land issues in China.
Speaker Series
The China Program also regularly invites distinguished individuals drawn from the Lincoln Institute’s network of leading scholars and policy makers to speak to the Beijing scholarly community on vital topics ranging from planning support systems to fiscal federalism and decentralization in the United States. This speaker series helps meet the demand for knowledge about international development and urbanization experiences and how these cases can be adapted to fit China’s needs.
Online Education
The Lincoln Institute has long history of employing online education as a tool to reach a broader audience and maximize its resources. Given the vast geographic distances in China and its emphasis on training and capacity building, the China Program has similarly been interested in online education for some time. The establishment of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center has accelerated the process of making information, analysis, and data available online, and widened the network of collaborators interested in tapping into the Institute’s expertise.
Through the Center, the China Program engaged a local online education company to develop a China-centric platform, which was inaugurated in the summer of 2009 during the China Program’s Training the Trainers session on urban economics and planning. The two-week program was recorded and translated into Chinese, and is accompanied online by Chinese transcripts of lectures and associated PowerPoint presentations and other materials.
The value of the online platform has become apparent almost immediately. During the fall 2009 program and demonstration on property taxation and CAMA, which was also recorded for later conversion to the online platform, attending SAT officials expressed their eagerness to use the platform to demonstrate the concepts to their colleagues and superiors.
Publications and Web-based Resources
As the China Program has increased its research capacity and professional support with the establishment of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center, it is producing a steadily increasing series of working papers, books, and training materials that are extending the Lincoln Institute’s and the China Program’s expertise on and influence in China. During 2008 and 2009, nine books were published or made ready for print, and eight other books are at various stages of development. The China Program and the Center’s fellows and visiting fellows have also produced about 40 working papers and a number of focused reports and policy briefs, which will soon be available online.
Complementing all of these activities is the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center’s revamped Web site. It provides a window into the China Program’s mission and vision, and is an important link between the Lincoln Institute’s and the China Program’s dual educational and research objectives. Drawing together Chinese and English working papers, training and education materials, and conference proceedings from both the Lincoln Institute and the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center, the Web site is a rich repository of impartial knowledge and an expanding platform for scholarly dialogue concerning the ascendant land, urban, and environmental policy issues in China.
In 2010, the China Program will continue to strengthen its online resources to synthesize and disseminate its recent research to a broader audience of Chinese scholars and policy makers through new publications and focused policy reports, while also striving to advance academic debate through research, demonstration projects, conferences and other activities.
About the Author
Joyce Yanyun Man is senior fellow and director of the Lincoln Institute’s China Program, as well as director of the Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy. She is also professor of economics in the Peking University College of Urban and Environmental Science.
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A city’s master plan typically describes development goals and objectives through the use of multiple maps and written documents. Most maps and other representations of urban design are built with a two-dimensional (2D) vision and then transferred into regulatory instruments and strategic planning tools. Urban space is treated as being flat and divided up into puzzle pieces such as administrative areas (municipal, rural, urban, growing, expanding, fringe); land use areas (residential, commercial, central business, historic, tourist, informal, recreational); environmentally protected or restricted area (water catchments, floodplains, landslide-prone hills); and other categories.
When urban space is described through digital maps integrated with databases in a geographic information system (GIS), many additional layers of information can be considered in a three-dimensional (3D) platform. However, when real 3D urban space is managed by laws and other conventions based on a 2D vision, the physical and legal cities are operating in quite different and incompatible dimensions. This discrepancy was accepted in the past, when 2D maps were the primary resource available to represent the real city, but nowadays computer graphics can handle more complex objects in space.
Rethinking the legal and economic aspects of urban society by shifting from the traditional 2D vision to a 3D approach will be necessary to develop, implement, and control urban land policies more efficiently. A 3D cadastre is one of the tools that can facilitate that process through spatial databases and representations. The institution of a territorial cadastre is familiar in many countries, but does not exist in the same way in the United States. A modern cadastre is an integrated database system that holds information on land registration and ownership, physical characteristics, econometric modeling for property valuation, zoning, geographic information, transportation networks, infrastructure and services, and environmental attributes, all of which are linked to socioeconomic and demographic information on property owners.
Creating a New 3D Framework
Google Earth has popularized geographic information by allowing users to visualize a virtual 3D location at the desired level of detail and in a global environment. Google Earth and other geographic software can be used quite easily to change the viewpoint of reality. Moving from a top-down view, which shows the city as a flat area, to an oblique perspective permits the viewer to see the relief and height of buildings, trees, aerial utility networks, and other objects in space.
This type of 3D visualization can identify undeveloped spaces, buildings of different heights, scattered suburban housing, structures in isolated rural areas, and precarious slum construction, thus helping to infer changes in land uses. Even when 3D images are represented on a flat screen or printed surface, they show details that are hard to identify in a 2D map, such as shadow movements during the day, views from an apartment window, and spatial relationships between buildings.
The constantly evolving 3D technology is changing the paradigms of urban planning and land policy because it impacts not only how the city is viewed but the way property rights and other restrictions in space are described. As a result, a new urban legal framework based on 3D laws and 3D property registries will be needed to describe objects in space instead of just flat con-tours. The 3D laws affect rights in space, not in a plane of projection, and in this context it will be possible to define 3D land policies.
For example, a 3D image of the basic, maximum, and actual floor-area-ratio (FAR) for a set of land parcels would facilitate the use of land management instruments such as charges for the purchase of building rights for new development. To support a 3D legal framework it is necessary to have spatial data systematized on 3D cadastres, which create and maintain up-to-date spatial databases and volumetric representations of cities, as well as a 3D property registry in which every property and its restrictions are identified and documented.
Land surveyors, geologists, biologists, and engineers are accustomed to determining the location of physical objects in space by specifying attributes such as mineral deposits, water bodies, contamination or fumes in the air or underground, or restricted spaces around power lines, but legislators, urban planners, assessors, and others are not used to describing the intersections of more than two attributes in space. The increasing complexity of infrastructure and densely built-up areas requires the proper registration of their legal status (private and public), which can be provided only to a limited extent by the existing 2D cadastral registrations.
Despite its promise as a tool for urban planning and the extensive research and progress in practice to date, no country has a true 3D cadastre with complete functionality. The evolving concepts involved in this new process should be based on the ISO 19152 Land Administration Domain Model (LADM), which provides support for 3D representations (van Oosterom 2011).
The Virtual 3D City
The first idea that usually comes to mind regarding a 3D image is its representation in regular shapes such as cubes, prisms, and cylinders, but these simple forms have proved insufficient to analyze urban space. Seeking a closer match with reality, researchers and designers have developed techniques to overlay photographs of building facades on building contours, and to represent all architectural characteristics of a building using 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software.
However, even these types of virtual 3D buildings typically were placed on a flat reference plane, which created a false image because it showed all buildings at the same level. By adding relief through digital perspectives based on digital terrain models, virtual 3D buildings could be placed at the correct altitude relative to sea level. The next step was to overlay aerial orthophotos on digital relief images, resulting in much more realistic 3D images of the real (physical) city (figure 1).
Presently, 2D and 3D urban models continue to be built with points, lines, polygons, and images. These models are useful but still insufficient for detailed urban analyses because, as noted by the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos, “Geometries are not geography” (Câmara 2000). In fact, several kinds of geographic information are used to develop land policies—human, physical, economic, and environmental—and all of them occur in space.
GIS contributes to the process of building a virtual 3D city by permitting linkages between statistical data and geometric shapes to generate thematic information images that can be applied to a variety of land policy issues. The 3D image created in a GIS platform is frequently more useful for urban planning purposes than a photograph of the same sector because the 3D platform makes it is possible to highlight certain information of interest, create prospective scenarios that anticipate the economical effects of certain land policy decisions, or evaluate the environmental impacts of new development.
Formal and Informal Virtual 3D Cities
The virtual 3D city represented geometrically is useful in several types of analyses, such as vehicle traffic studies, propagation of cell phone waves, or any type of infrastructure network analysis. For other kinds of analysis, even the virtual 3D city is not sufficient, as when a lawyer needs to visualize the legal 3D city as defined by urban and environmental regulations. Figure 2 shows two sets of virtual 3D city blocks, one representing existing buildings and the other indicating the development potential of those buildings based on the applicable urban regulations. These two images show different densities and consequently variable land and property values, but in both cases the property tax base and potential value capture charge can be estimated precisely.
In Latin America, where the incidence of informality is emblematic of the urban landscape, it is important to visualize and define the informal as well as the legal dimensions of the city. Informal settlements develop when households cannot afford housing supplied by the market or by social programs. People must find a place to settle, which is often on hazardous or protected land that is inappropriate for housing, or on vacant public or private land. The magnitude of the need for housing often surpasses the amount of land available, thus forcing informal settlers to build taller structures at higher densities (figure 3).
Every occupied space is a part of the city and should be considered in the urban databases of the cadastre. The task of connecting the virtual informal city with the rest of the virtual city is a bigger challenge in 3D than in 2D due to complexities in dealing with parcels where owners and occupants are different but may share the same space. Infrastructure is also organized differently in these areas. In the formal city, for example, public infrastructure networks consisting of fixed pipes, cables, roads, and rails are regularized and stable. In the informal city, infrastructure networks are often self-built and change constantly as the settlement expands. A 3D cadastre can inform planners of the gaps between the characteristics of the population demanding shelter and the effective supply of land and its attributes, thus helping define policies to address unplanned informal settlements.
3D Dynamic Cities
Changes taking place in cities can be visualized and measured in several ways, for example through studies of densification, migration, and expansion of infrastructure networks. These studies assume that social, economic, and environmental variables are constantly changing although the land is static. However, other forces that produce change in the city can cause dislocations of different intensities that can be measured in space (3D) and time (4D). For example, the continental plates are moving South America, its cities, public and private properties, and infrastructure networks slowly toward the west at the rate of 2 centimeters (cm) per year. These movements, which seem insignificant, have consequences for urban policy if one considers that in 50 years a property could be moved as much as 1 meter from its current position.
Even more extreme movements are the consequence of the dynamic nature of our planet. The earthquake in February 2010 impacted the Chilean region of Bio-Bio at many different scales. Measurements by the Transportable Integrated Geodetic Observatory (TIGO) in the city of Concepción recorded that the entire territory moved initially toward the northwest and then ended with a displacement of 3 meters toward the southwest, all within 30 seconds. During this event, the height of land shifted by 50 cm. The telluric movement carried away properties and destroyed urban infrastructure and buildings, and the damage was compounded by the subsequent tsunami. A similar pattern was observed during Chile’s 1960 earthquake, the most severe ever registered in the world, when the ground moved with such velocity that some properties disappeared into the sea and other land areas emerged.
The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti produced an estimated 20 million cubic meters of debris in 35 seconds, even though significant land displacements were not registered. From the point of view of the cadastre, however, these two disasters had very different impacts. If the urban information had been structured in thematic layers and integrated in a GIS platform, the earthquake in Haiti would have affected the construction layer and several representative building types would have disappeared. In Chile, the construction layer was modified mainly by the tsunami, but the land itself was affected by the spatial displacement and shifts resulting from the telluric movement. Fast-moving natural disasters like these change the environment and people’s lives radically, and have important implications for government priorities, including definitions and implementation of land policy, both before and after such events.
Predictable climate change events, underground contamination, air pollution, and other such data can be mathematically modeled before they happen. By connecting these models with the spatial databases of a 3D cadastre, it is possible to create prospective 3D scenarios of the potential impacts and identify the neighborhoods and properties that could be affected. Unpredictable phenomena such as earthquakes and sudden flooding can be represented much more quickly if the measurement instruments tracked by environmental institutions or government agencies are connected to the spatial databases of 3D cadastres. The spatial representation of the impact can be made available soon after the event.
In sum, the 3D representation can help define preventive land policies to address predictable changes and also enable the readjustment of current land policies after unpredictable natural events.
3D Networks and Infrastructure
Infrastructure and transport networks move through 3D parcels in different ways and allow the city to remain active and fluid. Some of these networks are invisible by nature, such as the microwaves of cellular phones; others are invisible because they are located underground, such as infrastructure tunnels and pipes; and others are easily visible because they are built on the surface, such as roadways or utility lines. Figure 4 illustrates some of the complex spatial intersections that occur in the overlapping layers of infrastructure and transportation networks within 3D parcels.
These spatial relationships among networks and public and private properties, environmental reserves, mineral deposits, water bodies, and other features have been treated inefficiently through 2D cartographic norms, but they require the development of specific, new 3D norms to enforce the social function of property with equity and justice. For example, Article 1.286 of Brazil’s Civil Code states that a landowner is obligated to provide a right of way through her property for cables, pipes, and other underground conduits that serve the public at large and could not be built elsewhere. The law also outlines the need to determine the amount of area affected by public works projects in each parcel and its corresponding value in order to calculate the compensation due to the owner. 3D cadastral records can be an important contribution to facilitating such transactions.
3D Land Market Value
One of the functions of a territorial cadastre is to provide information to determine the value of the parcels with respect to property taxation and urban planning policies. In Latin America, land values generally have been based on ad hoc valuation methods (such as the replacement value of buildings) that use construction data and land values for each cadastre sector (Erba 2008). This practice does not always produce reliable valuations because it is difficult to keep the cadastral databases up-to-date, and the implementation of the valuation methods may be arbitrary from place to place.
An alternative valuation method now being implemented across the region is the use of spatial econometric models to determine property values with the desired level of statistical precision. This is important because land values change across urban space and depend on variables such as urban regulations, environmental restrictions, scenic views, infrastructure, and other features associated with the property, such as underground or airborne elements.
The most modern GIS platforms developed for 3D cadastres even allow the assessor to “stand” inside a building at any given altitude before the building is constructed. The software allows the assessor to see the view that will be available from the window of the dwelling, identify relationships to other buildings, perceive the natural landscape, and note other relevant characteristics of the property. Such data help determine the relevance of externalities to the value of the property, an aspect often neglected in valuations based on traditional replacement value methods.
Figure 5 shows a perspective of the surface gradient of land values per square meter obtained from sample points corresponding to properties for sale. The surface has the same coordinate reference system (x, y) as the entire city. Even when the spatial third dimension (z) is not related to the geographic space, it is possible to put the surface under the legal virtual city (as shown in figure 2) and analyze the spatial correlation between the land value per square meter and relevant urban regulations. Such an application is another possible contribution to the development of land policies based on 3D cadastre techniques.
Conclusions
While the technologies used to measure, represent, and store information are now evolving toward 3D platforms, urban legislation and land policies continue to approach the city as a flat land surface. To visualize the buildings and the restrictions imposed on properties in 3D is a considerable advancement for those responsible for urban decision making. Nevertheless, there is a long way to go before 3D information is integrated as part of urban legislation and property titles.
The consolidation of a 3D cadastre, which registers how 3D parcels intersect with the corresponding legal norms and regulations, would contribute to more effective urban and environmental planning, infrastructure network design, and the prevention of informality by permitting the construction of future scenarios showing the impacts of land policies in space. Changing the term area to space would be a first step in giving urban and environmental legislation a 3D connotation, and would be a simple and relevant way to start the process of introducing this new paradigm. Structuring a 3D property registry is still under development, but when it is established landowners will understand that they own cubic feet instead of only square feet.
About the Author
Diego Alfonso Erba is a fellow at Lincoln Institute of Land Policy where he coordinates distance education programs for the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean. He also researches, publishes, and manages studies on cadastre and GIS applications.
References
Câmara, Gilberto. 2000. http://mundogeo.com/blog/2000/01/01/geometrias-nao-sao-geografias-o-legado-de-milton-santos/
Erba, Diego A. 2008. Catastro e información territorial en América Latina (CD-Rom). Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
van Oosterom, Peter. 2011. Preface of the Proceedings 2nd International Workshop on 3D Cadastre. Delft, The Netherlands http://3dcadastres2011.nl/
Acknowledgments
The author thanks these partners and colleagues in the development of research in this field of knowledge: Anamaria Gliesch-Leebmann, Design Concepts 4 You, Seeheim-Jugenheim, Germany; Everton da Silva, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil; João Norberto Destro, Aeroimagem S/A; Igor Bacigaluppi, Regional Government of Bio-Bio, Chile; Sergio Baeriswyl Rada, Municipality of Concepción, Chile; Andrea F. T. Carneiro, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil; Eduardo A. A. Augusto, Brazilian Land Registry Institute (IRIB), São Paulo, Brazil; and Martim Smolka and Anna Sant’Anna of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
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Land trusts across the United States differ vastly in terms of age, size of protected acreage, mission, strategy, budget, and context. Audrey Rust, an acknowledged conservation leader and the 2012 Kingsbury Browne Fellow at the Lincoln Institute, is in a unique position to parse the differences between two strikingly distinct yet successful preservation efforts in the American West. She served as president and CEO of the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) in Palo Alto, California, for 24 years until July 2011, and she is now a board member of the American Prairie Reserve (APR) in Bozeman, Montana.
APR is one of the nation’s most ambitious new conservation efforts, aiming to assemble 3.5 million acres and create the largest wildlife complex in the lower 48 states—in Montana, the nation’s fourth largest state with the seventh smallest population (just one million as of 2012). By contrast, POST encompasses only 2 percent of APR’s projected acreage, yet is considered remarkably successful for amassing 70,000 acres of very expensive open space, farms, and parkland in a densely settled region, from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, with more than seven million inhabitants.
Despite their dissimilar profiles, these organizations share a surprising number of similarities. In this Q&A with the Lincoln Institute, Rust compares POST’s and APR’s particular histories and characteristics, based on her first-hand experience with each organization, and offers some universal lessons for all involved in the difficult and challenging work of preserving open space.
Lincoln institute: How did the Peninsula Open Space Trust begin and what is its mission?
Audrey Rust: POST is a 35-year-old, traditional land trust in a dense metropolitan region, which has grown significantly since POST was founded in 1977. It began as a private conservation partner for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a public, tax-supported agency on the San Francisco Peninsula (figure 1). Working on the urban fringe, POST would raise private funds on behalf of the District and take on an occasional land donation project. To this day, all the territory it protects lies within a major metropolitan area.
Given POST’s densely populated location, it was essential from the beginning to immediately include opportunities for low-intensity public recreation and provide exposure to the biodiversity of the peninsula, where within a 12-mile transect one can pass through at least nine distinct ecosystems. POST works to assure a system of interconnected open lands in corridors along the San Francisco Bay, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. No specific number of total acres is contemplated, unless a particular campaign is underway, but giving people a place to experience nature is a driving force.
Lincoln institute: How do the genesis and mission of the American Prairie Reserve compare?
Audrey Rust: Since it was founded in 2002, APR has amassed 274,000 acres but seeks to permanently protect some 3.5 million contiguous acres of short-grass prairie as a wildlife reserve in northeastern Montana—one of only four places on earth where such a conservation effort is possible (figure 2). The idea originated from research done by a group of nonprofit conservation organizations working in the northern Rockies, with science assistance from the World Wildlife Fund at the start.
APR is reintroducing plains bison that are free of cattle gene introgression and intends to develop a sustainable herd of 10,000 animals while restoring other native species including prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, and burrowing owls. APR acquired a lot of land quickly, but it will take decades to reintroduce wildlife and foster significant growth of species populations.
Federal lands form a large part of the wildlife habitat APR is assembling. The Reserve lands are adjacent on the south to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and on the west to the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, which figures prominently in our nation’s history as part of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Lincoln institute: What are the key challenges for POST and APR?
Audrey Rust: Funding any conservation work is always the biggest challenge. The first hurdle is identifying potential donors and getting their attention. To do that, you need a clearly articulated vision and the ability to make the project relevant to the potential donor. Validation of the mission from a third respected party is key. You also need some means for the donor to experience the relevant work and feel appropriately included, in addition to a well-developed relationship that results in an appropriate request for support made at the right time.
Lincoln institute: What are the particular funding challenges at POST?
Audrey Rust: In the San Francisco Bay Area, millions of people see and appreciate how proximity to nature enhances their quality of life, but most do not know the role POST plays in assuring this; or, if they do know, they don’t necessarily feel moved to support POST’s work financially. Competition for philanthropic dollars within the small geographic area of Silicon Valley is intense. All the major conservation organizations, plus Stanford University’s powerful fundraising machine, operate in the area.
Fundraising takes a traditional course at POST. There is a well-developed annual giving program that moves many donors to the upper capital gift levels. Many of them are willing to lend their networks to the effort, and because of the successes of the organization and the existing donor list, people feel comfortable and supported by their community when making a gift. POST’s model has also depended on finding and creating public funds and then selling land or easements to a public entity, at or below the price paid by POST, allowing the organization to return donor funds to be used again and again.
POST also faces the challenge of success. Often leadership-level donors are ready to move on to new ideas and new environmental issues, seeing that their personal impact is not as visible as it would be in starting their own new organization. Some donors feel they have done their part, and now it’s someone else’s turn. New top leadership-level donors are as difficult as ever to attract.
Lincoln institute: How do APR’s mission and goals affect its fundraising strategy?
Audrey Rust: APR faces what is often called a “pipeline” problem. As a relatively new organization—and one where the potential donor population is both scattered and at a great distance from the Reserve—finding the right people has required many false starts and unproductive gatherings. It has been difficult to expose potential donors to the project in ways that can build a philanthropic relationship. Although board members are willing, only a few have networks that have proven productive for APR. It’s difficult and expensive to assess the real interest of a potential donor, estimate his or her likely gift level, and develop an ongoing relationship with a person who is geographically removed. As yet, status is not associated with being a supporter, and the enormity of the campaign goal ($300 million to $500 million) dwarfs even million-dollar gifts. Any practical campaign would need to attract a gift of $80 million to $100 million at the top of the fundraising pyramid.
Building a productive leadership-level prospect list is only worthwhile if meetings and relationships can happen. Geography creates difficulties when there are not enough people in one area, and efforts can’t be leveraged. Time is a key element in building the needed relationships.
Because of its rare size and scope, however, APR may have singular appeal to extremely wealthy individuals who, like the Rockefellers decades ago, could create this Reserve with their philanthropy alone. This is the unfulfilled dream of every executive director. Chances are slim, but history shows it is possible. APR’s model has never looked to public funding as a way to leverage private dollars, since the leased public lands are in some measure doing just that.
Another key funding challenge for APR is the scale of the project. Impact comes in increments of 50,000 or 100,000 acres in a landscape where conservation biologists have determined that a mixed-grass prairie would need to be approximately 5,000 square miles (roughly 3.2 million acres) to be a healthy, functioning ecosystem that supports the full complement of native prairie biodiversity.
Lincoln institute: How has the leadership at both organizations handled the funding challenges?
Audrey Rust: At both APR and POST, the first president/executive director, who also served as a board member, had a solid business background but no experience fundraising or running a nonprofit organization. The second board chair of both organizations was a successful venture capitalist and was viewed as a founder. All these leaders were charismatic and well-connected. Last but not least, both founding executive directors had to contribute or lend substantial funds to the organization to keep it afloat.
APR’s founding President Sean Gerrity is still at the helm after ten years, and his passion for conservation is undiminished. The time needed for extensive travel and meeting the financial needs of the organization was more than a full-time job, however, and none of the development professionals he hired could relieve his load. On the premise that potential donors want to meet someone with a title, two years ago Gerrity made a major change in how the organization functions by hiring two managing directors who are able to carry a significant fundraising and content load. The strategy requires regular telephone or in-person meetings to stay aligned on all aspects of the organization, but it’s working. Organizing around the managing director model has allowed APR staff to travel more and develop better donor relationships. Current personnel have been in place for fewer than two years, but they are making progress.
Lincoln institute: How did you weather the fundraising challenge at POST?
Audrey Rust: When POST hired me to replace Founding Executive Director Robert Augsburger in 1986, my first mission was to raise $2 million in a few months in order to exercise an option on a key coastal ranch, POST’s first truly independent project.
I understood the local donor community and had a good deal of experience in fundraising and nonprofit management. I was completely absorbed by the work and the need to meet our financial obligations. Although travel usually wasn’t necessary to raise funds, the proximity of potential donors meant that every weekend, every farmer’s market, every local event was an opportunity to connect. We undertook one major project after another, doing good conservation work and building momentum, but I was exhausted.
To solve this problem, I also found really good staff people. My approach, however, was traditional: Get enough money in the bank to hire adequate staff and ensure one of them was a young lawyer with potential to take on additional responsibilities and leadership. I would continue doing large-gift fundraising as well as oversee key land acquisition strategy and negotiation, and others would take over more of the day-to-day work and administration. The ability to grow the staff and delegate some of the work was a major step forward for me and the organization.
Lincoln institute: What has been POST’s basic approach to land acquisition and how has that affected its financial strategy?
Audrey Rust: Both POST and APR want to connect existing public lands through acquisition of adjacent, privately held property, and both have treated local conservation entities as key allies in the task of preserving biodiversity, providing public access, and creating a larger vision of a protected landscape. Their different basic land conservation strategies, however, lead to very different funding patterns and long-term financial impacts.
POST plans to transfer all the land it protects, and most of it will go into public ownership as federal, state, and county parks or to one of the regional open space districts for its management and permanent protection. Agricultural land, protected by strict conservation easements, is sold to local farmers. POST retains the easements along with an easement endowment fund to assure their monitoring and compliance.
The first project POST undertook in the late 1970s resulted in the gift and subsequent sale (at half the appraised value) of a highly visible property adjacent to the town where a high percentage of potential donors lived. The funds resulting from this sale allowed POST to save some additional lands. However, the organization progressed slowly for nearly a decade, with no real financially sustainable land protection strategy in place.
In 1986, driven by an opportunity to purchase a 1,200-acre coastal ranch, POST optioned the property, which required owner-financing, significant fundraising, and later statewide political action. Success led to the creation of a working capital fund that allowed POST to repeat a similar strategy several times, focusing on prominent and ambitious conservation projects. Gaining a reputation for delivering on its promises, POST transitioned to raising funds in a capital campaign for a much larger inventory of property. Having working capital freed POST to focus on what needed to be done, rather than what could be done.
Lincoln institute: What were the key accomplishments and shortfalls of POST’s strategy?
Audrey Rust: POST was able to build working capital and show donors a leveraged return. Success built on success, and today POST operates with a working capital account of more than $125 million. Protected land was never at any risk of being lost due to financial issues. The type of public funds used, coupled with private gifts, provide further assurances.
Each accomplishment has given POST the confidence to move to another level in direct protection, restoration, and collaboration. Sustainable forestry, affirmative easements on farmland, conservation grazing, and exotic species removal are all now a part of its conservation arsenal.
On the other hand, a broad vision of what the future could hold was never well articulated, as POST essentially worked in an incremental fashion. Stirring the imagination of leadership-level entrepreneurial donors, the primary wealth in the Valley, became more difficult as time went on. It was also difficult for the organization to embrace the restoration and management of land being held for later transfer.
As public funds have begun to dry up, public agencies are less likely to take on the obligation of additional land ownership. POST experiences both the expense of holding the property indefinitely and the inability to sell the land to return capital to its account.
Lincoln institute: What has been APR’s basic approach?
Audrey Rust: APR faces a different situation in Montana, where the privately held ranches are far larger than any parcel in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and their owners control additional vast tracks of federally owned leased land. APR intends to hold these private fee lands and leases in perpetuity. Privately raised endowment funds will be required to ensure the management of these lands.
APR wanted to show from the beginning that it could make real progress on its large conservation vision, despite the lack of funds. APR moved quickly to acquire land and the accompanying leases using owner financing. The leadership of the organization felt putting a stake in the ground was the only way to begin to attract the money it would need to acquire the property that would make up the Reserve. Without sufficient fundraising experience or a developed prospect list, the struggle was enormous. Until recently, only minimal funds were held in reserve, making it extremely stressful to meet financial obligations, especially for debt.
Lincoln institute: What are APR’s key accomplishments and ongoing challenges?
Audrey Rust: Persistence and good work are now paying off. Critical advances include the opportunity to acquire fees and associated leases on a 150,000-acre ranch and in 2012 a very important gift from one of the organization’s largest supporters. APR also began building a high-end “safari camp” to open in 2013 that will allow them to bring leadership-level donors to the prairie, build relationships, and deepen their connection to the land.
The organization has a track record, demonstrating its ability to get things done, and can begin management practices to foreshadow future activity. Reintroducing genetically pure bison is a charismatic example. Extraordinary opportunities for acquiring key pieces of land can now be pursued. Without significant working reserves, however, APR staff and leadership are under great stress to meet their financial obligations. This creates a climate of looking for quick delivery on donations rather than developing the kind of leadership gifts the organization needs most for the long haul. As yet, plans are incomplete for assuring the permanent private protection of the acquired lands. Land that carries owner financing or is especially well priced may be purchased, even though its priority for acquisition may not be high. Raising the necessary endowment funds for the ongoing stewardship of the land has been slow.
Lincoln institute: In conclusion, what are key commonalities between these two very different organizations?
Audrey Rust: POST and APR are at different stages in their organizational growth, and their futures are based on their most obvious differences and track records. However, it is possible to identify similar key elements leading to success:
Both organizations continue to face significant challenges in funding their goals. POST has successfully transitioned to new leadership and is pursuing ever larger and more complex conservation initiatives. Its success has dominated the organization for so long that it is difficult for new philanthropists to find something to “invent” and support. It is a very well-run organization, which leaves little room for the new Silicon Valley elite to provide their trademark “we can do it better” involvement. POST needs to do more to identify and attract those very few top-of-the-pyramid donors. This challenge is especially difficult because government participation has virtually ended, and POST’s three largest donors are no longer making grants, in the $20 million to $50 million range, to this type of conservation. Further, it is difficult to point to an endgame, and, without it, the organization will lose urgency and gift support.
APR is new and exciting. The organization has sought a creative partnership with National Geographic, which produced an hour-long video called The American Serengeti, elevating APR’s mission and bringing with it the national prominence APR needs to raise large gifts in the national arena. It is during this time that key leadership donors must become involved. In all nonprofit organizations, funding pyramids are becoming more and more vertical. Campaigns such as this one often depend upon one or two donors to make gifts equal to half or even two-thirds of the total goal. Without these donors, staff members are worn out by raising money, and the cost of fundraising rises rapidly.
I am convinced that the size, scope, and ability to measure the vision held by an organization are key determinants of success. Donors and the public in general are elevated by the idea that we can change our world. Clearly articulating and promoting that vision is instrumental. POST needs to work on its messaging to better articulate its current vision. APR needs to find more venues to effectively communicate its vision and develop a critical mass of supporters.
Conservation leader Audrey Rust, the 2012 Kingsbury Browne Fellow at the Lincoln Institute, will lecture on “The Peninsula and the Prairie: Regional and Large Landscape Conservation,” at Lincoln House on May 1, 2013, at noon (lunch is free).
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Shaping the Future of the American West
Summer Waters is the third director of Western Lands and Communities—a joint program established in 2003 by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute to inform policy related to the use of land and natural resources in the Intermountain West. Summer has a B.S. in biology from the University of South Florida and an M.S. in civil engineering, with concentrations in environmental and water resources engineering, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before joining the Sonoran Institute, she spent 15 years working in urban planning and natural resources for government entities including the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and the County of San Diego, where she won an Emmy award for coproducing an educational video.
LAND LINES: What attracted you to the challenge of directing this joint program between the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute?
SUMMER WATERS: The chance to help shape the future of the American West. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a thought leader in this realm, and the Sonoran Institute is well known throughout the region for its dedication to collaborative work with local communities and other organizations. Our shared mission is ambitious, but each organization has complementary attributes that make it successful. Our mutual, longstanding commitment gives the joint program depth and flexibility.
LL: Why is this job the right one at the right time for you?
SW: My interest in the natural world led me to study biology as an undergraduate, and my desire for a solutions-oriented career led me back to school for engineering. After graduation, I gravitated toward planning, because it allowed me to work with both the natural and built environments. After gaining professional experience, I began to recognize how the use of land, water, and energy interconnects with economics and community development. And I appreciated Western Lands and Communities’ holistic approach to the challenges facing the region.
LL: Both the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute have recently undergone leadership changes. What challenges and opportunities does this transition afford you?
SW: Both Stephanie Sklar, the new CEO of the Sonoran Institute, and Lincoln Institute President and CEO George McCarthy are motivated leaders who inspire me personally and professionally. Stephanie is ambitiously embarking on a strategic planning process that will guide the Sonoran Institute through its 25th anniversary as an organization. Her breadth and depth of knowledge inform the process and ensure that we both celebrate and evaluate our work. George McCarthy is a courageous and visionary leader guiding the Lincoln Institute through a similar transition. His appreciation for the West was obvious when he recently visited our Phoenix office. He comprehends the challenges we are facing and the importance of demonstration projects, such as our Colorado River Delta Restoration effort, in shaping the future of this region.
LL: How is Western Lands and Communities contributing to the Sonoran Institute’s effort to restore the ecology and economy of the Colorado River Delta?
SW: Western Lands and Communities supports the implementation of Minute 319, the binational agreement between the United States and Mexico that guides the sharing and delivery of water on the Colorado River under the 1944 treaty through 2017. Perhaps the most significant event resulting from this agreement was the release of a “pulse flow” of 105,000 acre-feet of water into Mexico in the spring of 2014. This intervention was designed to mimic what would have been the Colorado River’s natural flow cycles under spring conditions, when snowmelt from the mountains once ran through what is now seven U.S. states and two countries, ultimately to the Sea of Cortez. This historic effort breathed life into the desiccated delta, and in May 2014 the river reached the sea for the first time in years. In the spring of 2015, we will convene a group of NGO representatives, academic professionals, and agency scientists at the one-year anniversary of this event. Participants will discuss the impact of renewed flows on critical ecosystem functions in the region and evaluate the implications of this temporary agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. Through this process, we hope to inform future policies related to the allocation of this precious resource to the natural environment.
LL: I understand this project fits into your broader agenda to conserve large landscapes. Tell us more about that effort.
SW: Public land ownership in the Intermountain West is vast. At first glance, a map of the region depicts a disconnected pattern of various land agencies and managers with very different missions and approaches. Working lands and tribal lands further complicate that scenario. Landscape-scale conservation relies heavily on the full range of people who live within this picture; in order to avoid “random acts of conservation,” and to achieve more coordinated and meaningful results, collaboration among public entities, individual land owners, and tribes is key. Fortunately, Westerners—regardless of political viewpoints, upbringing, or economic status—typically unite around a shared goal of preserving a way of life that is intertwined with the landscapes they inhabit. The way forward involves capitalizing on this shared vision, engaging communities in shaping their own future, and connecting practitioners with stakeholders in a meaningful manner.
LL: How does Western Lands and Communities help communities respond better to the major challenges for the future of the Intermountain West?
SW: The West faces essentially the same challenges as other areas of the United States, but under a unique set of circumstances. We have a growing population, which triggers changing economies and demographics. Both urban and rural areas struggle to balance growth with natural resource protection. Given the sheer scale and grandeur of the natural environment in the West, it is easy to view our vast natural resources as infinite—a misperception that can lead to sprawl and other issues associated with natural resource extraction. Our expansive landscapes also create specific challenges related to transportation, which contributes to climate change—a force that exacerbates all other problems. The joint program assists communities through the development of planning tools, webinars on smart growth and sustainable development topics, and compilations of successful case studies from communities across the West.
LL: Western Lands and Communities is engaged in exploratory scenario planning—a unique approach to long-range planning that explicitly challenges communities to evaluate their proposals against an uncertain future. How is exploratory scenario planning different from traditional planning, and how is it being applied in the West?
SW: Exploratory scenario planning is a process that encourages imagination in the planning process. Through the engagement of stakeholders, community members, and experts, we develop a variety of plausible scenarios and acknowledge the complex forces, such as climate change, that could lead to a significantly different future. We help participants to view their particular issues in terms of the broader social, political, economic, and natural forces that shape communities in general. While some scenarios currently seem more probable or desirable than others, each receives equal consideration throughout the workshops. Most importantly, this process is more flexible, engaging, and dynamic than traditional planning, requiring participants to develop multiple strategies in response to a spectrum of future uncertainties. Western Lands and Communities has helped communities across the West apply this approach to General Plan updates, watershed plan development, and preparation for the economic impacts of changing climate and weather conditions. Ultimately, exploratory scenario planning is designed to help communities adapt to change better by addressing complex issues that are embedded in great uncertainties. The foresight and strategies generated through this process prepare leaders to guide their communities toward a more sustainable future.
LL: What are the special challenges of planning for climate change in the Intermountain West and how have WLC’s approaches recognized those issues?
SW: In the West, climate change affects ecosystems that are predominately arid and often exhibit high variability, compounding problems. In the past, we have built large reservoirs to cope with fluctuating water supplies due to cycles of drought. But that solution is no longer sufficient, as we are seeing droughts of unprecedented severity punctuated by extreme floods. Communities must now tackle issues that could once be left to the federal government. They must determine for themselves how to cope with diminishing water resources, increasing temperatures, migrating ecosystems, and extreme weather. The approach that Western Lands and Communities takes is to help communities identify priorities and develop policies to create resilience.
We have to be cognizant of the fact that neighboring communities can be very polarized when it comes to climate change. While some communities have embraced the reality of it, others hold onto a past way of life that is essential to the character of the region, yet leaves little room for adaptation. The West has large populations of American Indians and Latinos who are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. We recently began working with urban Latino communities in Arizona to address their disproportionate exposure to the effects of global warming. We do this by convening leaders, crafting messages that resonate with Latino communities, and working with organizations to train community members to educate others on this topic. Every community is a little different, so we blend replicable methods with adaptive management.
LL: The scope of Western Lands and Communities’ work has widened considerably since it started with an exclusive focus on the needs, challenges, and opportunities for state trust lands. What is the significance of that original mission and the resulting relationship, built over time, with state trust land managers?
SW: Historically, state trust lands have been poorly understood by the general public and natural resource professionals alike, particularly with respect to their fiduciary responsibilities. People rely on state trust lands for their livelihoods, as do children and young adults who need access to quality public education. Here in Arizona, we have seen unprecedented cuts to funding for public schools and universities in recent years. Our work has brought greater understanding of state trust lands as a source of funding for public schools and as natural systems with important biological functions that need to be protected. Mitigation banking and land exchanges help to integrate state trust lands into the broader context of large landscape conservation and sustainable development. But most state trust lands managers face regulatory challenges when they try to implement conservation practices. Reform is necessary to remove barriers that hinder implementation of the full array of practices that provide for both conservation and profit.
The economic and environmental benefits of state trust lands will continue to be significant. Ultimately, our commitment to western communities through our work with state trust lands will remain intact. Although the focus of the program may change as states encounter new and different challenges, the need to educate people about the state trust land mandate to create value for the trust beneficiaries will remain constant in the years to come.
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Decentralization of the state and growing business and community involvement in civic affairs are posing new challenges to the development of institutions focused on land policies and their implementation throughout Latin America. Mayors and local councils are assuming new responsibilities in the areas of environmental protection, urban transportation, basic infrastructure, local financing, social services and economic development. At the same time, business and civic organizations are finding new avenues to ensure public attention to their demands through participatory planning, budgeting, co-financing and control at the local level.
Thus, decentralization and democratic participation are gradually building an environment in which public-private alliances can develop joint projects of common interest to both government and individuals. However, many government institutions have a long way to go before they are fully adjusted to their new roles in planning, regulation and evaluation.
Long-entrenched cultures of apathy and citizen distrust of government have to be transformed into mutual confidence capable of mobilizing the best community traditions of the Latin American people. Political and economic patronage and state corruption need to be superseded by political and administrative accountability. Obsolete budget, contract and municipal laws still restrict the capacity of both local governments and civil society to interact creatively through contractual and co-financing arrangements.
The institutional challenges and policy dilemmas currently confronted by the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (MASS) illustrate the transformations occurring throughout the region. After years of civil war, the Salvadorans signed a peace agreement in 1992 that provided the framework for real competition among political parties and stimulated more active participation by business, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community organizations. MASS incorporates several municipalities, some of them led by mayors from opposition parties to the central government. The coordinating body of MASS is the Council of Mayors, which in turn is supported by a Metropolitan Planning Office.
With technical assistance from international NGOs, MASS has prepared a comprehensive development plan. Contemporary urban planning instruments such as macrozoning, multi-rate property tax, value capture for environmental protection, public-private consortiums and land use coefficients are being considered for the implementation of land, development and environmental policies. Indeed, the Salvadorans have the support of several research centers that are familiar with the use and impact of these and other instruments in other parts of the world. Their primary need now is to mobilize public and private metropolitan actors around common policies and to develop shared instruments for their application.
Toward that end, PRISMA, a prominent Salvadoran NGO and urban research center, invited the Lincoln Institute to develop a joint workshop on urban management tools, intergovernmental coordinating mechanisms for metropolitan areas and public-private initiatives for sustainable cities. The workshop, held in San Salvador in October, included high-ranking officers from the central government, mayors, planning officers and other authorities from MASS, and representatives from builders’ and developers’ associations and some cooperative housing institutions and community organizations.
Speakers from the Lincoln Institute presented experiences from Taiwan, The Philippines, Mexico and other Latin American countries that underlined policies and instruments capable of harmonizing the interests of different urban stakeholders and coordinating several layers of government for land use and urban development objectives. The Salvadorans explained their immediate concerns, such as the lack of intergovernmental coordination to protect the urban environment, discontinuities in policy measures, arbitrariness at all levels of government, and legal and administrative uncertainties.
The workshop participants concluded that to foster the new legal and institutional framework sought by MASS the Salvadorans need to expand discussions among other metropolitan actors. They also need to continue to work with institutions such as the Lincoln Institute that have the trust and credibility to present internationally recognized land management policies and can help build consensus among different public and private interests.
Mario Lungo is a researcher at PRISMA, the Salvadoran Program for Development and Environmental Research; Alejandra Mortarini is the Lincoln Institute’s Latin America and Caribbean programs manager; and Fernando Rojas, a lawyer from Colombia, is a visiting fellow of the Institute this year.
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Throughout North America, there is a growing trend to approach land use, natural resources and environmental problems on a regional basis. Since existing government agencies often lack broad authority, local and environmental leaders are increasingly taking the initiative to address the social, economic and environmental issues of a particular place by reaching across conventional political and jurisdictional boundaries, sectors and disciplines.
Interest in environmental regionalism has ebbed and flowed over the years, but its roots are as ancient as humankind’s first home in Africa’s Rift Valley and the early civilizations of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Regionalism flourished in Europe during the early nineteenth century and emerged in the U.S. in the form of the western explorations by Lewis and Clark and John Wesley Powell. In the 1930s, regional interest in the U.S. surfaced again in the form of Lewis Mumford’s ecological regionalism and the initiatives of the New Deal. After World War II, the U.S. Congress was persuaded to experiment with unifunctional and political forms of regionalism, such as the federal-state river basin and regional commissions. At the turn of the twenty-first century, prompted by dissatisfaction with the growing numbers, scale and complexity of governmental functions, and coincident with the public commitment to civic forms of environmentalism, the stage was set for the current revival of interest in regionalism.
What Is An Environmental Region?
An environmental region usually has some combination of the following attributes:
Examples of these places abound at different scales throughout the U.S.: Chesapeake Bay, the Northeast’s Northern Forest, the Great Plains (popularly termed the Buffalo Commons), the Southwest’s Sonoran Desert, the Rocky Mountains, California’s Great Valley of the Sacramento River, and the Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound. The ambitious “Y2Y” (Yellowstone to Yukon) and Northeastern Landscape projects are designed to secure wildland corridors in crucial regions across the borders of the U.S. and Canada.
But environments need not be large to become good candidates for regional action. For example, a cranberry bog lying in two small Massachusetts towns was the spark for an eventual statewide statute permitting jurisdictions of all sizes to enter into joint powers agreements for environmental purposes. In the Deep South, high-level political negotiations currently preoccupy municipalities, states and federal agencies in the northern portions of the three-state, 20,000-square-mile Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint (ACF) Basin while citizen environmental interests remain focused on the relatively modest, still unspoiled reaches at the southern end of the basin. The famous Quincy Library case in northern California was an initiative prompted by three local citizens, meeting at the town library, to forge a common strategy for nearby national forests. And, on Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound, one of the earliest land management collaborations involved local citizens and jurisdictions serving as surrogates for the National Park Service. In fact, such is the breadth and diversity of regional environmental initiatives across the country that national collaboration expert Julia Wondolleck of the University of Michigan has likened them to snowflakes— none exactly alike.
The Harvard Environmental Regionalism Project
Responding to an apparent resurgence of interest in regionalism throughout the U.S. and Canada, researchers at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the spring of 1998 asked nearly 150 prominent North American regionalists how regions might be used to advance environmental protection, use and management. The survey paralleled a similar New Deal-era inquiry into the possible use of regions for social and economic development and resulted in an outpouring of opinions (C. Foster and Meyer 2000). Some respondents advised that regions are bounded and shaped in response to a number of physiographic, hydrologic and biotic factors, while others noted influences built around a strong human sense of place.
Regions tend to be less distinct at the margins than at the core. In fact, many regions exhibit a kind of fractal, multi-core quality, operating through individual components that are layered, nested and organized hierarchically. But all seem to work best when they address real, politically relevant issues occurring in a “problem-shed” context. Thus, regions should be viewed as conceptual frameworks for analysis and practice, and ways to organize processes and relationships in order to harness capabilities and integrate policies and programs within a given area, rather than as definitive lines on a map.
Although environmental attributes will be prominent and compelling in any environmentally based region, they should not be controlling. More important will be the inhabitants’ own values, perspectives and priorities, which may include a range of environmentally relevant economic, social, political and cultural objectives. Such regions, like the environment itself, will turn out to be dynamic, not static. The best regions will employ a changing mix of largely organic activities supported by the programmatic services of established governmental agencies and political jurisdictions. Their scales must be large enough to encompass the problem or problems to be addressed, but not so large as to lose any prospect of a supportive constituency. The region’s form and administrative structure should be fitted carefully to its proposed programs and functions, and should operate as a viable business organization.
Despite passionate individual adherents for certain kinds of regions (for example, watersheds or ecoregions), no single best type of environmental region seems to fit all circumstances. Each region must reflect its own biological and cultural diversity and represent the needs of both the present and future occupants of the area in question. The survey respondents recommended starting with a sizable, recognizable, organic landscape, preferably one with a coincidence of natural and cultural features, where sufficient regional consciousness already exists to make the area identifiable (and even nameable). Pluralistic and deliberative processes should then be employed to define the required regional entity. In some instances, preexisting governmental authorities (such as the Endangered Species Act) can serve as the spark; in others, environmental functions may simply be added to established regional agencies for planning, transportation, economic development or metropolitan affairs. Whatever form it may take, and whatever its program objectives may turn out to be, the regional organization must not waver from its goal of achieving meaningful, positive and timely change in the state of the environment by either improving its present condition or removing impediments to its proper management, protection and use.
The Harvard researchers concluded that successful environmental regionalists will need a “tool box” of technical and financial assistance delivered to them through one or more “centers of excellence” established to serve on-the-ground networks of practitioners. Responding to that challenge, the Lincoln Institute has been supporting an inquiry and evaluation of the center of excellence concept through a project known as ENREG (environmental regionalism).
The ENREG Project
The project began with the drafting of a white paper, “Fostering Conservation and Environmental Regionalism: A Blueprint for Action,” describing the rationale for and likely attributes of a national environmental regionalism program (C. Foster 2002b). Separate audiences of regional practitioners and organization/agency representatives reviewed and debated the paper during sessions in Salt Lake City in December 2001 and at Lincoln House in Cambridge in April 2002.
After reviewing an extensive inventory and assessment of ongoing regional initiatives (McKinney et al. 2002), the western practitioners agreed that regionalism is by definition an integrative concept, eventually touching a whole circle of social, economic and political, not just environmental, issues. They noted that regionalism was growing in popularity for several reasons: necessity, self-interest, and as a way to design a shared future and avoid a common fate. They listed a number of obstacles and challenges facing regional initiatives in the West, describing such keys to success as new and creative processes, partnerships, coalitions, planned redundancy, and the exercise of a learning, adaptive attitude on the part of regional practitioners. As strategies to support and promote regionalism, they encouraged experimentation with different models, use of Internet tools to foster communications and networks, and the development of training programs for regional practitioners built around actual case experience. While they agreed that a common framework for promoting and supporting regionalism would be helpful, they cautioned against any attempt to institutionalize what was in essence an organic movement (McKinney, Harmon and Fitch 2002).
The eastern group used four case presentations to begin sorting out what regions are for, how they might be founded and used, what role government should be asked to play, and the implications of regionalism in a global sense. In terms of general precepts and strategies, participants were encouraged to be bold, positive, goal-oriented and adaptive. Those seeking to encourage and support regional initiatives should be sure that the right science and data are available at the right time, and that research and documentation do not overlook the crucial role to be played by people in achieving the necessary behavioral/societal changes (Foster 2002a).
Both groups agreed on the need for specialized education and training in regional environmental practice. The westerners urged training in designing regional initiatives, managing regional organizations and undertaking collaborative problem solving. The easterners suggested a curriculum that would start with concepts, principles and history, and then turn to the skill sets and processes needed to build an effective constituency for change. All favored research and documentation into what works in actual practice, what doesn’t, and why.
The Next Steps
Given these encouraging developments, what does the future portend for ENREG and the field of environmental regionalism it is advocating?
First, the Lincoln Institute is developing a short course on practical strategies to help citizens and officials initiate, manage and sustain regional initiatives. It is being designed for people interested in starting and operating regional initiatives or organizations, such as individual activists, local advocacy groups, governmental officials, and business and industry leaders. The course builds on recent work supported by the Lincoln Institute (see K. Foster 2001 and C. Foster 2002) and uses a combination of lectures, case studies and simulations to provide background information and teach practical skills. The first offering of the course is planned in the spring of 2003 for a group of 20 to 30 prospective practitioners and their associated organizations interested in solving environmental problems according to “the natural territory of the problem,” whether that be watersheds, ecosystems, metropolitan areas, or other types of regions. Ideally, the course will provide an opportunity for people from a common region to come together and begin the process of thinking and acting regionally. Future courses may be convened by one or more local organizational cosponsors that will be responsible for the recruitment of practitioners and many of the logistical and organizational arrangements and for working with the Lincoln Institute to provide instructional resources.
Second and closely allied with the short course is an executive seminar for senior regional practitioners who will be invited to share information and learn from one another through a peer exchange process, thereby building and sustaining viable practitioner networks and refining the instructional principles and strategies through the use of experiences drawn from the real world. The first executive seminar will be held in the West in March 2003.
Third, former ENREG national advisor Richard Doege is seeking supplemental funding to establish a national center of excellence on environmental regionalism. His efforts focus initially on case study research and on outreach to Congress, federal and state agencies, and national environmental NGOs. The objective is to develop a constituency for legislation, governmental practices and civic action that can promote sound environmental protection and management through the exercise of regionalism. The case studies are expected to be a critical resource for developing Lincoln’s training curriculum, and the contacts with organizations and agencies will help identify additional venues, targets and cosponsors for future courses. Through his liaison with Congress, Doege has already identified a number of regionalist provisions in important pending legislation. His future outreach efforts will aim to inform Congress and the national environmental community about ENREG’s research findings and help ensure that Lincoln’s curriculum objectives reflect the current status of regionalism in governmental circles.
Finally, the ENREG planners have in mind the ongoing development of curricular materials. For example, the initial elements of theory, skills and practice will be just the first steps toward an entire “library” of subject matter from which course organizers can make their own selections. Some courses may lend themselves to conversion into distance learning modules so that training can proceed either in conventional course settings or through home computers via the Institute’s web-based instructional program, Lincoln Education Online (LEO). This combination of face-to-face courses and distance learning will advance the Institute’s long-term mission of making knowledge comprehensible and accessible to citizens, policy makers and scholars throughout the world, and ENREG will have more than fulfilled the promise perceived by its proponents at the time of its founding just a year ago.
Charles H. W. Foster is adjunct senior research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Harvard University, a former Massachusetts secretary of environmental affairs and a former dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His colleagues in the ENREG inquiry were Matthew J. McKinney, executive director of the Montana and Western Consensus Councils, and former Harvard Loeb Fellow Rebecca Talbott, a career intergovernmental partnership specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.
References
Foster, Charles H.W. 2002a. Conference summary. ENREG Eastern Regionalism Conference (April). Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
_____. 2002b. Fostering conservation and environmental regionalism: A blueprint for action. ENREG working paper (June 30). Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Foster, Charles H.W. and William B. Meyer. 2000. The Harvard Environmental Regionalism Project. Discussion paper 2000-11. Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Foster, Kathryn A. 2001. Regionalism on purpose. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
McKinney, Matthew, Will Harmon and Craig Fitch. 2002. Regionalism in the west: A working session with practitioners. (February 25). Helena: Montana Consensus Council.
McKinney, Matthew et al. 2002. Regionalism in the west: An inventory and assessment. Public Land and Resources Law Review. Missoula: University of Montana School of Law.
ENREG National Advisory Board
Robert L. Bendick, Jr., Southeastern Division vice president for The Nature Conservancy, Florida; former New York deputy commissioner for natural resources and director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
Richard L. Doege, Esq., Specialist in environmental economics and public policy; advisor to Congress in the areas of energy and the environment, Washington, DC; former business executive and legislative counsel.
Marion R. Fremont-Smith, Esq., Senior counsel at Choate, Hall and Stewart, Boston, and senior research fellow at the Kennedy School’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations; former Massachusetts assistant attorney general in charge of the Division of Public Charities.
DeWitt John, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Bowdoin College, Maine; former director of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Center for the Economy and the Environment.
Chester M. Joy, Esq., Senior analyst for natural resources and the environment at the U.S. General Accounting Office, Washington, DC.
Ethan Seltzer, Director of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies at Portland State University, Oregon; former land use supervisor for Portland Metro.
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Peter Pollock, FAICP, is the Ronald Smith Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Since July 2006 he has been working with the Department of Planning and Urban Form to manage the Institute’s joint venture projects with the Sonoran Institute and the Public Policy Research Institute of the Universtiy of Montana.
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Eduardo Reese, arquitecto que se especializa en planeamiento urbano y regional, es el subadministrador del Instituto de la Vivienda de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. En cargos profesionales anteriores, fue asesor técnico para los planes maestros de más de 20 ciudades en argentina; Secretario de Políticas Socioeconómicas del Ministerio de Desarrollo Humano y Laboral de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; asesor al Consejo de Planeamiento Urbano de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires; y Secretario de Planeamiento en la ciudad de Avellaneda.
Reese es docente en el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional del General Sarmiento en Buenos Aires. Actualmente es profesor de gestión urbana en el programa de grado en urbanismo en dicha universidad. También enseña desarrollo urbano en programas de maestría de la Faculta de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad de La Plata, así como en universidades de Mar del Plata y Córdoba. Además, dirige el plan maestro de la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo en Buenos Aires.
Land Lines: ¿Cómo se involucró usted en el Programa para América Latina del Instituto Lincoln?
Eduardo Reese: Mi relación con el Programa se remonta a 1997, cuando estábamos elaborando el plan de la ciudad de Córdoba, que incluyó la formulación de diferentes proyectos urbanos de gran escala. En ese momento el Instituto colaboró activamente para ampliar el debate de los impactos de estos proyectos sobre el mercado de suelo y, consecuentemente, en la configuración de la ciudad. Posteriormente, me fui integrando en diversas actividades del Instituto, y hace cuatro años asumí la coordinación de los cursos anuales de Gestión del Suelo en Grandes Proyectos Urbanos, a partir del fallecimiento de Mario Lungo, quien había dirigido ese programa desde su inicio.
En el 2004, el Programa y el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, realizamos en conjunto el curso Mercados de Suelo: Teoría e instrumentos para la gestión de políticas, el cual fue la primera actividad del Programa para América Latina y el Caribe que implicó un programa de formación de siete meses para 50 alumnos argentinos. Esa experiencia educativa ayudó a formar una masa crítica de técnicos y profesionales con una visión innovadora y diferente respecto de la gestión de las políticas de suelo. El impacto de ese curso se ha reflejado en decisiones de políticas urbanas en diferentes municipalidades (tales como San Fernando y Morón en el Gran Buenos Aires); en la constitución en Argentina del Movimiento de Reforma Urbana en 2005; y en cambios académicos en el mismo Instituto del Conurbano.
Land Lines: ¿Qué rol puede jugar un proyecto urbano en la calidad de vida de una ciudad en el contexto latinoamericano?
Eduardo Reese: Las grandes operaciones o proyectos urbanísticos sobre sectores definidos de la ciudad (tanto en áreas centrales como en las periferias) han sido grandes protagonistas del urbanismo contemporáneo en el último cuarto de siglo. En América Latina se cuenta hoy con un amplio muestreo de experiencias y proyectos, aunque todavía se requiere una reflexión teórica más rigurosa. Algunos ejemplos importantes son los proyectos del Portal del Bicentenario en Santiago de Chile; los proyectos urbanos integrales en Medellín, Colombia; las operaciones urbanas en diferentes ciudades de Brasil; y el proyecto de reestructuración en el sector Oeste de San Fernando, Argentina.
Sin embargo, es importante aclarar que las grandes operaciones urbanísticas son un instrumento de intervención en la ciudad que ya tienen muchos años no sólo en los países centrales, sino también en nuestras sociedades. En Buenos Aires, por ejemplo, la apertura de la Avenida de Mayo y de las diagonales, proyectada hacia 1880 y llevada a cabo en las décadas siguientes, implicó importantes impactos, tanto en lo físico-espacial como en lo social, económico y, fundamentalmente, en el campo simbólico. Este enfoque de múltiples impactos permite, sin duda, asimilar la operación de Avenida de Mayo a un gran proyecto urbano contemporáneo, pero también generó un gran debate sobre quién debía financiar la operación y quién se apropiaría de las rentas de suelo generadas. En última instancia, la Corte Suprema falló que la municipalidad no podía financiar las obras con la plusvalía generada, porque las rentas eran enteramente de los terratenientes. Durante muchos años, este caso fue un precedente en relación a la intervención estatal en el proceso de valorización de suelo generado por un gran proyecto público.
Land Lines: Usted tiene una mirada muy crítica del reconocido proyecto de regeneración urbana Puerto Madero, en Buenos Aires. ¿Qué haría de manera diferente en otras grandes áreas de redesarrollo?
Eduardo Reese: Puerto Madero es un caso emblemático de proyectos urbanos que promueven un modelo de planeamiento urbano segregado y que hoy en día se “exporta” a otras ciudades y países como instrumento básico para poder “competir” por las inversiones internacionales. En este proyecto el Estado adoptó una posición de sumisión frente al mercado y permitió la construcción de un barrio exclusivo para sectores de altísimos ingresos. Es un ejemplo notorio de una política pública diseñada explícitamente para privilegiar a los sectores más ricos sin recuperación de las enormes valorizaciones del suelo que fueron producto de esta misma política pública.
Más aún, a fin de garantizar a los inversionistas la sobrevalorización de las propiedades que compraron, el emprendimiento tiene una serie de características que la “recortan” (física y socialmente) del resto de la ciudad, creando con ello rentas aún mayores debido a la segregación. Puerto Madero no tiene un muro explícito, como los condominios cerrados, pero tiene múltiples acciones y mensajes implícitos, explícitos y simbólicos que señalan claramente que ese lugar está fuera del alcance para la mayoría de la sociedad:
En definitiva, Puerto Madero es la clara demostración de urbanismo y política pública de distribución regresiva: un “ghetto” libre de problemas para ricos.
Land Lines: En la medida en que las municipalidades compiten por inversiones externas, ¿es posible reconciliar esto con objetivos alternativos tales como prioridades ambientales y sociales?
Eduardo Reese: El problema de nuestras ciudades no es la falta de planeamiento, sino el actual orden excluyente de las políticas y del urbanismo. No puede haber una ley para la ciudad formal y un conjunto de excepciones para el resto. Es necesario crear un nuevo orden urbanístico y jurídico en América Latina respecto al derecho a la ciudad, la distribución equitativa de los beneficios de la urbanización, y la función social de la tenencia de suelo.
Land Lines: ¿De qué manera la municipalidad de San Fernando, en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, ofrece una alternativa a este enfoque?
Eduardo Reese: San Fernando es un municipio ubicado en la zona norte del Gran Buenos Aires, a 30 km de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, con una superficie continental de 23 km² y una población de 156.000 habitantes. Tiene un frente litoral al Río Luján de 5 km de extensión sobre su desembocadura en el Río de la Plata donde se concentra una gran cantidad de actividades productivas vinculadas con la náutica. Este sector del municipio tiene una ubicación privilegiada, con altos valores inmobiliarios y está dotado de la totalidad de los servicios urbanos.
El plan urbano y el modelo de gestión del suelo se comenzaron a elaborar en el 2003 a través de un convenio entre el municipio y el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. En el año 2005, un seminario de capacitación del Instituto Lincoln ayudó a ampliar las ideas tradicionales sobre manejo de suelo que abundaban en los grupos profesionales locales y llevó a una serie de decisiones importantes:
La política urbana en San Fernando se enfocó en una serie de estrategias de acción que incluyeron (1) asegurar el acceso a nuevos espacios públicos sobre el río para fines recreativos, deportivos y comerciales, especialmente para ser aprovechados por los sectores pobres; y (2) la regularización comprehensiva del sector oeste de la municipalidad, donde se concentra los mayores niveles de pobreza.
Para implementar estas estrategias, fue necesario aumentar los recursos fiscales para inversión pública de dos maneras: a través de la apropiación de la rentabilidad del uso del suelo o tierra municipal sobre el río a través de la creación del consorcio Parque Náutico de San Fernando, S.A. (PNSFSA); y con la participación de la municipalidad en la plusvalía a partir de una reforma tributaria municipal. (PNSFSA es una empresa creada por la municipalidad de San Fernando para administrar las tierras del dominio municipal en la costa ribereña del sector este de la ciudad, conocida como Marina Park).
La experiencia de San Fernando se basa en un conjunto de herramientas de gestión orientadas a la redistribución de rentas urbanas para construir una ciudad más equitativa. El suelo se considera como un activo clave dentro de una estrategia más amplia de desarrollo local y, por lo tanto, la gestión depende de una combinación de instrumentos de planeamiento, administrativos, económicos, fiscales y legales orientados a fortalecer el papel del sector público. El eje central de las políticas es la búsqueda de equidad en la distribución de los costos y beneficios de la urbanización, dentro del contexto desafiante de la creciente presión sobre el suelo en toda el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires.
Land Lines: ¿Qué cambios habría que realizar en el sistema educativo para la capacitación de los planificadores urbanos?
Eduardo Reese: Primero, es necesario incorporar una mayor comprensión del funcionamiento de los mercados de suelo en el contexto actual de las ciudades de los países en desarrollo. Segundo, hace falta un análisis más crítico de los instrumentos teóricos, metodológicos y técnicos para llevar a cabo el diagnóstico e intervención en asuntos de suelo urbano. El curso sobre mercados de suelo de 2004 que mencioné antes buscó desarrollar este tipo de materiales para permitir que los estudiantes cubrieran las diferentes escalas y dimensiones del problema.
Land Lines: ¿Qué tensiones existen entre intereses públicos y privados en el planeamiento urbano?
Eduardo Reese: Esta es una pregunta crucial porque toda la historia de la gestión territorial en nuestras ciudades ha tenido un hilo conductor: el derecho de la propiedad privada del suelo juntamente con la estructura de la propiedad han entrado siempre en conflicto con la actividad urbanística que es una responsabilidad pública. En ese sentido siempre habrá una tensión entre intereses públicos y privados en la construcción de la ciudad.
A mi juicio, los proyectos urbanos en América Latina tienen la responsabilidad de contribuir a la creación de nuevos espacios de uso y goce público, a la inclusión social, a la generación de empleo, a la equidad en el acceso a los servicios para todos, a la sostenibilidad ambiental y a la redistribución de las rentas urbanas generadas por el proyecto. Los cuatro casos mencionados antes de Chile, Colombia, Brasil y Argentina muestran que estos beneficios son posibles en muchos países.
Sin embargo, y lamentablemente, en una gran cantidad de casos en América Latina los proyectos urbanos se han justificado como necesarios para atraer inversiones y/o consumidores y asegurar o reforzar las ventajas competitivas dinámicas de la ciudad. Estos insospechados objetivos positivos a veces se usan como un mecanismo para legitimizar intervenciones que profundizan la segregación socioespacial de las ciudades. Estos efectos adversos del mercado no son fatales para las ciudades, sino que son el resultado de elecciones políticas perversas.
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Jay Espy se unió a la Fundación Elmina B. Sewall como su primer director ejecutivo en enero de 2008. Esta fundación, con sede en Brunswick, Maine, está centrada en la defensa del medio ambiente y el bienestar de los animales y los seres humanos, principalmente en el estado de Maine.
En las dos décadas anteriores, Espy fue presidente del Fideicomiso del Patrimonio Costero de Maine, una organización estatal de conservación de suelos. Durante su ejercicio, este fideicomiso aceleró sus esfuerzos de protección de suelos en toda la costa de Maine, conservando más de 50.000 hectáreas y estableciendo la Red de Fideicomisos de Suelos de Maine, que fomenta el crecimiento de fideicomisos de suelos locales en todo el estado. También lideró la exitosa Campaña de la costa del fideicomiso, recaudando más de 100 millones de dólares para conservación y duplicando la cantidad de suelos protegidos en la costa y las islas de Maine.
Espy recibió su licenciatura en Bowdoin College y un título de maestría en Administración de Empresas y Estudios Medioambientales de la Facultad de Administración y la Facultad de Estudios Forestales y Medioambientales de la Universidad de Yale. Es miembro de la junta directiva del Centro Filantrópico de Maine y la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelos de Canadá. Fue presidente de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelos, una organización nacional que presta servicios a fideicomisos de suelos en los Estados Unidos. En octubre de 2010 fue nombrado Kingsbury Browne Fellow para 2010–2011 a través de un programa conjunto de la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelos y el Instituto Lincoln.
Land Lines: ¿Cómo se involucró inicialmente en el campo de la conservación de suelos?
Jay Espy: A comienzos de mi último año en Bowdoin College, un maravilloso consejero vocacional me sugirió que quizás tener alguna experiencia en el “mundo real” podría resultarme útil para conseguir un empleo remunerado. Comencé así una pasantía documentando aves marinas en la Bahía de Casco, Maine, como parte de un proyecto de planificación de contingencias en caso de un derrame de petróleo. Esta experiencia despertó en mí una intensa pasión por la costa de Maine y me sirvió de plataforma de lanzamiento para mi carrera profesional. Después de un período en el que trabajé para una empresa consultora medioambiental, realicé estudios de posgrado en Administración de Empresas y Ciencias Forestales y Medioambientales en la Universidad de Yale, y varias pasantías más, acepté entusiasmado un trabajo a nivel de principiante en el Fideicomiso del Patrimonio Costero de Maine (Maine Coast Heritage Trust, o MCHT ) en Topsham. Por aquel entonces, MCHT era un pequeño fideicomiso estatal de suelos y una buena manera de “descubrir la dura realidad” para un aspirante a conservacionista de veintitantos años de edad, prácticamente sin credenciales.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son algunos de los proyectos de conservación de suelos más significativos en los que estuvo involucrado?
Jay Espy: A fines de la década de 1980, una gran corporación que se estaba deshaciendo de sus activos madereros en el noreste de los Estados Unidos y el Canadá marítimo, puso a la venta una parcela de 5.000 hectáreas de suelos costeros en Down East Maine, cerca de la frontera con Canadá. Este era el bloque sin desarrollar más grande del suelo costero de Maine, y uno de los mayores de toda la costa este de los Estados Unidos. MCHT nunca había tenido un desafío tan apasionante ni de tamaña envergadura.
En asociación con el estado de Maine, el Fondo de Conservación y la Fundación Richard King Mellon, MCHT lideró un esfuerzo para adquirir la propiedad y trabajar con funcionarios locales y estatales en un plan para conservar el suelo, incorporando asimismo la gestión de bosques activos, el desarrollo de sendas recreativas y viviendas económicas en el pueblo de Cutler. Si bien no lo sabíamos en ese momento, estábamos realizando “conservación comunitaria” al hacer participar a una amplia gama de sectores con intereses variados. Este proyecto sirvió para que MCHT se iniciara en la conservación de paisajes. Desde entonces se han completado docenas de proyectos en dicha región, conocida como la Costa Escarpada (Bold Coast) de Maine. Ahora el público puede acceder a más de 32 kilómetros de impresionante costa que brindan grandes oportunidades económicas a la comunidad.
Me siento privilegiado por haber podido ayudar a proteger muchos otros suelos, tanto extensos como reducidos. La Isla Marshall, una joya de 400 hectáreas a 24 kilómetros de la península de Blue Hill, que en una época estuvo a punto de ser blanco de grandes emprendimientos inmobiliarios, ahora cuenta con un extenso sistema de sendas costeras desarrolladas por MCHT. La granja Aldermere, en Camden y Rockport, es una emblemática granja de agua salada. Albert Chatfield comenzó a criar ganado Belted Galloway aquí en la década de 1950, y la granja ha albergado a este galardonado ganado de cría desde entonces. Después de que la propiedad fue donada en 1999, MCHT ha expandido considerablemente los programas agrícolas y ganaderos para la juventud de la zona y la comunidad en general, y ha protegido tierras vecinas que se usan para sostener el creciente movimiento de alimentos locales.
Land Lines: ¿Cuándo se enteró del trabajo de conservación de suelos del Instituto Lincoln, y cómo se ha involucrado usted en nuestros programas?
Jay Espy: Mi ingreso en el campo de la conservación fue completamente fortuito. A los pocos meses de comenzar a trabajar en MCHT, fui invitado a una reunión de profesionales de la conservación en el Instituto Lincoln, co-patrocinada por la Alianza de Fideicomisos de Suelos (en ese entonces conocida como el Intercambio de Fideicomisos de Suelos). Había conocido previamente a Kingsbury Browne brevemente en una conferencia en Washington, DC, pero en esa reunión tuve la oportunidad de pasar un día entero con él y con algunos de los otros venerados líderes del moderno movimiento de conservación de suelos.
Con el transcurso de muchos años, el Instituto Lincoln se convirtió en el lugar de encuentro para los conservacionistas, muchos de ellos reunidos originalmente por Kingsbury, que fueron valiosos mentores míos a medida que iba aprendiendo este oficio. El Instituto ha seguido siendo un lugar en el que las mentes creativas se reúnen para innovar, y donde se fomentan la investigación de vanguardia y la comunicación con el resto de la comunidad de conservación de suelos. Me siento honrado de formar parte de este legado como Kingsbury Browne Fellow.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son a su juicio las futuras tendencias en la conservación de suelos?
Jay Espy: El campo de la conservación está creciendo, cambiando y madurando de una manera que considero muy saludable. No hace mucho la mayoría de nosotros pensábamos que la conservación tenía que ver solamente con los suelos. Recuerdo bien los primeros folletos de los fideicomisos de suelos, llenos de fotos de hermosos paisajes, pero completamente vacíos de gente. Afortunadamente, esto ya no es así.
Hoy en día, la mayoría de los que participamos del movimiento comprendemos que la conservación se refiere tanto a los suelos como a la gente. Se trata de cómo las comunidades se benefician de ecosistemas saludables; cómo las oportunidades de recreación cerca del hogar combaten la inactividad juvenil y la obesidad; cómo los suelos agrícolas protegidos contribuyen a la seguridad alimentaria y la disponibilidad de comida nutritiva local; cómo los espacios al aire libre, que incorporan artes y entretenimiento locales, contribuyen a crear centros vibrantes en las ciudades; cómo el agua limpia, los bosques y multitud de otros recursos naturales gestionados de manera sustentable pueden respaldar el desarrollo económico y la creación de puestos de trabajo; y cómo los suelos bien gestionados nos permiten vivir vidas más ricas y completas, tanto individual como colectivamente.
En todo el país, los silos que han separado el trabajo de conservación, la salud pública, las artes, la educación, el hambre, la vivienda, la producción de alimentos y el desarrollo económico están desapareciendo. Esta tendencia me resulta alentadora. El trabajo que hagamos hoy sólo perdurará en el tiempo si genera un beneficio directo y tangible para la gente a lo largo de muchas décadas. La participación colaborativa de todos con estos intereses amplios y variados es un ingrediente esencial en cualquier receta exitosa de conservación duradera.
Land Lines: ¿Cómo podemos convertir los problemas de financiamiento de la conservación en oportunidades?
Jay Espy: Tenemos, en efecto, muchos desafíos en el frente financiero. El financiamiento público de las fuentes gubernamentales estatales y federales tradicionales ha ido disminuyendo, las fundaciones privadas han sufrido una erosión de sus activos, y los donantes individuales han adoptado, comprensiblemente, una actitud más conservadora con sus inversiones filantrópicas, debido a los altibajos de la bolsa. En consecuencia, hoy se emprenden menos proyectos a gran escala de conservación de suelos que requieren decenas de millones de dólares, como los que vimos a fines de la década de 1990 y a comienzos de la década de 2000.
A pesar de ello, se sigue financiando una gran variedad de trabajos importantes de conservación en todo el país. El respaldo público para la conservación local sigue siendo alto, y la mayoría de las iniciativas de financiamiento local por emisión de bonos sigue siendo aprobada por amplios márgenes. Las donaciones individuales y de fundaciones para proyectos de conservación no se han derrumbado, como se temía. Los patrocinadores siguen proporcionando fondos, pero ahora son más selectivos. Además, los proyectos de conservación que tocan múltiples intereses humanos y que cuentan con la participación de múltiples socios están atrayendo nuevas fuentes no tradicionales de apoyo financiero. Recientemente hablé con un patrocinador de proyectos de salud que cree que es importante disponer de más suelos para la recreación pública como una medida preventiva sanitaria fundamental. El financiamiento de conservación de suelos agrícolas también ha crecido sustancialmente en los últimos años, impulsado en parte por la popularidad explosiva del movimiento por los alimentos locales.
Land Lines: ¿Puede compartir con nosotros algunos ejemplos de éxitos innovadores en la conservación de suelos?
Jay Espy: En un área remota del este de Maine, el Fideicomiso de Suelos de Downeast Lakes ha estado trabajando desde hace más de una década para proteger grandes extensiones forestales que bordean la costa cerca de la comunidad de Grand Lake Stream. Estos suelos y aguas han respaldado la economía maderera y de recreación durante más de un siglo. Con el declive de la industria del papel y la pulpa, se han vendido varias empresas comerciales madereras de gran envergadura.
En vez de esperar simplemente a que se produzca el desarrollo inevitable de casas de vacaciones y la pérdida de la cultura local, la comunidad ha trabajado de manera extraordinaria para adquirir decenas de miles de hectáreas, y varios kilómetros de suelos costeros, para usarlos como bosques que generan ingresos, preservación de la vida silvestre y áreas recreativas apartadas. Los empresarios locales, los guías de caza y pesca, los representantes de agencias estatales y federales, los miembros de la tribu indígena Passamaquoddy y funcionarios electos a nivel local, estatal y nacional unieron sus fuerzas al fideicomiso de suelos para adquirir estas propiedades y gestionarlas para obtener ingresos sustentables de la madera así como de otros usos tradicionales, incluyendo la caza, la pesca, el camping y el remo.
En el pueblo de Skowhegan, en la parte central de Maine, una joven mujer emprendedora adquirió una vieja cárcel del condado y la está convirtiendo en un molino de cereales. Una vez que entre en funcionamiento, el molino procesará aproximadamente 600 toneladas de cereales anuales, un monto que requiere alrededor de 250 hectáreas de suelos de cultivo. Esta zona de Maine fue en su momento una próspera región triguera, y se cree que suministró a las tropas de la Unión una parte importante de su pan durante la Guerra Civil. Ubicado en el centro del pueblo, el lote del estacionamiento de la vieja cárcel es ahora un exitoso mercado de granjeros locales. También se ubicarán en la cárcel una cocina comercial y varias empresas de alimentos y artesanías, ayudando a crear un “centro alimenticio”.
Skowhegan es el asiento de uno de los condados más pobres de Maine. ¿Podrá este centro alimenticio cambiar la fortuna de la región? ¿Podrá una demanda creciente de cereales revertir la pérdida de suelos agrícolas y conservar y cultivar más hectáreas de campo? Todos los signos sugieren que la respuesta a ambas preguntas es “sí”. Creo que lo que está ocurriendo en Skowhegan es un ejemplo maravilloso de la nueva cara del movimiento de conservación. Todavía no se puede reconocer a simple vista, pero sospecho que iremos conociendo mejor este tipo de enfoque comunitario en los años venideros.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son sus expectativas sobre el rol de la conservación en la economía volátil de la actualidad?
Jay Espy: Soy bastante optimista, porque la adversidad hace que la gente se una más. Con menos, estamos aprendiendo a trabajar colectivamente para lograr más. A medida que participa más gente en la conservación, desarrollando relaciones con y alrededor del suelo, y viendo como esas relaciones tienen un impacto positivo en sus vidas, estoy convencido de que veremos logros más extendidos, significativos y duraderos de conservación. El suelo, la gente y la comunidad están profundamente interrelacionados. Irónicamente, estos tiempos difíciles pueden estar acelerando la transformación inevitable de la conservación hacia una actividad que beneficie a más personas y más aspectos de la vida comunitaria.
