Expert: Plan ‘will do nothing to preserve’ rural areas

Friday, Aug. 12, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

A leading national planning expert says a proposed Las Vegas ordinance to create rural preservation districts "will do nothing to preserve" rural areas, but rather will drive up property values and diminish available land.

Jeff Soule, policy director of the American Planning Association in Washington, D.C., a leading organization in the field of rural and urban planning, is suspicious of the city's motives for its proposed ordinance.

"The APA is against exclusionary zoning, which is what the city is trying to do with this large lot zoning to keep certain areas homogeneous," Soule said.

"You should not use this as a disguise to pretend you are preserving rural areas. All you are doing is driving up land prices and eating up the land for development. You are not conserving rural resources."

Soule, who has spoken extensively on both rural planning and urban design, said when it comes to trying to keep much of older Las Vegas rural, "that horse is out of the barn."

Soule said if the city were serious about protecting rural areas there are lots of time-tested methods that can be utilized to preserve wide open spaces.

For example, he said, Montgomery County, Md., utilizes "transfer development rights," which allow developers to purchase easements from farmers and other rural land owners and then go to urban areas designed for higher density, buy property there and trade in the easements to obtain bonus density.

"The farmer is happy because he gets some money and gets to keep his property rural, the city is happy because it gets higher density where it wants it and the developer is happy because he gets to build more homes and make more money," Soule said.

He noted that if such a program existed in the Las Vegas Valley, Gilcrease Orchard, the valley's last remaining working farm, likely would not have been forced to sell off 40 of its 107 acres to make way for homes that many residents now are protesting because they say it destroys the rural atmosphere of the area.

Jeff Rhoads, a board member of the Las Vegas chapter of the The Urban Land Institute, says what Las Vegas is experiencing is a "typical problem as we see urban growth into areas that are settled" nationwide.

"People are trying to preserve a certain neighborhood quality," he said. "(The city's proposed ordinance) tries to recognize the existing residents' concerns and desires."

Rhodes, president of the Argonaut Company, a local land planning and community development consulting firm that is not involved in rural preservation neighborhoods, said people feel the need for protection because the natural tendency is for developers to try to build at a higher density.

He said developers are pressed to build at ever higher densities because land in Las Vegas is selling at about $500,000 an acre.

"The real challenge is to reconcile the concerns of residents (of half-acre properties) with developers who have suburban design standards in mind and want to build six units per acre because land."

Asked if he believes the city's proposed ordinance is bad for growth for the region, Rhodes said, "It has to be taken on a case-by-case basis."

"There are viable neighborhoods to preserve," he said. "But maybe there also are other areas that no longer are viable as rural communities and could be replaced by contemporary residential development."