Evaluating land use plans under uncertainty

Abstract

A method is proposed that planners and stakeholders can use to select an optimal land use plan that balances the socioeconomic benefits and environmental costs of regional growth. It entails seven steps: (1) specifying alternative growth futures; (2) formulating land use policies to alleviate potential adverse environmental impacts of alternative futures; (3) evaluating socioeconomic and environmental impacts (outcomes) with land use policies and alternative futures; (4) using a multiple attribute utility function to score outcomes and rank land use plans based on those scores; (5) determining an optimal plan for stakeholders based on some decision criterion; (6) employing a conflict resolution method to resolve stakeholder disagreements about optimal plans; and (7) using passive adaptive management to determine whether an implemented plan remains optimal over time. The proposed method is demonstrated for a hypothetical case study that incorporates: (1) low, medium, and high future growth rates for major industries in a region; (2) unrestrictive, moderately restrictive, and highly restrictive land use policies that limit the location and density of residential and non-residential development; (3) economic output and habitat fragmentation attributes of outcomes; (4) a linear additive, multiple attribute utility function; (5) pro-development, neutral, and pro-environment stakeholder preferences for attributes; and (6) optimal plan selection based on the maximin principle. Results for the hypothetical case study indicate that the ranking of the three plans and the optimal plan differ across the three stakeholder groups, and the optimal collective plan varies depending on which conflict resolution method is used and whether the assessment is ex ante or ex post.