Linked landscapes: Creating greenway corridors through conservation subdivision design strategies in the northeastern and central United States

Abstract

Very broadly conceived, greenways can encompass extensive areas comprising natural and cultural landscapes such as prime farmland and upland habitat, in addition to linear elements such as stream valleys or environmentally sensitive lands which are unfit for development due to wetness, floodability, or steepness. Local land-use regulations can be written and implemented to pre-identify potential open space within each new residential subdivision in such a manner that every development contributes a segment to the community-wide conservation network envisioned in its comprehensive planning documents. These reservations can easily comprise 40–70% of the buildable land within each new neighborhood, a major distinction setting this approach apart from previous “clustering” techniques—which were rarely utilized in any coordinated way to preserve interconnected open space networks. This approach augments the contributions of the planning profession with critical insights from the field of landscape architecture by institutionalizing basic principles of site assessment, planning, and design in new model zoning and subdivision ordinance language. Those recommended regulatory provisions can then be adopted by local governments in developing areas at the edges of expanding metropolitan regions, a process that can be enhanced and accelerated through education programs for local officials. The advantages of this approach lie in its economy, administrative ease, fairness to landowners, and political acceptance, which combine to make it potentially one of the most promising physical planning techniques to emerge in recent decades.