No (Back)Sliding: Amenity Migration, Viewsheds, and Contesting Steep Slope Ordinances in Western North Carolina

Abstract

In 2007, in the midst of the global building boom, County Commissioners in rural Jackson County, North Carolina passed new land-use regulations to limit steep slope development in the Appalachian Mountains. The zoning ordinance is considered the strictest in the state and has become a model for other western North Carolina counties where the transition from extractive rural to exurban economies is underway. Land-use ordinances are key to inscribing new environmental management regimes and while seeming to protect natural areas for their ecological value, they also protect and create natural amenity for the benefit of real estate investment. In contrast to much exurban political ecology research from the American West (see, e.g., Walker and Fortmann 2003), the battle over landscape ideology among developers, long-term rural residents, and amenity migrants over competing visions for the future of Jackson County’s mountain landscapes unfolded in a surprising way. Coalitions between long-time residents and exurbanites were forged in support of the new zoning, calling into question the assumption that the transition from resource economies to amenity economies—reterritorialization—is always accompanied by a clear-cut power shift in the environmental management regime from extraction to protection. Our case also points to the existence of a process of counter-territorialization, which highlights the ways competing land-use control approaches emerge to push back against proposed changes to landscape valuation.