Social and institutional factors associated with land use and forest conservation along two urban gradients in Massachusetts

Abstract

With the rate of suburban development now surpassing the amount of land protected nationally for conservation, the act of preserving land from development becomes a crucial need to support critical ecosystem services and human quality of life. While previous studies have quantified the loss of forest lands and open spaces along urban gradients, rarely have they quantified the connections between land use policies, actions and land use change. We examined social and institutional factors positively influencing land conservation efforts across two urban gradients in Massachusetts, one surrounding the large, economically growing city of Boston and the other surrounding the smaller, economically depressed city of Springfield. Despite their differences, the metropolitan areas of these two cities are both growing rapidly. We measured forest and open space protection for a sample of 15 towns, comparing this with quantitative assessments of town-level open space policies, investment in conservation planning, wealth, and social capital, in the form of local land trusts. We found significant differences between the two urban gradients, with greater land protection occurring in the Boston area towns. The towns with the largest proportion of protected land were at the urban end of both gradients. We found that land trusts played a significant role in the conservation of open spaces, and wealthier towns were more likely to have longstanding, active land trusts. This result suggests that fostering land trusts in lower-income communities could have a lasting positive impact on land conservation in the face of rapid suburbanization.