Transfer Of Development Rights Programs Research Articles

Integrating ecosystem services in transfer of development rights: a literature review

In recent years, transfer of development rights (TDR) programs have become widespread as a mechanism for implementing urban transformations and achieving planning goals. As market-based instruments, they facilitate land acquisition whilst avoiding compulsory purchases and minimizing public spending. By promoting urban transformation, TDR programs affect the provision of ecosystem services (ES) delivered by green and permeable areas. ES are essential for wellbeing, and the inclusion of ES in planning decisions promotes sustainable urban development. This research aims to provide a starting point for mainstreaming ES knowledge in TDR studies and application. Through a literature review, this paper aims to gain greater understanding as to what ways, and to what extent, ES have been considered so far in TDR studies and to identify if there is evidence that demonstrates how ES can be included in the design phases of TDR programs to improve their effectiveness in ensuring sustainable spatial transformations. The results show that the inclusion of ES can strengthen the ex-ante phase of TDR processes, supporting the development of the design features and paying greater attention to receiving areas identified during the process.

A Technical Proposal for the Implementation of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) on Preserved Historic Buildings in Turkey

Buildings that have cultural and historical significance are very important elements of our living spaces and they must be protected by public authorities. However, the preservation of these buildings prevents their landowners from using their development rights and causes economic losses. If those losses are not compensated, it results in social injustice. Leaving this problem unsolved makes historic buildings a target for arson, facilitates the destruction of unregistered (unlisted) historic buildings for redevelopment with a higher density. The traditional methods, namely expropriation and property exchange, generally fail to compensate those development losses. However, the method of transfer of development rights (TDR) can be a good option for this task in Turkey as well. Although there have been some important legislative actions, an “implementing regulation” could not be enacted so far. In this study, we attempt to develop a step-by-step methodology for the implementation of a TDR program from the perspective of land management. The methodology introduced in this paper is also tested for its validity by interviewing 18 professionals from related sectors and all the interviewees agreed on them with minor suggestions. The results derived from this study could benefit not only property owners, but also overall preservation efforts in the country.

A national inventory and analysis of US transfer of development rights programs

Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs shift development intensity between land parcels. Jurisdictions, most commonly local municipal or county governments, employ TDR to protect resources such as farmland or historical properties and to encourage infill and redevelopment where deemed appropriate. However, while championed by economists and others seeking to reduce conflicts between land development and preservation, TDR program adoption has varied widely across the US. What demographic, economic, or environmental factors are associated with TDR program establishment? This paper describes a census of 375 TDR programs in the United States, documenting primary program attributes and adoption year and categorizing their functions and typology. Using logistic regression, we analyze program spatial patterns and factors predicting program implementation. We find that areas that are coastal, more liberal, have higher home values, in home-rule states, and in states with state-wide growth management programs, are all significantly more likely to implement TDR programs.

Urban planning and the market of development rights in Italy: learning from Milan

In recent years, the influence of neoliberal principles has led to an experimental application of new market-oriented approaches in the field of urban studies, in order to achieve different objectives of public interest, from the compensation of land use restrictions to the acquisition of areas for public services. Also in Italy, the use of equalization and non-financial compensation mechanisms has been influenced by internationally consolidated models, such as the Transfer of Development Rights programs (TDR). The key issue concerns the legal autonomy of development rights from land ownership, allowing their trade in the municipal market and thus, in theory, balancing private and public benefits. The scientific debate focuses on the several opportunities, in terms of planning effectiveness and flexibility, but also envisages the risk to generate unfairness, deregulation and other speculations. The paper aims to assess the positive and negative impacts of a generalized use of TDR in the urban governance and in the real estate market, adopting a case study research method. The experience of Milan has been investigated, analyzing the municipal registry of development rights. The results highlight strengths and weaknesses of the market of development rights application, in particular the risk of encouraging real estate speculation, in the same way as financial markets. Conclusions suggest the need of a more effective integration of market-based tools in the planning and regulatory framework, avoiding that their uncontrolled use could weaken the role of public authority in the local government.

Land Preservation Under the Transfer of Development Rights Program

Problem, research strategy, and findings Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs are land preservation programs that promise to conserve land in its current use by allowing landowners to sell development rights on their parcels. Using Montgomery County (MD) as an example, I examine how development patterns evolve under a TDR program and how well this program delivers its promise of permanent preservation. Montgomery County is a national model as one of the most successful TDR programs in the United States. After matching the digitized TDR transaction records with land use/land cover maps, I found a clear effect of the program on encouraging agricultural land and forest preservation. However, scattered development patterns have also emerged in the TDR sending area. The TDR program showed promising effects on preserving agricultural land and forest but also insufficiency in advancing desirable development patterns and ensuring permanent conservation. Takeaway for practice Planners should be cautious about the putative advantages of land preservation through TDR programs. Such efforts may not engender the desired outcomes. Owing to the unbridled pressure for development in large metropolitan areas, attempting to maintain land for agricultural and forest use perpetually in their suburbs is financially challenging. Thus, planners should enhance their endeavors to track the actual preservation achieved by TDR programs and discern whether sprawling patterns start to emerge in the TDR sending areas. I also discuss specific design features that planners can use in land preservation programs to improve their effectiveness.

The State as Both Regulator and Player: The Politics of Transfer of Development Rights in China

AbstractThe conventional argument that the introduction of transfer of development rights (TDR) shifts the power of land use regulation from the state to the market is increasingly under challenge. In China, the state's grip on land is reinforced through TDR, in which the state is both regulator and player. This state‐dominated form of TDR affects China in three ways. First, competing aspirations of different scales of government complicate how TDR is implemented. Although the central state promotes TDR to maintain a national balance of arable land, some local states instrumentalize it to expand their landed basis of accumulation. Secondly, TDR tends to benefit the state but not its people. It may increase the fiscal income of the sending government and lessen the land shortage of the receiving government, but sometimes at the expense of the interests of land users without land ownership. Thirdly, given the state's deep involvement in TDR programs, the key for China's TDR to protect arable land lies not so much in clear property rights or a fully fledged market as in effective checks and balances regarding the state's powers over TDR. These three observations attest to the embeddedness of TDR in the local political economy.

Why do counties adopt transfer of development rights programs?

Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs are widely-used market-based tools for growth management efforts that seek to protect farmland, natural areas, and other open spaces threatened by development pressure. Yet, little is known about why local governments adopt, or do not adopt TDR. This study uses descriptive analysis and logistic regression modeling to identify local factors associated with the adoption of TDR by Florida counties from the 1970s to the 2010s. We find that counties that adopt TDR tend to be larger in size, with higher agricultural product sales, and voter-supported land conservation ballot measures. TDR adoption is also associated with home rule authority and a greater percentage of Republican voters, suggesting that market-based mechanisms are linked to both local ability to adopt innovative planning strategies, and to political conservatism. Overall, TDR appears to be a tool that developed counties use to rationalize growth across large areas.

The transfer of development rights in the midst of the economic crisis: Potential, innovation and limits in Italy

The paper deals with the transfer of development rights (TDR) in Italy. It presents a comparative analysis of the TDR programs implemented in the twelve capital cities of the Lombardy region in the past decade. After introducing the international debate on TDR and the distinctive features of the transfer of development rights in Italy, the essay analyses the specificity of TDR programs in Lombardy. The spread of this planning mechanism is stressed, and seven relevant characterising aspects of TDR programs in Lombardy are highlighted (with reference to: reasons for TDR adoption, designation of sending and receiving areas, allocation rate, destiny of sending areas, mandatory nature of the transfer, market of development rights and role of the public authority). The analysis identifies internal factors (e.g. related to the design of the program) and external factors (e.g. exogenous to the program, such as the condition of the real estate market) for the success of the transfer of development rights in the Lombardy case. It allows us also to enrich (and partially correct) the international debate on the TDR, by considering the diffusion of this planning tool in Italy and its potential.

Estimates of Transaction Costs in Transfer of Development Rights Programs

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Local jurisdictions in 36 states have implemented transfer of development rights (TDR) programs to provide a market-based approach to preserving farmlands and open space while redirecting future development to targeted areas. Participation in TDR programs involves transaction costs over and above paying for TDR credits. Planners know little about the magnitude of transaction costs; who, if anyone, incurs a disproportionate share of these costs; or how transaction costs affect TDR participation. In this study we estimate the magnitude and distribution of transaction costs incurred by participants in 4 countywide TDR programs in Maryland, a TDR pioneer, by interviewing multiple participants in these programs. We fi nd that total transaction costs were high and borne largely by private sector participants, although we exclude the initial public sector costs of establishing the programs. Total transaction costs range from 13% to 21% of total TDR costs per transaction. Our findings are based on data reported by participants and may not be scalable; transaction costs, however, might deter landowners from participating in TDR programs, thus thwarting the land use goals of planners.Takeaway for practice: Planners should work to reduce transaction costs by better constructing TDR programs and providing greater information on TDR sale prices and potential buyers and sellers. Lowering and more fairly distributing transaction costs will make the TDR program a more successful approach to achieving land use goals and addressing the externalities arising from land use markets.

Transfer of development rights and urban land markets

Transfer of development rights (TDR) is seen as an important tool for land use planning, in large part because it leverages market mechanisms. TDR extends market concepts used primarily in emissions trading programs to the arena of land use. However, with the exception of a handful of success stories, TDR programs generate few transfers. Although researchers generally attribute the weak performance of TDR to program design flaws, this study demonstrates that the unique conditions presented by urban land markets explain, in part, why TDR programs often underperform. I present a case study of a TDR program in Sarasota, Florida, to address two questions. First, what attributes of urban land markets may impact TDR program design and outcomes? Second, is TDR a planning tool that can achieve desired planning goals, given the conditions of land markets? I find that the unique features of land markets—specifically (1) the sensitivity of development to timing; (2) imperfect information, uncertainty, and speculative activity; (3) unique features of land; (4) the limited number of buyers and sellers; and (5) the development orientation of urban political and planning institutions—distort the market for transferable development rights. The Sarasota case demonstrates how local land market characteristics contributed to a set of incremental program design and implementation decisions that, in sum, amounted to significant departures from fundamental program principles and mechanisms. These resulted in imperfect market conditions and rendered the TDR program ineffective.

Transfer of development rights in theory and practice: The restructuring of TDR to incentivize development

In the 2000s, Florida local governments began using transfer of development rights (TDR) to enable a mix of conservation and development rights on large landholdings in rural areas. While the theoretical function of TDR is to facilitate a market for development rights exchanges, these programs envision little or no exchange of development rights, and instead use TDR as part of effectuating new development conditions. Previous research on TDR focuses on program performance, and provides little insight into why TDR programs might differ in theory and practice. In this research, I explore the design and orientation of Florida’s emergent rural TDR programs. I argue that these programs restructure TDR primarily as an incentive rather than its theoretical function of enabling a market in support of managed growth. As a result, these programs are biased toward development over conservation. The programs also present an ambiguous treatment of property and development rights. The research raises questions about how well market-based land use strategies deliver “win–win” outcomes that balance economic growth and environmental protection.

TDR Program Performance in Florida

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs can help manage growth through the exchange of development rights from sending areas targeted for protection to receiving areas targeted for development. We ask 1) what TDR approaches are used in Florida, and 2) which approaches effectively help communities manage growth? We identify three distinct TDR approaches, corresponding to different stages in Florida's growth management policies. Conventional TDR programs reflect Florida's early growth management policies by facilitating rural-to-urban transfers; they have had limited impact. Hybrid TDR programs reflect a smart growth orientation; they have been most successful at retiring vested development rights in areas that cannot support growth. Rural TDR programs reflect a recent focus on economic development; they have saved many acres, but too often at the expense of increased rural sprawl. Some successful programs owe their outcomes largely to public land purchases and not to private market exchanges. We conclude that most Florida TDR programs do little to manage growth, and that acres conserved is an inadequate and often misleading measure of program success.Takeaway for practice: To manage urban growth, planners must ensure that TDR programs operate in alignment with local comprehensive plans. Planners must assess the performance of TDR programs with measures other than acres preserved and adopt complementary policies that facilitate density to make TDR programs effective.

Study on the Montgomery County Farmland Preservation Program and its Enlightenment for China

Montgomery County has been home to a strong agricultural industry, and the Farmland Preservation Program has contributed a lot. The two parts of the Program-the Transfer of Development Rights Program and the Purchase of Development Rights Program have preserved a great amount of farmland for the county and keep the development and prosperity of the agriculture. Nowadays, the recession of agriculture and the decrease of farmland are serious in China, so it is urgent to find solutions to those problems. The experiences from the Montgomery County has a certain sense of enlightenment for China to deal with the situation, such as 1) convert the development views and response to urban sprawl, 2) using economic means to solve the problems of farmland preservation, 3) establishing the development rights to guarantee the benefits and interests of farmers, 4) developing more scientific and reasonable land evaluation methods for the compensation.

What Makes Transfer of Development Rights Work?: Success Factors From Research and Practice

Problem: Over the last four decades, at least 20 authors have identified various components thought to be necessary for effective transfer of development rights (TDR) programs. However, the factors most commonly cited in these articles have not yet been isolated and systematically compared with a substantial number of TDR programs that have accomplished meaningful preservation results to date. Purpose: This article is intended to help planners create effective TDR programs by identifying those features that contribute significantly to success. Methods: We created a list of the 20 U.S. TDR programs that have preserved the most land to date. We then identified the 10 success factors that publications about TDR have cited most frequently since 1972 and determined how many of the 20 programs actually exhibit these factors. Results and conclusions: The following 10 success factors are those referenced most often in the literature. Each is followed by the number of top 20 TDR programs that exhibit this factor in parentheses. Demand for bonus development (20), customized receiving areas (20), strict sending-area regulations (18), few alternatives to TDR (17), market incentives (15), certainty of use (14), strong public preservation support (13), simplicity (13), promotion and facilitation (12), and a TDR bank (4). These results suggest that the first two factors are essential to success, the next three are extremely important, and the remaining five factors are helpful but not necessarily critical, although some, such as TDR banks, can produce extraordinary results. Takeaway for practice: Communities can establish successful TDR programs by designating receiving areas that fit local conditions and offering development bonuses that developers actually want and need. In addition, successful TDR programs appear to require at least one of the following three characteristics: strict sending-area regulations, market incentives, and/or few ways for development to gain bonus density without using TDR. Five other factors are generally not essential to success, but can greatly improve program effectiveness. Research support: None.

Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.

A study on containment of development in farmland by Transfer of Development Rights

TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) is a land preservation tool by which owners of property who are well situated for development acquires the development rights from a property for conservation. Since 1990s, U.S. cities have adopted TDR programs as an effective tool for achieving Smart Growth. In Netherlands, which had strict land-use regulation, TDR began to be introduced to prevent sprawl. Although Japan has many cities experiencing serious sprawl, TDR is seldom considered as a tool to cope with it. In this study, a methodology to implement TDR in Japan is suggested and the feasibility of TDR is discussed.

米国コロラド州ボルダー市の都市成長管理政策と開発権移転に関する考察

Boulder City’s first urban service boundary, called the “Blue Line”, was established in 1959. Boulder County, in 1989, introduced transfers of development rights through a process called non-contiguous non-urban planned unit development (NCNUPUD). But it was not used extensively, because receiving sites were not pre-designated and the transfer of development rights (TDRs) was to be able only into unincorporated portions of the County. Boulder County and the City of Boulder jointly prepared and adopted the Boulder Valley Transfer of Development Rights Program (TDR/PUD). The program identified sending sites, receiving sites and the number of TDRs that can be transferred between these areas. While some receiving sites are within the unincorporated portions of the County, many receiving sites are within the City of Boulder. This program was implemented through an inter-governmental agreement, or IGA, between the City of Boulder and Boulder County adopted in 1995.

The Effect of Farmland Preservation Programs on Farmland Prices

AbstractGovernment agencies in urbanizing areas are increasingly utilizing purchase and transfer of development rights programs to preserve farmland and protect local farm economies. This article tests the effect of development restrictions imposed by permanent easement sales on farmland sales prices, using Maryland data. We correct for selectivity bias due to the voluntary nature of these programs in estimating hedonic sales equations. Although preserved parcels' actual land values are lower, the effect of the restrictions is not statistically significant. These findings may encourage additional participation in preservation programs or justify reductions in the easement prices paid by agencies.

Managing coastal development: An evaluation of the transfer of development rights approach

Abstract The protection of open space poses a great challenge to coastal communities, given the significant pressure for residential development in most coastal areas. This study examines the transfer of development rights (TDR) as one solution to this problem. The results of this TDR simulation, conducted for South Kingstown, Rhode Island, indicate that there are particular problems inherent in coastal areas that make it difficult to have a successful TDR program. We conclude the paper by offering some modifications to the TDR program and by suggesting alternative land preservation approaches.

Spatial-equilibrium analysis of transferable development rights

Transfer of development rights (TDR) programs combine low-density incentives with zoning flexibility to generate a market for development rights and to redirect land-use patterns. A differentiated spatial-equilibrium model is used to study the impacts of brokered and unbrokered TDR programs on rents, consumption/location patterns, household utility, and property-tax revenues. Properties of the TDR market, the relationship of TDR systems to uncontrolled and zoned economies, and questions regarding the optimal control of a TDR program are also examined.