Urban Containment and Open Space Preservation
Dr. Nelson was the first to demonstrate empirically how land markets respond to urban containment that includes Greenfield preservation. Urban containment will steer regional market demand for development to areas inside urban containment boundaries (UCBs) with the effect that the value of land for urban development rises inside UCBs and falls outside them. The value of land for farming and other working landscape uses rises as with respect to distance from UCBs because the closer to the boundary such land is, the more it is impacted adversely by negative externalities imposed by urban neighborhoods. On the other hand, the value of land just inside the UCB falls with respect to UCB distance because the positive effects of Greenbelt amenities diminish. Dr. Nelson argued for schemes that capture positive land use gains inside the UCB to compensate for losses outside. Dr. Nelson also showed that the aggregate effect of leapfrog urban development patterns is to push the value of land for working landscape purposes below that which may sustain economically viable operations.
Gerrit J. Knaap and Arthur C. Nelson. 1993. The Regulated Landscape: Lessons of Statewide Planning From Oregon. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1993. The Urban Growth Boundary as a Growth Management Tool. In Planning the Oregon Way: A Twenty-Year Appraisal, Carl Abbott and Deborah Howe, eds. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1992. "Preserving Prime Farmland in the Face of Urbanization," Journal of the American Planning Association 58(4): 467-488.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1991. "The Analytic Basis for Farmland Preservation Policies," Journal of Rural Studies 6(3): 337-346.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1988. "Additional and Reduced Demand/Amenity and Disamenity Increment Recapture: Considerations of Urban Containment Policies." Real Estate Issues 13(1): 47-51.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1988. "An Empirical Note on How Regional Urban Containment Policy Influences An Interaction Between Greenbelt and Exurban Land Markets." Journal of the American Planning Association 54(3): 178-184.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1986. "Using Land Markets to Evaluate Urban Containment Programs." Journal of the American Planning Association 52(2): 156-71.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1985. "An Overview of Greenbelt Influences on Regional Land Values: Implications for Regional Planning Policy," Growth and Change 16(2): 43-48.
Arthur C. Nelson. 1985. "Demand, Segmentation, and Timing Effects of an Urban Containment Program on Urban Fringe Land Values." Urban Studies 22(4): 439-443.