Growth Is Squeezing Out Rural Life In Arizona
Arizona's rural landscapes are being taken over and obstructed by huge housing booms and development projects. Residents are supporting a ballot initiative to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres of land, while legislators side with developers.
Rural land is quickly being eaten up in Arizona, one of the nation's most active housing markets. Many older residents and state natives are upset about the rapid urbanization of Arizona, a home they have chosen because of its open views, scenic hiking trails and easy access to the natural world. Facing some large housing developments within state-owned land, residents are backing one ballot initiative for this year's November elections seeking to preserve 700,000 acres of land, while legislators have proposed a watered-down version seeking to impose light limits on development in 400,000 acres.
"In the coming years, the rocks and hiking trails, cactuses and coyotes that surround many rural properties will give way to thousands of houses plus restaurants and shopping centers."
"The State Land Department continues to sell off parcels of pristine desert to keep up with the state's booming population."
"Last year, the agency sold a record $515 million in land. Later this year, it will sell its largest parcel to date: a 275-square mile swath of terrain in the East Valley known as Superstition Vistas."
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LA and Phoenix
LA and the rest of Southern California was a really nice place with lots of open space too once I am sure BEFORE a gazillion people moved there. And so there goes Phoenix along with the fate of many other western cities with desirable locations and attractive settings in the landscape. SO the goal then would be to find a place with a nice climate, beautiful open spaces, lots of jobs, good schools, etc...and don't tell anyone else about it, indeed stop writing to your friends and relatives in other parts of the country and if you see anyone from the press or media tell them how miserable life is here! hehe.
Frank
Tempe, AZ
My Opinion
^ LOL
I agree that something need to be done. I was reading a story a few months back that a developer had been approved for a plan that would creat virtually a new city with 100,000 people in the new plan and a town center and take up around, i think, dont quote me, i cant find the artilce now, 75,000 acres of AZ land. man, something needs to be done before AZ is just engulfed in sprawl. imagine this, i am the realtor:
from this window you can see your neighborhood, being on a cul-de-dac you can easily make friendly relations with your neighbors and throw block parties. but come this way, this is the money shot, from this window, you can view the entire grand canyon!!!
lol
NAUTF | North American Urban Transit Forum
Easy solution
Since the state is selling land, the supporters of preservation should just buy it and thus guarantee its preservation. Or are they not willing to put up their own money for the cause, only other people's?
Everyone Benefits, Everyone Should Pay
Since the public benefits from preserving open space, the public should pay through taxes.
Otherwise, you have a freeloader effect: many people who want the open space would not pay for it, figuring they would get the public space whether or not they paid.
You might as well say that police protection or fire protection should not be paid for by taxes; only people who want them should pay for them. But everyone benefits if the police arrest a dangerous criminal or if the fire department puts out a fire before it spreads. Since everyone benefits, everyone should pay - or else there will be much less police and fire protection than the optimum because of the freeloader effect.
This is economics 101: basic economics of public goods.
Charles Siegel
Solution already proposed.
Or are they not willing to put up their own money for the cause, only other people's?
The article answers your question for you. (It is contained in the passage The other ballot measure, Proposition 106, is called Conserving Arizona's Future...it wants to automatically preserve 259,000 acres and set aside an additional 358,000 acres that could be purchased by cities and set aside for conservation )
HTH,
D
Open space
Open space is not a service or necessarily a benefit. It is not comparable to fire/police/schools in that open space exists already. (Recreation in the form of pools and community centers are a different matter.) I feel since the developers taking away open space while adding people that need it they should be the ones to pay for it.
more open space.
Open space is not a service or necessarily a benefit
Open space is an amenity and the proximity principle (where municipalities use locational attributes of houses to parks/open space to forecast higher tax revenue than parcels farther from parks/open space) is well-known. That is: proximity to high quality open space often translates to higher property values.
I feel since the developers taking away open space while adding people that need it they should be the ones to pay for it.
So open space is a benefit. But anyway, the difference here is that the developers own the property to be developed, but in the article that is not necessarily so.
Open space in many communities is a public good. Therefore, the public may wish to pay for it (taxes, bonds). The private property rightists use this argument, BTW.
Best,
D
More On Open Space
It is plausible for developers to pay for additional open space to mitigate the impact of development, just as it is plausible for developers to pay for additional police, fire protection, or schools to mitigate the impact of development.
In any case, we are dealing with public goods. My point -- and a basic point of economic theory -- is that people have to be required to pay for public goods. You can't just say that people who want the public goods should pay for them, and everyone else should not have to pay.
Charles Siegel
Not a public service
Open space is THERE. The developers are taking it away while adding people who will need to use it. It is not like fire and police as the land already exists. Police and fire provide protection.
If I were to think of open land as a service, the next thing to go would be the air we breathe, or should people pay taxes for that too?
We Do, In Fact, Have To Pay For Clean Air
Open space is not a public service, but it is a public good -- defined in economics as a good that cannot be subdivided and sold to individuals. Military defense is the classic example of a public good: the military defends the entire country, and you can't subdivide military protection and say that individuals should choose whether or not to pay for their own defense, as people pay for private goods such as housing. In this sense, open space is a public good.
Police protection is not so different from open space as you think. Before any people move to a region, there is no need for police protection. Likewise, before any people move to an a region, there is no need for the public to acquire open space.
Clean air is also a public good. Before people move to a region, the clean air is already there. After people move to a region, we need laws requiring pollution controls: people do in fact have to pay to keep the air clean. As with all public goods, people have to be required to pay for air pollution controls. It obviously wouldn't work if we let each person have the choice of whether or not to pay for pollution controls on their cars.
The key point is simply that people have to be required to pay for public goods. These goods cannot be subdivided so each individual can choose whether or not to buy them. As I said before, this is economics 101.
Charles Siegel
Should people pay taxes for that too?
It's only a matter of time, but more likely, the air we breathe will be privatized rather than taxed. After all, water is currently being privatized globally...
"Arguably, the best-known reaction to water privatization occurred in Cochabamba, Bolivia when the engineering giant Bechtel set up its subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, in early 2000 and immediately raised the price of water beyond the reach of the vast majority of the population. Its contract even gave the company the right to charge people for the water they took from their own wells and to send collection agents to homes to charge for rainwater collected in cisterns on roofs."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/gpg/2004/0704waterprivatization.htm
Um, these ARE public lands
Why should the public have to pay for something they already own? At least, that's my understanding of "State" in "State Land Department".
I gather from the article that this is not primarily a situation where developers are buying land from private-sector owners, and those who wish to preserve open space must step in and purchase the land themselves, presumably via a land conservation agency. Instead the public agency already owns the land, and is selling it to be developed.
In so doing the State of Arizona artificially increases the supply of land, preventing the increase in land costs that would otherwise naturally limit development activity. What would have been merely a boom becomes a bubble. Once it pops, there is still all that infrastructure to be maintained.
Western Trust Lands Reform.
Why should the public have to pay for something they already own? At least, that's my understanding of "State" in "State Land Department".
These are trust lands. Trust lands are managed with a fiduciary responsibility in mind [scroll down to AZ discussion]. The ballot measure mentioned in the arty proposes to manage these lands differently.
The underlying issue here is that the state is managing the lands in such a way that the public(s) are now fed up and are looking for workable solutions.
Best,
D