Land use

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'Land use' is also often used to refer to the distinct land use types in Zoning.

Land use is the human modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements. The major effect of land use on land cover since 1750 has been deforestation of temperate regions.^[1] More recent significant effects of land use include urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation, salinization, and desertification.^[2] Land-use change, together with use of fossil fuels, are the major anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide, a dominant greenhouse gas.^[3] It has also been defined as "the total of arrangements, activities, and inputs that people undertake in a certain land cover type" (FAO, 1997a; FAO/UNEP, 1999). ^[4]

1 Municipal land use
2 Land use and the environment
- 2.1 United States
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Municipal land use

Villages, cities, towns, boroughs, townships and counties are all governed by a set of designations assigned to particular parcels of land. Each designation, known as a parcel’s zoning, comes with a list of approved uses that can legally operate on the zoned parcel. These are found in a government’s ordinances or zoning regulations.

[edit] Land use and the environment

Land use and land management practices have a major impact on natural resources including water, soil, nutrients, plants and animals. Land use information can be used to develop solutions for natural resource management issues such as salinity and water quality. For instance, water bodies in a region that has been deforested or having erosion will have different water quality than those in areas that are forested.

According to a report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, land degradation has been exacerbated where there has been an absence of any land use planning, or of its orderly execution, or the existence of financial or legal incentives that have led to the wrong land use decisions, or one-sided central planning leading to over-utilization of the land resources - for instance for immediate production at all costs. As a consequence the result has often been misery for large segments of the local population and destruction of valuable ecosystems. Such narrow approaches should be replaced by a technique for the planning and management of land resources that is integrated and holistic and where land users are central. This will ensure the long-term quality of the land for human use, the prevention or resolution of social conflicts related to land use, and the conservation of ecosystems of high biodiversity value

[edit] United States

In the US, every legal activity must have its place in municipal and county zoning laws. Meaning if an adult entertainment facility can legally operate in a given jurisdiction, then the zoning laws must offer a proper and by-right zone for that business to operate within. With this example in mind, one can guess that choosing zoning wisely can make or break a city’s image and inevitably its ability to attract more favorable business and industry.

To regulate what can be built where, cities create comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances to create an order to the potential uses of land within their political boundaries. A municipality will spend thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to determine where best to encourage industrial growth, allow residential building and permit commercial activity. These decisions have dramatic impacts on land values, safety and community interests. With so much at stake, the process of determining what can be built where has become extremely politicized.

Today active community groups wield much strength in the public land use approval process. Informed residents know the potential impacts of a large big box coming to their neighborhood or the opening of a quarry a mile down the road. When involved they shape the process and are more likely now than ever to actually impact the process. Politics plays a big part in the approval process. But the reality is that mostly developers create the rules. In the absence of opposition, a developer can change the real estate landscape for years to come by successfully rezoning one large parcel in area. Where there is opposition, today’s developers have to take heed and listen to their demands.

With financial stakes so high for developers and residents and the approval process being susceptible to public pressure and politics, it is no surprise that there is now a subset of political culture known as land use politics.

Patterns of land use arise naturally in a culture through customs and practices, but land use may also be formally regulated by land use planning through zoning and planning permission laws, or by private agreements such as restrictive covenants. For example, the setting aside of wilderness either publicly as a Wilderness Area or privately as a conservation easement.