Hubert B. Stroud

Planning in the Wake of Florida Land Scams

A huge surplus of poorly planned vacant lots presents a vexing land-use problem through out much of the U.S. The most significant problems occur within large pre-platted sub divisions where, decades ago, distant buyers purchased potential homesites in ill-conceived land developments. The magnitude of the problems and the potential for rapid popula tion growth combine to make platted lands the sleeping giant of growth management problems in Florida, Texas, and parts of the Southwest. The options explored in this re search may alleviate some of the problems that large preplatted subdivisions have created.

Changing rural landscapes: A need for planning and management

Abstract This article explains how recreational subdivisions convert large tracts of rural land in the USA into ‘potential vacation homesites’. Much subdivision has occurred in areas where land use regulations are weak or non-existent. All too often developers have implemented an operational framework without a master plan, have not adhered to local environmental constraints, and failed to provide the most basic services needed for human habitation. Many of these so-called ‘planned new communities’ qualify as neither communities nor planned and end up as ghost subdivisions with vast acreages of unused, vacant land marked by an elaborate network of bladed roads. Specific developmental guidelines are suggested to assist governmental officials in reducing the negative impact associated with the premature subdivision of land years prior to its expected use.

Evaluating the effectiveness of Act 250 in protecting Vermont streams

Vermonts progressive land development and land use law (Act 250), now 30 years old, provides district and state control over major developments through the review of environmental and planning criteria. Although it is comprehensive in nature, the law is applied on a case-by-case basis, which can make the results inconsistent. Up to now, there have been no significant studies of the role of Act 250 in conserving water quality through stream buffers. This research uses four case-studies of stream buffer use along Vermont streams as a step toward understanding and improving the role of comprehensive land use regulation in protective buffers. Such a study, while directly applicable to Vermont, could be useful to other states that are interested in improving compliance with existing regulations or in adopting new land use legislation.

Vermont's Act 250 legislation: a citizen-based response to rapid growth and development

Unregulated land development, dramatic increases in population, soaring land prices, and environmental degradation are significant factors responsible for the widespread concern among Vermonters that the state is losing its distinctive rural character and its small, picturesque villages. The citizen legislature responded by adopting Act 250, Vermonts principal land development and land use law. This paper describes the events leading to the passage of this law, examines the major components of this progressive legislation, and analyzes its effectiveness in protecting Vermonts natural resources.

Controlling growth and development in Monroe County, Florida

Abstract Growth controls are extremely important in places like Monroe County, Florida, because of limited land area suitable for development. Monroe Countys mainland consists entirely of federally owned park lands and the Keys has been designated as an Area of Critical State Concern. Rapid population growth and the concern over hurricane evacuation time have prompted local officials to implement a dwelling unit allocation system and a transfer of development rights procedure as important parts of their growth management strategy. Early Indications suggest that these techniques, with the proper refinements, can successfully limit growth and development in this popular amenity location.

Growth management and recreational land development in Florida.

Abstract Land use problems began in Florida more than a century ago in association with intensive settlement within some of the states most sensitive natural environments. Pressures from growth and development mounted until an environmental crisis was proclaimed during the early 1970s. This was the decade during which growth management measures were adopted by the Florida legislature, largely in response to environmental degradation that was occurring in association with unprecedented growth and development. This article looks at the establishment of comprehensive growth management and control mechanisms, including areas of critical state concern, developments of regional impact and other land use laws aimed at controlling subdivisions that threaten Floridas fragile ecological system.

The Land Development Corporation: A System for Selling Rural Real Estate

This research illustrates ways in which rural real estate is converted into potential vacation home sites by large land development corporations. The individual and previously disorganized approach to selling property is replaced by an organized framework that is designed to create a demand for rural real estate.Unfortunately, development is progressing without serious or adequate consideration being given to a number of specific problems. Developers and local governmental officials often fail to consider the environmental impact of these developments, the adequacy of service facilities being provided or the direct and indirect public costs associated with this type of developmental activity. Because of these shortcomings and others, serious questions arise concerning the desirability of this kind of developmental activity for rural areas. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Retire in Style: 50 Affordable Places Across America

examination of L.A.’s prison-industrial complex is particularly inspired, illuminating its topic through the life experiences of those who are continuously cycled back and forth between the streets of L.A. and its penal outposts. Equally powerful are Joseph Nevins’ doublebarreled deployment of L.A.’s Mexican history in conjunction with current immigration law to thoroughly deconstruct the odious notion of ‘‘illegal’’ human beings, and Roger Keil’s triangulation of concrete events with mediated representations to map the present and future of L.A. as both a metaphorical disaster area and an area of study. In fact, Keil’s chapter would have made an excellent conclusion for the volume, and serves to counter the more simplistic equations of L.A. scholarship with L.A. boosterism made elsewhere in the volume. Unmasking L.A. sits uncertainly in an indefinite somewhere between compilation and monograph, a polemic bundled up with empirical studies and artistic aspirations. A grab-bag of a book filled with surveys, critiques, interviews, poems, and other assorted sundries, the volume offers something for everybody (and, in my opinion, a thing or two not likely to be for much of anybody). As to whether or not it offers enough to satisfy any single somebody, I can only suggest that prospective readers browse through a copy and decide for themselves.

Water resources at Cape Coral, Florida: Problems created by poor planning and development

Abstract Residents of Cape Coral, FL, are concerned about the availability of an economically acceptable supply of potable water to meet a continually growing demand. Water resource problems have been exacerbated by the absence of planning and the use of unsound land development practices. Since few if any provisions for services were made by the original developer and since water resources have been severely degraded by the developmental practices that were used, city officials have been forced to implement innovative water supply techniques that include a reverse osmosis water treatment plant and a newly proposed dual water system.