Masters Theses

Date of Award

6-1983

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Planning

Major Professor

George Bowen

Abstract

Environmentally sensitive areas, such as the coastal zone, and their vulnerability to development pressures have become a major policy issue in the United States during the last three decades. Decision makers and planners have not had an objective basis for evaluating the tradeoffs between development and preservation of these areas. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine one particular case of this conflict over development in the coastal zone: the development of Kiawah Island.

The development processes that occurred at Kiawah Island were studied and compared to three distinct planning processes, which were described in Chapters II through IV. The processes of environmental planning, development planning, and the public approval process were discussed as they have been developed in the planning literature. This detailed discussion formed a framework for comparing the Kiawah Island development planning processes.

Two methods were used to examine the Kiawah development. The first is an examination of the written planning documents that were developed for the master development plan for Kiawah. The second method involved the interviewing of major actors concerning their roles in the development process. In studying the various aspects of the development, the purpose was to consider the following components of the development of the Island:

1. What was the intended strategy for developing Kiawah, and how was this process carried out?

2. What are the economic ramifications of environmentally sensitive development planning at Kiawah?

3. Who were the major actors in the planning process and what roles did they play in the development of Kiawah Island?

4. What effects did these actors have on the development of the final plan?

5. What were the major factors and elements in the environmental design planning process, and how are problems and issues resolved?

Following the comparative analysis of the planning processes as set forth in this literature, the major conclusions were:

1. The Kiawah planning process, because of its comprehensive nature and being based on a complete natural systems inventory, is unique in its scale as applied to an environmentally sensitive area within the coastal zone.

2. The process, because of its high cost, is only economically feasible for large-scale projects, with an affluent clientele, without large public subsidies.

3. The process has merit on a smaller scale when using only readily available information or systems such soil, slope, floodway and vegetation data.

4. The process needs monitoring to test its transferability to other coastal zone areas, as well as environmentally sensitive areas beyond the coastal zone.

5. The public approval of the project was only successful because of the developers consummate negotiating skills.

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