Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-2003

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Planning

Major Professor

Bruce E. Tonn

Abstract

The adoption of Public Chapter 1101 in 1998 required each county, in cooperation with the municipalities within its borders, to develop a comprehensive growth policy plan. Each county plan was to direct future high density, urban type growth into municipally designated Urban Growth Boundaries and non-municipal county Planned Growth Areas. Rural areas were to be designated that would protect land for use in agriculture, recreation, forest, wildlife, and other non high-density uses. Through the adoption of this law, the Tennessee legislature hoped, among other things, to reduce urban sprawl. As counties adopted the mandated plans however, inappropriate application of the law resulted in extremely large areas designated for dense, urban development; it seemed the law was having the opposite effect and was actually encouraging sprawl. This thesis contends that while all county plans adopted to date meet the letter of the law, they almost universally fail to meet the spirit of the law of reducing urban sprawl. By calculating the areas of all municipally designated Urban Growth Boundaries and County Planned Growth Areas, and comparing these to population growth estimates for the twenty (20) year time frame that communities were to plan for, this thesis shows that most county plans fail to reduce, and may actually encourage, urban sprawl. In fact, , given different scenarios for future development patterns based on current Tennessee municipal population densities, roughly twenty (20) times as much land as necessary may have been designated to accommodate medium to high density growth. Statewide, distrust between cities and counties, tempered by the potential loss of funding to assist the extension of often profitable services "county wide" led to growth plans that were likely different than those envisioned by the law's authors. As a whole, areas identified as suitable for dense development seem to have little to do with sound planning and effective growth management, and more to do with political expediency. Fundamentally, PC 1101 forced cities and counties to agree on boundaries within which municipalities can control future growth and annexation, and ultimately rather than require, only suggest that sound land use decisions be a part of the decision making process.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS