American Conservation Real Estate | Lane Coulston

We are no longer living in the 1950's. The challenge is to be thinking outside the box.

My work with the concept of "Sustainable Communities" for development and growth.

A concept for sustaining communities is to use the principles of aquifers and agriculture as the foundations of planning and growth. Regard them as fundamental. We have an emerging problem in this generation. Rural landowners commonly have a strong perceived self- interest and have a diminished sense of appreciation for their role on the land.

My consulting work leads to innovative solutions for limited development and for conservation. The focus is to find ways to compensate landowners for participation. I structure incentives and rewards for participation in the development process. We must develop innovative conservation strategies for rural communities to meet the pressures of urban sprawl. We are no longer living in the 1950's. The challenge is to be thinking outside the box.

The concept of "sustainable communities" is eloquently described by Christopher Duerksen of Clarion Associates in Colorado, www.ClarionAssociates.com . He has recently presented and led discussions in Montana on "Saving Montana through the Sustainable Development Code."

The foundation of "sustainable communities" honors aquifers and agriculture as protected non-developable areas. An economic system for the identification and valuation of development rights can arise from this foundation. Embracing this foundation is a very bold process and a necessary step. We can discover new paradigms for the transfer of development rights into a new mix of lands qualifying as "receiving areas." Development rights can move to emerging communities (possible receiving areas) forming as "intentional neighborhoods."

When these neighborhoods are used as the development pattern - as a basis for your growth policy and standards - you gain a number of benefits:

1. You have community participation in the neighborhood planning process - a local, proactive process of residents.
2. You can control development above aquifers, and you can involve the local agricultural component in that neighborhood as part of the solution.
3. Communities learn to feed themselves with their own agriculture and export products - preserving those agricultural lands through a creative transfer of development rights (TDR) program.
4. You create the community model for local energy conservation, energy production, solar, wind and other locally produced fuels. There is a tremendous cost savings for producing at least some energy needs locally.
5. The model of intentional communities leads to resourceful building technology, protection of natural and renewable community resources. People who buy to live in these communities have a vested interest in their own welfare.
6. You preclude urban sprawl in farming and ranching areas - in deference to the already formed neighborhood nodes - those places with churches, schools and services beginning to form.

Once a model for land-use outside the Urban Development area is adopted, the model defines growth as it will be allowed to happen in rural communities. It redefines the concepts of permitted parcels on rural lands. Hold to the "foundation principle" of not building on top of your aquifers, at least not on all of your aquifers.

Adopt a soils policy for farmlands which the total community will preserve for all future generations. Agriculture is going to change. Across Montana, all farm expenses exceed gross farm revenues in this decade! Is that sustainable? If we do not preserve remaining farmlands as an absolute policy, communities ultimately will not have the choice of sustainability. I think self-reliance is worth the battle.