Conservation development

Conservation development, also known as conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area's natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and vista, protecting farmland or natural habitats for wildlife, and maintaining the character of rural communities. A conservation development is usually defined as a project that dedicates a minimum of 50 percent of the total development parcel as open space. The management and ownership of the land are often formed by the partnership between private land owners, land-use conservation organizations and local government. It is a growing trend in many parts of the country, particularly in the Western United States. In the Eastern United States, conservation design has been promoted by some state and local governments as a technique to help preserve water quality.

This type of planning has become more relevant as "land conversion for housing development is a leading cause of habitat loss and fragmentation". With a loss or fragmentation of a species' habitat, it results in the endangerment of a species and pushes them towards premature extinction. Land conversion also contributes to the reduction of agriculturally productive land, already shrinking due to climate change.

Conservation development differs from other land protection approaches by aiming to protect land and environmental resources on parcels slated for immediate development—to protect land here and now. In contrast, a green belt approach typically aims to protect land from future development, and in a region beyond areas currently slated for development. It seeks to offer a gradient between urban regions and open countryside, beyond what a line on a map—typically a highway—currently provides. This approach seeks to avoid the dichotomy of economic urbanism on one side of such a street while on the other lies completely protected woodlands and farm fields, devoid of inclusion in that economy. Addressing the theoretical illusion that humanity walled off is better-off, conservation development recognizes that design of how we live is far more important than we allot credit; that instead of walling off a problem we need to face that problem and drastically lower our impact on the sites where we live, and indeed raise the performance of our communities toward a level where such walls are no longer considered first response requirements.

Conservation development was formulated in the early 1980s by a British-trained planner Randall Arendt. He pulled together several concepts from the 1960s. He combined the idea of cluster and open space design with Ian McHarg's "design with nature" philosophy.

Conservation development seeks to protect a variety of ecological resources and services such as biodiversity, productive farmland, ecosystem services, scenic landscapes and historic and cultural resources. This is achieved by identifying the ecologically sensitive and valuable areas. The protected lands can be under an easement to prevent development on it. Housing is then built around the protected areas. Density, lots sizes, types of housing and amount of protected area is dependent on the type of conservation development.

While not a prevalent type of development, it is estimated that conservation development takes up between 2.5%-10% of the total US real estate development. Conservation development is usually applied to rural, exurban or suburban residential subdivisions, though it does have a few urban applications (Doyle 4).

While there are several types of conservation developments, they all have several features in common. All developments have conservation land set aside, either held by a conservation organization or protected by a conservation easement. These developments must have ongoing stewardship for the protected portion of the parcel. Secondly, the development finances the protected area. Third, each development begins by surveying the land's ecological features and resources. A decision can then be made about where to build and what areas need to be protected. Lastly, these developments also use a variety of design features to reduce some of the negative impacts inherent in development. Examples include low-impact stormwater management systems, and landscape design.

Milder cites four principal conservation development techniques found in the United States. The first two he groups together as having a "conservation with development" philosophy. Conservation is the main goal with development as a means to that end. The latter two types fall under the "development with conservation" ethos. These two types of projects are done through private developers whose goal is to turn a profit at the end of the day, but in a "conservation-friendly matter". Table 1 provides an excellent summary of the different conservation development techniques.