ASSESSING GROWTH MANAGEMENT POLICY IMPLEMENTATION - CASE-STUDY OF THEUNITED-STATES LEADING GROWTH MANAGEMENT STATE

Many states in the United States attempt to manage urban growth so tha t development is directed to urban areas equipped to accommodate devel opment and rural lands are preserved for resource and other non-urban uses, Oregon is entering its third decade of what many commentators de scribe as the nation's most aggressive urban growth management program administered statewide, This article reports a recent evaluation of t he effectiveness of state urban growth management policies as they are implemented in four urban areas. The study is the first of its kind t o assess development patterns associated with administration of statew ide growth management policies by local governments, Using primary dat a collection and analysis, effectiveness of urban growth management an d resource land preservation efforts is found to be mixed, In some sit uations, administration does not appear to be effectively directing de velopment into urban growth boundaries and away from resource lands. I n other situations, administration appears to be quite effective, Prob lems with administration are found in all situations, This article off ers two generalizable outcomes, The first is a methodology for assessi ng the effectiveness of any given urban growth management program to e ffect desired development patterns. The second is a specific set of po licy lessons learned by Oregon in its effort to create definable, comp act urban centers and preserve resource land for non-urban uses. Copyr ight (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd