Pd. Gottlieb, THE GOLDEN-EGG AS A NATURAL-RESOURCE - TOWARD A NORMATIVE THEORY OF GROWTH MANAGEMENT, Society & natural resources, 8(1), 1995, pp. 49-56
Growth management is the branch of urban planning concerned with the t
iming and sequencing of land development and the policies designed to
mitigate the more negative impacts of growth. These policies are often
justified on the ground that rapid or poorly planned development caus
es ''quality of place'' to deteriorate, reducing both current welfare
and the prospects for future growth (ie., ''killing the goose that lai
d the golden egg''), In this article, I evaluate the normative assumpt
ions underlying this popular argument. I conclude that the ''golden eg
g'' argument makes an implicit analogy to resource economics and raise
s legitimate issues of sustainability and dynamic efficiency. Although
an understanding of resource economics can provide more normative gui
dance than one typically finds in the urban planning literature, using
these concepts to make policy is no easy task. Thus the golden egg ar
gument remains subject to cynical manipulation by both pro- and antigr
owth forces.