Chapter 3.1
Development Patterns and Infill

• ALL
• Remove Code Barriers
• Create Incentives
• Fill Regulatory Gaps

Agricultural Lots in Planned Unit Developments (PUDs)

INTRODUCTION

As sprawling urban and suburban development threatens agricultural lands,[1] communities are exploring ways to protect productive farmland. Local governments are partially addressing this through their Planned Unit Development (PUD) provisions with a specific focus on protecting farmlands. Such ordinances are designed to simultaneously preserve prime farmlands while encouraging urban and suburban growth.

For agricultural land protection purposes, PUDs can be used in various ways. They can be used to protect lands within a PUD and also to funnel development to a PUD to preserve agricultural areas outside a PUD.[2] If done correctly, PUDs can incorporate a variety of efficient, sustainable, environmentally protective, and aesthetically appealing mixed-use spaces. In short, they provide flexibility to be innovative in customizing a solution.[3] By establishing ordinance-based requirements that PUD proposals must satisfy in order to gain approval, local governments can steer the innovative use of land to achieve locally specific planning goals.[4] For example, some local governments are permitting the transfer of development rights from active agricultural lands to PUDs. This allows the PUDs to be densified, while protecting agricultural lands (for more information on development rights purchases and transfers, see Purchase of Development Rights and Transfer of Development Rights).[5]

While steering development to particular locations can help ensure the preservation of agricultural lands in locations outside PUDs, other communities have begun implementing ordinances designed to preserve and encourage sustainable agricultural land uses within PUDs.[6] This alternative strategy not only preserves preexisting agricultural land within PUDs, it also allows agricultural land to double as a PUD amenity.[7] Additionally, agricultural land within PUDs can fulfill the open space criterion that PUD-governing ordinances often require. In this way, ordinances allowing agriculture in PUDs help preserve farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas while simultaneously encouraging more innovative and efficient urban growth.[8]

EFFECTS

Permitting and encouraging agricultural lots in PUDs and protecting lots outside PUDs can help combat the degradation of agricultural lands—a decades-long trend resulting from undirected urban and suburban growth.[9] According to the USDA, between 1949 and 2012 the amount of the United States’ total land used for agriculture declined 11 percent.[10] During this same period, urban land mass tripled.[11] To some extent, PUDs lacking regulations designed to protect agricultural lands and other usable open spaces contributed to this trend of agricultural land depletion.[12] In particular, large rural PUDs—especially in rapidly growing communities overly reliant on PUDs—have had adverse impacts on agricultural operations and natural resources.[13] However, by designing ordinances that regulate PUDs to preserve agricultural land and open spaces or “green spaces”[14] more generally, communities can not only protect agricultural land and thus local agricultural production, but also reap the other benefits PUDs provide.

Rural areas under significant pressure to develop, especially those currently lacking codes to direct growth, can use PUDs to provide flexibility when establishing cost-effective mixed-use spaces.[15] By strategically guiding development through PUDs, communities can additionally benefit from an increase in surrounding property values as well as make available new residential and commercial spaces in response to demand, a vital component of a burgeoning local economy.[16] However, these same rural communities, although having much to gain from PUDs, also likely have agricultural lands to lose. PUDs with an agricultural focus can guard against the fragmentation and degradation of local agricultural lands.

Additionally, by providing a streamlined PUD proposal review process that incorporates PUD-regulating ordinances into the criteria required for proposals to gain approval, planning commissions can provide local developers with “increased predictability in the development review process.”[17] In establishing criteria necessary for a PUD proposal to gain approval, a local government can customize PUD requirements in alignment with a community’s comprehensive vision.[18] By coordinating development goals with community growth goals, especially when informed with meaningful public input, this transparent and predictable approval process can accelerate development.[19] Furthermore, by including PUD-regulating ordinances designed to protect agricultural land into the approval process, local governments can still provide developers with a predictable, streamlined review process that encourages growth while preserving prime agricultural lands.

The implementation of PUD-regulating ordinances that protect agricultural lands and other open spaces or “green spaces”[20] can also provide health and environmental benefits. The mixed-use opportunities PUDs provide can help reduce the need for local residents to commute between otherwise distant residential and commercial zones.[21] Furthermore, PUDs incorporating walking or biking paths provide residents with healthy alternatives to driving (for more general information regarding pedestrian mobility see our chapter Pedestrian Mobility).[22] By reducing the need to drive and increasing the availability of alternative pedestrian and cyclist paths, residents can reduce their carbon footprints while increasing their exercise and time spent outside.[23]

Ultimately, permitting and encouraging agricultural lots in PUDs provides rural communities a way to guide and stimulate economically efficient growth while simultaneously preserving local farmland. The policy of prioritizing agricultural land preservation, especially when widely adopted, can help enhance food security and supply, economic stability through the preservation of local jobs, environmental protection when farmlands share in the ecological landscape and habits of local wildlife, and the preservation of many communities’ agrarian cultural roots and sense of place.[24]

EXAMPLES

Levy County, FL

With a population of approximately 40,000 residents and located just south of the Florida Panhandle along the Gulf Coast,[25] Levy County maintains a comprehensive plan that includes policies to discourage residential development in agricultural areas.[26] To that end, Levy County has developed a number of ordinances that, in combination, help preserve agricultural land within PUDs.[27] First, Levy County allows higher gross residential densities within PUDs in districts zoned as “Forestry/Rural Residential” (F/RR) and “Agricultural/Rural Residential” (A/RR).[28] Within these districts, Levy County’s PUD process serves “as an incentive to developers to retain continued agriculture and open space uses by providing density bonuses.”[29] Developers may use these “density bonuses” to increase gross density within PUDs.[30] To qualify for a density bonus, a developer must have and maintain unified control of the agricultural land and open space land within the proposed PUD.[31] For a PUD within an F/RR district, a developer may build one additional dwelling unit for every ten acres of land designated for commercial forest use.[32] For a PUD within an A/RR district, a developer may build one additional dwelling unit for every five acres of land designated for commercial farming use.[33] Furthermore, Levy County requires that PUD proposals “delineate the boundaries of any permanent agricultural or open space use, its acreage and its percent of the total planned unit development area.”[34] This method of oversight in combination with incentivizing developers to preserve agricultural lands within PUDs through a method of proportionate density bonuses allows Levy County’s planning board to direct the community’s growth while sustaining its agricultural resources and economy.

To view the provisions see Levy County, FL, Code of Ordinances §§ 50-902(c), 50-903(7), 50-904(d), 50-905(c)(16) (2019).

Chattanooga, TN

With a burgeoning local economy[35] and a population growth rate surpassing the national average by more than two percent, at least 180,000 residents currently call the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, their home.[36] As one of the top ten producing states of beef, tobacco, tomatoes, snap beans, hay, and cotton in the United States, Tennessee’s expanding cities like Chattanooga have taken various ordinance-based zoning measures to stymie the transformation of agricultural lands into swelling suburbs.[37] For instance, Chattanooga designated an urban agricultural zoning district designed to provide “the opportunity for agricultural and related uses within the City limits.”[38] Chattanooga not only allows an extensive range of agricultural uses within this district,[39] but also provides for the development of residential PUDs inside the zone as well.[40] The city requires that any residential PUD within the urban agricultural zoning district contain at least five acres, a minimum of 50 percent of which must be set aside for agricultural uses or as maintained open space.[41] The city also provides “Revocable Special Exception Permits” for lots less than five acres in order to allow the Chattanooga City Council the ability to evaluate “the effect of the proposed use and its effect on the surrounding area and on the public health and welfare.”[42] In this way, the Chattanooga City Council provides explicit requirements for residential PUD proposals within the urban agricultural zoning district, yet also maintains the authority and flexibility to make adjustments and exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

To view the provision see Chattanooga, TN, Code of Ordinances § 38-456 (2020).

Kenosha County, WI

Located at the southeastern corner of Wisconsin, [43] Kenosha County’s population has plateaued in recent years, standing currently at just over 166,000 residents.[44] With a strong farming heritage evidenced by the county’s history and landscape,[45] its local government has provided for a PUD overlay district especially designed to protect land currently used for agricultural purposes.[46] Called the “Agricultural Preservation Planned Unit Development,” this specific PUD overlay district enables residential growth to occur and coexist with agricultural production.[47] To accomplish this, Kenosha County limits residential density within the PUD to single-family dwellings,[48] ensures the PUD’s residential lot designs are compatible with the needs and practices of the PUD’s agricultural lots,[49] and requires such PUDs to retain a rural aesthetic evocative of “Midwestern farmhouse-style homes.”[50] Not only does this provision provide for agricultural preservation alongside residential growth within a PUD, it also empowers the county’s government with the ability to direct the aesthetics of the PUD in order to preserve the heritage and character of Kenosha County. Furthermore, this provision aligns with the county’s 2035 Multi-jurisdictional Comprehensive Plan.[51]

To view the provision see Kenosha County, WI, Municipal Code § 12.26-4 (K)(1)(i) (2019).

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES

Churchill County, NV, Code of Ordinances §16.12.040.3 (2019) (allowing PUD proposals that exceed maximum density limits in residential and commercial zones by permitting the transfer of development rights from active agricultural lands and by permitting the continuance of agricultural production within the PUD for the purpose of protecting agricultural lands and open space areas).

Roseburg, OR, Code of Ordinances § 12.12.020 (2020) (allowing regulatory flexibility in the PUD approval process in exchange for the mitigation of potential adverse impacts on significant landscape features and neighboring properties and uses including “urban agriculture/silviculture production”).

Hinesburg, VT, Zoning Regulations § 4.5 (2020) (requiring that PUDs incorporate “greenspaces”—a land use category that includes agricultural uses—constituting no less than 50 percent of the parcel area in agricultural, rural residential, and low-density residential, shoreline, and industrial districts unless the Development Review Board determines that a lesser area of dedicated greenspace is warranted).

Courtland Township, MI, Zoning Ordinance § 9.02(c)(3), § 9.05(C)(1)(e) (2014) (requiring PUD designs that preserve at least 40 percent of the total area in active agriculture or open space and establishing that land set aside for agriculture may be converted to open space at the property owner’s discretion).