Collaborative Development Rights - Reshaping maps of vacant subdivisions

So many of the vast open spaces across the American West are made up of an array of small, private, vacant parcels. The breaking up of large ranches has mapped the open range for a sprawling future. Would-be homesteaders are drawn by the dream of cheap land and a quiet life in a house on the prairie.  While the challenge and cost of homesteading in rural areas without infrastructure keeps many of these parcels vacant, it is fairly common that people move out to their little piece of ground and find themselves priced out of building and making do with substandard structures or inadequate infrastructure. This phenomenon is compassionately described in the book, Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover.

In a recent update to the Park County, CO, Strategic Master Plan by Sky Tallman and Electra Johnson developed a new land use strategy to address the dual problems of the potential for dispersed development to replace open spaces, rangeland and farmland, and some of the challenges of isolated rural poverty. Dubbed “Collaborative Development Rights,” the rural zoning district is modified to allow multiple neighbors to combine development rights on a single parcel in trade for conserving other parcels. It combines principles from transferable development rights with cluster development and creates the possibility of incrementally redrawing the map while allowing people to save on development costs by pooling their resources.

The basic idea is to allow for two or more nearby property owners to develop on a single parcel in return for conserving the undeveloped parcel(s) as open space or agricultural land. This allows two or more projects to share upfront costs such as a well,  driveway access, septic system, tying into the electric grid, and even potentially building attached units, saving costs on shared walls or roofs. Those who are marginally priced out of building could improve their living conditions and build community. If taken advantage of on a large scale, it would shift the rural development pattern from sprawling, isolated homes to a pattern of compounds, some of which could eventually emerge as villages, and a greater portion of currently subdivided land could be preserved for nature or agriculture. Under current rural land use regulations, that attempt to preserve rural character by limiting density and requiring large lot sizes, the emergence of villages has become all but impossible, and rural sprawl is about the only possible pattern of development. Compared to dispersed rural development, combining development rights in clusters not only preserves open land, but it builds a stronger foundation for rural economies and communities. 

About the only way for a new village-like pattern to develop in most rural areas is if it is a master-planned community or planned-unit development. Collective development rights open up the potential for a type of bottom-up, incremental development pattern in rural areas. At the parcel level, it removes density as a consideration without impacting potential density as measured within the sending radius. 

In a regular grid of 5-acre parcels, such as the one above, a 1/2-mile radius around a single parcel would include 140 parcels; a ¼-mile radius, there would include 49 parcels. In a scenario in which half of eligible parcels were to transfer rights to contiguous receiving parcels built out to a density of 3.5 units per acre, a 1/2-mile sending radius could facilitate the build-out of four receiving parcels and the conservation of 350-acres.

Developing a policy

A few considerations in developing the concept include if and how to define limits with regard to the proximity of sending and receiving parcels and the frequency or dispersion of receiving parcels, consideration of ownership and management of parcels and structures, lot sizes, circulation, and growth.

1. Proximity and Dispersion: The distance between sending and receiving parcels, and between receiving parcels, will shape how the policy impacts development at a local and regional level. If the intent is to redirect development patterns within platted, vacant subdivisions into clusters, requiring sending parcels to be in rough proximity to receiving parcels will help. For growing clusters, this will also make it more likely for sending parcels to form contiguous areas of conserved land.

Requiring a certain distance between clusters enhances both the clustering and conservation impacts of the strategy over time. For example, requiring receiving parcels to be either contiguous or a half-mile apart would allow a cluster to grow over time, while also incentivizing village form over a sprawl of small clusters. 

By not limiting collaboration to a small number of users, the more people who collaborate on a single parcel, the more nearby parcels get conserved. Collaborative developments that mix uses or develop an internal economy, could enhance nearby conservation by incentivizing additional collaborators to purchase nearby parcels in order to transfer rights. In considering how different the outcomes would be if collaborative development rights were exercised by ten different people building homes on a parcel versus a single developer purchasing ten adjacent parcels to conserve and leading the development be part of conversations about what a county wants to encourage and achieve with the policy. In a high-growth scenario, it might be advantageous to encourage developer-led consolidations, however, in low-growth scenarios aimed primarily at lowering the upfront cost of building for existing property owners, a limit to how many development rights a single owner can transfer could be established. 

2. Ownership and Management: Land use codes do not typically aim to regulate ownership, but to avoid the creation of parcels that would be likely to default on taxes and come into county ownership or the creation of parcels on which the right to develop might be contested through sales to unknowing buyers or inheritance. If sending parcels are divested of development rights, they essentially lose almost all of their economic value, and to ensure that these parcels are both managed (for fire mitigation, for example) and conserved, sending parcels should owned by the association or cooperative of owners on the receiving parcel or put into a conservation trust.  Ownership on receiving parcels could also take different forms. Likely the common area and conserved land would be owned collectively or by an association, and individual homes or buildings would be condominiumized.

3. Lot sizes: To make conservation of open and natural spaces or agricultural uses a significant outcome, the size of sending and receiving parcels should be considered. Receiving parcels that are too large could still result in a sprawling development pattern and fail to deliver on the potential savings to collaborators that comes from shared infrastructure costs. Likewise, sending parcels should have a minimum size or be proportional in size to receiving parcels.

4. Circulation: In the event that a receiving parcel experiences significant development and the emerging village needs to grow onto an adjacent parcel, connectivity should be considered. If the emerging cluster is to continue to grow, there is a public interest in ensuring that the entire development is well-connected and that a system of blocks begins to develop. At a basic level, this could include a requirement that the internal circulation of two adjacent receiving parcels connect both internally and to the adjacent road. If receiving parcels are larger than five or six acres, establishing a maximum block size of 4 – 6 acres that will provide an eventual framework for walkability. To be avoided is an outcome in which an old property line separates two adjacent cul-de-sac neighborhoods.

5. Growth: It is not hard to imagine that a successful collaborative development might grow to the point that it needs to expand, converting an adjacent parcel into a receiving parcel. To convert two adjacent parcels into receiving parcels, consider requiring each to receive at least three development rights from sending parcels within the sending radius. As the cluster of receiving parcels grows, raise the threshold. To convert a third adjacent parcel into a receiving parcel, each parcel must receive at least four development rights from sending parcels within the receiving parcel. To convert four or more adjacent parcels into receiving parcels, the net density of connected receiving parcels must be at least four dwelling units per acre. At this point, which would likely be a rare occurrence, we would be seeing the emergence of a village and the successful conservation of a significant portion of contiguous nearby land, and expanding the sending radius could be necessary to allow the continued success of the project.

Collaborative development rights should be seen as a transitional strategy to allow for and incentivize a shift in the pattern of growth in rural areas. At some point, as a successful cluster grows into an emerging village, it will make sense to shift to a more formal planning process to manage the growth around the self-organized core, to upgrade infrastructure, and to shift to an organizing principle other than collaborative development rights. The intent is not to force or mandate the village form, but to open the possibility of a rural development pattern other than the sprawl that is already written into the parcel map. 

Villages and clusters of development are a quintessential element of rural character. Throughout our rural history, collaborating with others is how people have been able to thrive in rural areas. While easy access to trucks and cheap gasoline have allowed us to replace a reliance on neighbors with a reliance on more distant population centers (often mislabeled ‘self-reliance’), collaboration, the sharing of resources, and the building of community through the building of shared places is the basic building block of society. Rugged collaboration is as old as the West. It is what got our ancestors through hard times, and it is part of how we can build resilience today. 

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Model zoning language for Collaborative Development Rights

In the [ ___ ] Zone District, the development rights of properties within ½ mile may be transferred from sending parcels and combined on a single receiving parcel for the purpose of conservation of open space and agricultural lands, and to allow for the clustering of development.

1. Sending parcels are those parcels from which development rights are sent to another parcel. Receiving parcels are those parcels to which development rights are transferred. Upon sending of a development right, the deed to the sending parcel shall record the removal of development rights, the receiving parcel number to which rights were transferred, and the date of transfer. Future use of sending parcels shall be restricted to conservation or agriculture. 

2. Sending parcels must divest all development rights and may not have existing residential or commercial uses.

3. Sending parcels shall be placed under the joint ownership of owners of the receiving parcel, or under the ownership of an association of such owners. 

4. The deed to a receiving parcel shall record the development rights received from sending parcel(s), including the date and parcel number of sending parcel(s).

5. Receiving parcels gain the right to develop one additional residential unit, or one additional structure for a use permitted in the zone district, for each sending parcel that transfers development rights. The receiving parcel gains the right to develop a single additional dwelling unit or structure even if the sending parcel would have been permitted to construct more than one dwelling or structure.

6. A receiving parcel may receive development rights from multiple sending parcels within the sending radius of ½-mile.

7. A receiving parcel must be at least five (5) acres, and no greater than twelve (12) acres. A sending parcel must contain at least 80% of the area of the receiving parcel, and be within a sending radius of ½-mile of the receiving parcel.

8. Improvements on receiving parcels may have separate ownership structures; ownership of land and structures shall be recorded in the deed.

9. Dispersion: To avoid sprawl and ensure dispersion of clusters, receiving parcels must be contiguous or spaced at least one-half mile apart.

   1. Contiguous receiving parcels: To convert two adjacent parcels into receiving parcels, each must receive at least three development rights from sending parcels within the sending radius. To convert a third adjacent parcel into a receiving parcel, each parcel must receive at least four development rights from within the receiving parcel. To convert four or more adjacent parcels into receiving parcels, the net density of connected receiving parcels must be at least four dwelling units per acre.

      1. Connectivity: To ensure internal connectivity in clusters, when two or more contiguous parcels are designated receiving parcels, internal roads, driveways or rights-of way on each parcel shall be made to connect. All contiguous receiving parcels shall connect with principal access road and connection between parcels shall connect internal circulation on both parcels.

10. The Planning Commission shall review proposals to combine the rights of five or more parcels on a single parcel, and may require a single developer combining the rights to five or more parcels to include at least one unit as a deed-restricted affordable unit, or to add a deed restriction that not more than one unit be used as a short-term rental.

Sky Tallman is the author of Metrocoalescence, a Zoning Paradigm for Vibrant Cities