Smart Growth and Open Space and Farmland Preservation
Smart growth is an approach to development that concentrates on investing in existing communities. By directing growth to communities where people already live and work, smart growth limits the amount of farmland and open space that is developed, makes existing communities more attractive -- with a mix of housing, restaurants, parks, cafes, and jobs, and minimizes the need for new water, sewer and road infrastructure that increase taxpayer burdens.
For rural communities, smart growth means supporting town centers and Main Streets, and attracting and encouraging growth and investment in and around these centers and within existing communities, preserving the character of rural towns. In contrast, sprawling development in rural, suburban and urban areas is auto-oriented, single use development -- frequently along or at the intersection of nearby highways -- that draws economic activity out of downtowns, damaging their vitality and dramatically increasing infrastructure needs. Smart Growth, in contrast, simultaneously preserves open space and farmland while ensuring that there is an adequate supply of housing for families with a mix of incomes. Smart Growth provides residents with a mix of shops, offices, restaurants, and other services that they can get to by automobile, bus, bike or foot.

Economic Benefits Communities across the country have found that protecting open space, parks and farmland is a strategy that can be used to strengthen existing communities, attract businesses, and avoid the costs of urban and suburban sprawl. As part of a package of smart growth programs and policies, communities that offer a high quality of life including well-maintained neighborhood parks and extensive park systems consistently attract and retain businesses. For example, Portland, Oregon, which adopted extensive growth management practices beginning in the 1970s and invested in an extensive park system, has attracted numerous new companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Hyundai, which picked the city because its quality of life would be able to attract an educated workforce. “According to Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel, the computer chip manufacturer that has nearly 9,000 employees in Oregon, ‘Companies that can locate anywhere they want to will go to places that attract good people.” For more info click here.

Agriculture contributes to local economies directly through sales, job creation, support services and businesses, and by supplying lucrative secondary markets such as food processing. In many rural areas, tourism is a major industry that supports local economies, and as discussed earlier, farmland and open space impose significantly fewer costs on local governments.
( Smart Growth America)