Urban growth boundary

An urban growth boundary, or UGB, is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural state or used for agriculture. Legislating for an 'urban growth boundary' is one way, among many others, of managing the major challenges posed by unplanned urban growth and the encroachment of cities upon agricultural and rural land. An urban growth boundary, or UGB, is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural state or used for agriculture. Legislating for an 'urban growth boundary' is one way, among many others, of managing the major challenges posed by unplanned urban growth and the encroachment of cities upon agricultural and rural land. An urban growth boundary circumscribes an entire urbanized area and is used by local governments as a guide to zoning and land use decisions, and by utility and other infrastructure providers to improve efficiency through effective long term planning (e.g. optimising sewerage catchments, school districts, etc.). If the area affected by the boundary includes multiple jurisdictions a special urban planning agency may be created by the state or regional government to manage the boundary. In a rural context, the terms town boundary, village curtilage or village envelope may be used to apply the same constraining principles. Some jurisdictions refer to the area within an urban growth boundary as an urban growth area, or UGA. While the names are different, the concept is the same. Another term used is urban service area. Opposition to unregulated urban growth and ribbon development began to grow towards the end of the 19th century in England. The campaign group Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) was formed in 1926 and exerted environmentalist pressure. Implementation of the notion dated from Herbert Morrison's 1934 leadership of the London County Council. It was first formally proposed by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935, 'to provide a reserve supply of public open spaces and of recreational areas and to establish a green belt or girdle of open space'. New provisions for compensation in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act allowed local authorities around the country to incorporate green belt proposals in their first development plans. The codification of Green Belt policy and its extension to areas other than London came with the historic Circular 42/55 inviting local planning authorities to consider the establishment of Green Belts. In the United States, the first urban growth boundary was established in 1958, around the city of Lexington, Kentucky. Lexington's population was expanding, and city leaders were concerned about the survival of the surrounding horse farms closely tied to the city's cultural identity. The first statewide urban growth boundary policy was implemented in Oregon, under then governor Tom McCall, as part of the state's land-use planning program in the early 1970s. Tom McCall and his allies convinced the Oregon Legislature in 1973 to adopt the nation's first set of statewide land use planning laws. McCall, with the help of a unique coalition of farmers and environmentalists, persuaded the Legislature that the state's natural beauty and easy access to nature would be lost in a rising tide of urban sprawl. The new goals and guidelines required every city and county in Oregon to have a long-range plan addressing future growth that meets both local and statewide goals. Albania maintains the 'yellow line' system hailing from its socialist regime — limiting urban development beyond a designated boundary for all municipalities. After the release of Melbourne 2030 in October 2002, the state government of Victoria legislated an urban growth boundary to limit urban sprawl. Since then, the urban growth boundary has been significantly increased a number of times. In Canada, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa (the 'Greenbelt') and Waterloo, Ontario have boundaries to restrict growth and preserve greenspace. In Montréal and in the rest of the province of Québec, an agricultural protection law serves a similar purpose, restricting urban development to 'white zones' and forbidding it on 'green zones'. They are notably absent from cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg that lie on flat plains and have expanded outwardly on former agricultural land. In British Columbia the Agricultural Land Reserve serves a similar pupose where adjacent to urban areas.