Land Market Monitoring - National Demonstration Project

Recognizing the importance of providing tools that can help local governments improve land use planning, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., and the Federal Highway Administration teamed with the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland to launch a national Land Market Monitoring Demonstration Project with five demonstration institutions around the United States:

• The Metro Council of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota;
• Portland Metro, Oregon;
• The Sacramento Area Council of Governments, California;
• Orange County, Florida; and,
• The Maryland Department of Planning.

The specific objectives of the demonstration project are:

• To help local governments maintain balance between managing urban growth and maintaining housing affordability.
• To develop standards and protocol for monitoring and reporting land and housing market data.
• To disseminate standards, protocol, and lessons gained from the sites.
• To facilitate research on the effects of growth management and development regulation on housing affordability.
• To develop techniques and protocol for forecasting future land use.
• To improve the process of transportation planning at the regional level.