Land Market Monitoring - Project Partners

The National Demonstration Project is being administered by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland in conjunction with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and five governmental partners.

Though highly disparate in location and institutional structure, each of these organizations has extensive GIS capacity and a long term commitment to land market monitoring. What’s more, each has the potential to offer unique lessons.

• Portland Metro has the most experience measuring residential and employment capacity within the strict confines of an urban growth boundary.
• The Metro Council of Minneapolis-St. Paul has the most experience operating in a very large metropolitan area encompassed by an urban service area.
• The Maryland Department of Planning is the only state agency with a recent mandate to measure and monitor development capacity in priority funding areas within a large, diverse urban corridor.
• The Sacramento Area Council of Governments is rapidly expanding its monitoring capacity in the absence of any regional boundary and highly decentralized land use control.
• Orange County, Florida, confronts the problem of monitoring development capacity in a fast growing region in the context of Florida's statewide concurrency policy.

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education

The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education is a non-partisan center for research and leadership training on Smart Growth and related land use issues nationally and internationally. Located at the University of Maryland, the National Center for Smart Growth was founded in 2000 as a cooperative venture of two schools and two colleges at the University of Maryland: the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; the School of Public Policy; the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; and the College of Engineering.

The mission of the Center is to bring the diverse resources of the University of Maryland and a network of national experts to bear on issues in land development, resource preservation and urban growth through interdisciplinary research, outreach and education, thereby establishing the University as the national leader in this field. Toward this end the National Center for Smart Growth staff and its more than two dozen affiliated faculty conduct independent, objective research in four general areas: land use and the environment; transportation and public health; housing and community development; and international development issues.

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a nonprofit and tax-exempt educational institution established in 1974. Its mission as a school is to study and teach land policy, including land economics and land taxation. The Institute is supported primarily by the Lincoln Foundation, which was established in 1947 by Cleveland industrialist John C. Lincoln. He drew inspiration from the ideas of Henry George, the nineteenth-century American political economist, social philosopher and author of the book Progress and Poverty.

The Institute's goals are to integrate theory and practice to better shape land policy and to share understanding about the multidisciplinary forces that influence public policy. The Institute organizes its work in three departments: Department of Planning and Development; Department of Valuation and Taxation; and Department of International Studies.

The Metro Council, Twin Cities Minnesota

The Metro Council (Metro) is the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and is responsible for managing the metropolitan-wide Urban Service Area. Metro has one of the most extensive metropolitan GIS libraries in the nation; it contains nearly 200 datasets which it shares through the MetroGIS consortium of over 300 local governments. Metro also has extensive experience estimating residential and employment development capacity, which it performs every 3 to 5 years.

Portland Metro, Oregon

Metro is the MPO for the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area and responsible for managing the Portland-area Urban Growth Boundary. Metro has nearly 20 years of experience measuring and monitoring residential and employment development capacity under the requirements of Oregon state law. Metro also has an extensive metropolitan GIS library which it developed, in part, through intergovernmental agreements with the 24 cities and four counties in the Portland metropolitan area. Metro has perhaps the most advanced, metropolitan-wide, vacant land inventory.

Maryland Department of Planning, Maryland

The Maryland Department of Planning provides planning technical assistance to the 23 counties and 159 municipalities in the state of Maryland. MDP has developed two of the most advanced statewide databases in the country. MD Propertyview contains detailed information on every tax parcel in the state, including the geographic coordinates of the parcel centroid. MDP's generalized zoning layer contains parcel-specific information about the zoning regulations that apply to every parcel in the state. The Governor of Maryland recently issued an executive order that requires MDP to conduct a capacity analysis of five municipalities and the area within the Priority Funding Areas of five counties in the state. A collaborative agreement between MDP and the University of Maryland was recently signed to conduct such analyses.

Sacramento Area Council of Governments, California

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) is an association of six Counties and 21 Cities and the MPO for the Sacramento metropolitan area. The metro area has no urban service or growth boundaries but is a non-attainment area for ozone. For this reason SACOG is currently engaged in a major land use and transportation planning process. As part of this process, SACOG is rapidly enhancing its extensive GIS and modeling capacities. Besides monitoring development on vacant land, SACOG uses highly advanced methods of estimating infill capacity, including computerized software that estimates "cash on cash" returns on investment. SACOG recently hired a consultant to enable it to monitor the costs and rent values of development on an ongoing basis.

Orange County, Florida

Orange County is a rapidly growing county in the Orlando Metropolitan area. The County is home to over 980,000 residents and has managed growth using an Urban Service Area since 1980, with strict policy requirements for potential expansion. This task is complicated by a complex intergovernmental context and the concurrency requirements imposed by the state of Florida. Orange County currently monitors land and housing development by recording project approvals and sharing its extensive GIS library with local and regional agencies and the public.