LA/UP 341 Fall 1999

Why land resource evaluation is hard

1. Most evaluations in which planners and landscape architects get to participate address either trade-offs of values of public land (e.g., mining vs. wildlife) or the values of private land vs. public (e.g., converting public to private or vice versa).
2. Public lands encompass "Common Pool Resources" whose uses are usually regulated by negotiated policies and agreements, rather than market forces.
3. Common Pool Resources include many that are typically regarded as "intangible" or hard to evaluate (e.g., scenery, clean air, clean water, as well as real estate values, timber, and grazing rights).
4. Establishing agreements on use of public land will entail a simultaneous consideration of multiple values.

Price, Colin, 1988. Landscape Economics, London: Macmillan. Chapters 1, 2 and 3, pp 1-29.

Helliwell, D.R., 1994. Expert judgement quantified. Landscape Research, 19(1), 7-9.

Key issues and concepts in evaluation:

The arena

• private dominion
• imperial/state autocracy
• centrally regulated bureaucracy
• public/private partnerships

The vehicles

• barter
• money (shells, knotted strings, coins and bills)
• bene, sat, util, delight

Problem issues that get raised

• tangibles and intangibles
• individual differences of opinion
• inequities of supply: spatial and quality

Economic evaluation:

• Simple financial cost/unit cost -- assigning current values
• Opportunity cost -- foregoing alternate values
• Option demand -- including value to others
• Discounted future value -- considering future values

The Commons dilemma -- some economic responses

• mutually agreed mechanisms for exchange are the means by which we avoid the runaway exploitation of common goods
• economic evaluation of farmland, urban real estate and hunting rights has gone some way to ensuring equitable use of some aspects of those goods
• the mechanisms for applying dollar values to the fair use of clean air and water, beautiful mountain vistas and remote hiking trails are less well-developed but examples do exist

Discussion of readings:

• Hardin's description is a landmark writing offering an explanation for why wise use of environmental resources is so difficult to achieve
• It suggests that it is impossible and unwise to rely on human conscience as a mechanism for regulating use
• He highlights the necessity of systems of coercion for establishing the controls.

• Addresses the commonly raised objections to landscape resource evaluation: Intangibility, Eye-of-the-beholder, Availability.
• Highlights the necessity to develop explicit evaluation systems.
• He shows how basic concepts such as simple financial costings, opportunity costs, unit costs, and option demand operate in the context of land resource evaluation.

Case study: 
A simple approach to evaluation

• Application of a set of expert judgements to the evaluation of a landscape resource

Focus groups

Process:

1. Invite 'citizens' to form small groups and identify facilitators
2. Invite discussion to identify possible land use changes
3. Report back to group
4. Discuss ideas as group

Discuss effectiveness of focus group processes

Emerson Park Maps

• Existing Buildings (epbuildings.pdf)
• Landuse (eplanduse.pdf)

Practical 3

• Work in teams to consider the economic evaluation of a land use change.
• Describe the items you will include in a simple financial costing of your proposed change.
• Prepare a spreadsheet in EXCEL that estimates as many as possible of the economic costs and benefits of your proposed change.
• Publish on the WWW including descriptions of the elements in your evaluation, how you came up with the unit $ values, and the EXCEL spreadsheet as a table.

Readings for next Monday:

Willis, Ken, 1994. Contingent valuation in a policy context. Landscape Research, 19(1), 17-20.

Modified: 1 August 1999, Brian Orland