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Ashe County Needs Land-Use Planning |
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Written by J.W. Williamson
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
Editorial, Jefferson Post, 27 March 2008:
The latest evidence that Ashe County needs to plan for its future came this week in the form of a UNC-Charlotte study on regional growth.
Researchers at the university looked at satellite images of 24 counties between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Rockingham. What they determined was that development increased by 850 percent between 1976 and 2006.
The densest development, of course, was in Mecklenburg County, where the study suggested open land would disappear in 25 years.
The study admittedly did not include Ashe County, but we can suspect that we experienced growth far in the triple digits during those same 30 years.
In some areas of the county, we probably equalled that figure of 850 percent.
Land use planning, properly done, is just that -- planning. By planning, you do not have farms overwhelmed with poorly constructed developments, or new factories located in residential areas. Through planning, conflicting uses -- such as 24/7 plants and homes -- can be buffered from each other.
It is clear that such planning is most critically needed in areas of obvious, rapid development. Topping that list, of course, would be Jefferson and West Jefferson, followed closely by Fleetwood and Todd. Much opposition to land use planning could be circumvented if land use planning could be applied at different levels and in different ways, based on the extent of development in a community. What would benefit Fleetwood, for example, would be much more than is needed in Pond Mountain. The fate of the one-size-fits-all Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) is too recent and painful a memory for our leaders not to remember, and seek to avoid.
The pace of growth shown in the study for areas not all that far from here underlines the importance of what Chris Robinson and the committee he leads are doing.
Their findings are urgently needed as the commissioners work towards addressing the long-volatile and thus neglected issue of land use planning.
We plan vacations, our children’s education and our retirement -- the wisdom of planning is obvious. We, as a community, must also work together to plan the Ashe County of the future. |
