Posted by David Hamilton on March 18th, 2010

And from the same source, this article detailing the struggle of U2 guitarist “The Edge,” who’s attempting to build a “luxury green” community of a handful of 7,000-12,000 square foot homes in the Santa Monica Mountains, above Malibu, California.  Environmental groups, regulatory agencies, and rock stars are definitely not seeing eye-to-eye on the project.  The first house, for Mr. and Mrs. Edge themselves, has proved a flashpoint.

Reading the article, I recalled cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, below the hills in question, with a friend of my wife, a recent arrival in Los Angeles.  ”Up there,” he gestured, “I just want to get a little piece of land up there and build a house, with a view and a breeze…”

“Great,” I replied.  ”You get a few million together, find the spot, and we’ll design the home.  Then get another million together.  When we’re through the public approvals process in twenty years, you’ll have an excellent spot to retire.”  He got a condo in Venice, I think.

In its stated aims, Edge’s proposed community follows principles of LID (low-impact development), though no mention is made of community legal structures and other complexities of a more typical Conservation Development, let alone the common-use and agricultural provisions of the Preservation Development model employed at Bundoran Farm.  Rather than challenge the plan, however, the debate has focused on the appropriateness of any development, however well-done, on this site.  That is clearly for regulatory agencies (and possibly courts) to decide, but this situation points up a very common problem in American land use.

The fundamental problem of our common tools for land conservation in the United States is that, in economic terms, they do not align incentives.  In this case, conservation of the hills in question no doubt confers a small benefit on everyone who drives the PCH (a few less houses in the view), but the cost of regulation is borne disproportionately by (an admittedly rich) guitarist-developer.  At the same time, the benefit of conserving this specific parcel accrues disproportionately to the (presumably slightly-less-rich) landowners in Malibu below.  In a free-market we’d expect that the Malibu folks would band together and lay out the cost of securing privately-owned land in their viewshed.  But we’d be wrong.  Our greatest successes in conservation, like the tax-credit driven development-right purchases which power open space protections in Virginia, are, despite their success on the ground, piling up an imbalance of costs and benefits.  As we get more and more serious about protecting land, at greater scales, some of these imbalances will need to be addressed.  At the Baldwin Center, we investigate models that, among other things, do that.

We often talk about Bundoran Farm, and other Preservation Development projects, primarily in terms of their day-to-day qualities: a walk in the woods, a protected view, a preserved agricultural heritage.  Just as important is an underlying economic concept which is disarmingly simple: “Like that view?  Buy it.”  Each owner of a homesite here becomes a steward of a slice of common-use land, of viewshed or natural resources, of productive agricultural land or forest.  In this way, conservation advances with development, and without subsidy or externalized costs.  The sum of many individuals making this commitment in one spot is, I’ll claim, remarkable.

As we found at our fall symposium, the model employed here is by no means the only solution, and it cannot address every landscape type or market.  But the search for more sustainable models for preserving (and funding) farmland is an important area of research and debate that we hope to foster in our little barn.  Next time they’re at JPJ arena, we’ll definitely invite the lads from U2 to come out for a visit.

Filed under: Architecture and Design, Baldwin Center for Preservation, General, Green Building