Posted by David Hamilton on March 29th, 2010

Readers interested in the “big picture” of rural land use in the US may enjoy this recent Washington Post article.  The author features Bundoran Farm, as well as Serenbe, Prairie Crossing and other communities which, in various ways, pair development and serious conservation of productive land.  The communities featured here are incredibly diverse, ranging from traditional dense and transit-oriented neighborhoods with small intensive farm gardens attached, to large and integrated farm-residence models.  Two elements unite all the projects:

First, there is a conviction among the developers that, if properly integrated (or insulated), farming in its various forms need not be extinguished when residential uses are introduced.

Second, and more important, the residents of these communities have made the determination that, in 2010, a working farm adjacent to their homes is an amenity, not a nuisance.   This is a remarkable shift from even ten years ago, when a residential amenity was fairly well understood to be a golf course or a pool.

At the Baldwin Center, we try to track and understand, at least in broad strokes, the many approaches currently underway (the article mentions a hundred projects) to pair residential uses with productive uses of rural lands.  It is clear, from this article and others, that we are in the midst of a moment of incredible innovation and change in two businesses: agriculture and land development.  How these many models succeed and fall short over the next decade will likely be a critical contribution to our discussion on the future of rural land.  Stay tuned.

Filed under: Agriculture, Baldwin Center for Preservation, Education and Inspiration