Economic impacts to Composite Index of Sprawl

B. W. Kew and B. D. Lee

Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Kentucky

Urban sprawl is transforming the landscape of Kentucky’s farmland from a dominant agricultural land use matrix to a patchwork of urbanization and agriculture. On average, 130 acres are converted from agriculture to urbanization in Kentucky. The Economic Research Service has “urban influence” codes which describe the degree of urban influence on the county, however; the complexities of these dynamic patterns of sprawl can be better analyzed with the use of geospatial data such as as density of urbanization, road layers, loss of farmland, population trends and amount of impervious surfaces to compute a sprawl index. Integrating this data, along with US Census data, and Census of Agriculture data, counties are ranked according to areas to these indicators of sprawl. The principle objective of this project is to create a Composite Index of Sprawl (CIS) within Kentucky’s Golden Triangle . CIS is needed by landowners, planners, policy makers and other stakeholders of Kentucky agriculture. The CIS by county can raise awareness of the importance of land use planning decisions This presentation will demonstrate how the index can be used to describe what counties are experiencing the most sprawl. Expected benefits of ranking urban sprawl indicators are to determine the counties of where sprawl is occurring to inform public land-use policy.

Keywords: economic evaluation, land use planning, social sciences

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