Re: P&Z and rural residential

[Ken Medlin <dev-plan@moscow.com>]

>Why 40 acres?  Good question.
A Moscow city official told me that this amount of acreage would 
presumably not disturb  the natural land uses (agricultural) while 
enhancing the county tax base. Each 40-acre plot is required to retain 
only 5 for residential development needs/interests. As a rationale, it is 
obviously contrived to fit a number of different land use interests; but 
ecologically, it just does not make any sense. To test out the wisdom of 
such practices,  we'd have to come back, say, 20 years from inception and 
measure the impacts of such arrangements, of which there are many in the 
County, and increasing. It's obvious that we do not have anything close 
to the name of "development planning", or urban planning, or rural 
planning, or community development. We have a vague 'comprehesive plan' 
that simply lays out certain contours on the landscape for human impacts, 
some of which relate to density, to services, to water rights, and the 
like. But if you raise questions about natural resources gain/loss, 
cost-benefit, communtiy sustainability, etc., there are no data built 
into the planning programs to answer these questions. It's about time 
that our planning associations and govt. development officials began to 
get a little scientific about their work. Otherwise, the politicians, qua 
developers,will continue to write the rules as they go, unmindful or 
unaware of what they are doing to both natural biotic communities and our 
human ones. It really isn't too difficult to see why they have not moved 
in these directions, or why the salmon are in such a hell of a mess.   
Ultimately, we'll all lose.  Ken M.

------------------------
William K. Medlin
Dev-plan associates
930 Kenneth Street
Moscow ID 83843
208/892-0148
dev-plan@moscow.com