Sprawl creates a series of social and environmental issues, such as increasing pollution, increasing traffic and traffic-related fatalities, decreasing land and water quantity and quality, and increasing infrastructure costs. However, as the population grows and the need of residential development grows, sprawl would continue in the future. Local governments in the sprawl areas, thus, are seeking land use planning strategies to eliminate sprawl problems.
Conservation subdivision development (CSD), a relatively new development tool, emerged about two decades ago, is trying to balance the demand of land development and the conservation of environment, ecosystems, farmland and cultural and historical features. It could reduce the sprawl problems by clustering the development on the relatively small portion of the site, and leaving major portion of the site as conservation areas.
This study uses marketing concept in business field to help local government to promote CSD. The study provides a framework for local governments to formulate CSD promotion strategies based on the situations that local government are facing, analysis of the characteristics and needs of developers (the suppliers of CSDs) and residentshomeowners (the consumers of CSDs), analysis of benefits and barriers of applying CSD approach, and the conservation objectives and goals; and then prepare time schedule for the implementation of CSD promotion strategies and monitor the outcomes of the strategies to adjust and update the strategies for better result. The framework is demonstrated with a hypothetical case study.
It requires knowledgeable staff and careful research to formulate strategies to promote CSDs. The lack of knowledgeable staff and careful research would reduce the effectiveness of these promotion strategies. In addition, the CSD approach is still relatively new compared with prevailed conventional development in residential development industry. It needs time and afford to achieve the wide rang implementation of CSD approach.