214 Practice
further – reinforced by binding all farm holders into a ‘right to farm and nothing
else’ rural tax base.
At its most offending, ex-urban land commodification presents as ‘ribbon
development’, an Australasian expression which transcribes expressively in
North America as ‘road stripping’. Figure 5.6, Rural road stripping: the cluster
alternative, illustrates the recommended layout approach. Approval within
such a compact involves acceptance of a deep frontyard set-back (50 metres
minimum from the road boundary), designing multiple access and pan-handled
rear siting, and achieving effective clustering, avoiding ridge-lines and hill-tops –
and landscaped withal.
The most direct instrument to apply for averting the costs to a nation of taking
elite soils out of food and textile production for ex-urban residential development,
is simply to enforce an urban growth boundary decree, a rural tax-based growth
prohibition against urban expansion onto land of either high productive character
or high conservation value. The only ex-urban uses permitted beyond the urban
growth boundary would involve pockets of agriculturally less productive soils of
marginal agricultural utility. This approach accommodates the fact that those
motivated toward an ex-urban lifestyle cannot be easily dissuaded from that
choice, leaving this as a selective compromise option.^25
The backgrounding to an extensive method of ex-urban sprawl control was
examined in the ‘Urban-rural patterning’ section in chapter 4, signalling the
ravages of sprawl and the benefits of growth management. Turning growth man-
agement principles into growth management practice – in effect initiating extensive land-
use planning – is one of the most exacting challenges of a planning kind confronting Anglo
settler societies. ‘Exacting and demanding’ because the emergence of growth man-
agement policy involves political partnerships, inter-governmental associations,
technical competency, years of lead time, and the formulation of legal procedures
of a magnitude unfamiliar to most local planning practitioners. The whole-of-
territory imperative established in chapter 4 predicates that the growth manage-
ment mandate exhibits a whole-state (whole province) attribute. In a text with theFigure 5.6 Rural road stripping and the cluster alternative.
Left: Scenic Highway 16 again.Right: not to be encouraged, but much better – a 20 per cent housing
and 80 per cent rural ratio, retaining most of the land for agriculture, yet producing a bonus number
of discretely sited, gravel-accessed plots for sale.