While this article is not the most current it’s about a year old, I found it rather interesting. It doesn’t go into all of the details of the planning organization but it has some. It is based off of the Open Space Committee in Guilford county, North Carolina. The committee began as an unofficial forum. Overtime it became a part of the Parks and Recreation Commission and would buy land using bonds. This is like music. Since the land is bought rather than taken, it is presumably going to the highest bidder. And people buying bonds to fund this means that people who believe in this cause are providing the money. Admittedly, it sounds as though some taxes are going to this cause, which is a bit of a downer, but two things in life are certain, death and taxes. Also, it sounds like the county is heading in the wrong direction, and will attribute more taxes to the project over time. For now, at least they’re buying up the land rather than simply taking it, or restricting the space that people can live one. According the John D. Young, chairman of the Guilford Open Space Committee there was little to no cost to the county to create Haw River State Park.
If it was moving towards using bond money rather than tax money to buy land rather than simply taking it that would be nice, however the trend across the states still appears to be the other way around. Perhaps if things such as the Haw River State Park being bought using bond money were better advertised then people would realize that all the rules and restrictions are unnecessary. This does not seem likely at least for some time since neither this nor the New Urbanism movements seem to take top priority among the news. However, Haw River State Park is a good example of the market working on its own.
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