Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

How does strategic planning of land-use actually influence the physical patterns of urban sustainable development? Extant research suggests a range of social forces -- from interest-group strength, local government institutions, ideology, fiscal stress and homophily -- influence the willingness of local governments to engage in sustainable land-use policy choices and actions. Often these studies overlook the full context of fragmented and competing service-delivery demands placed on local governments. And rarely has the influence of these social determinants been extended to actual physical outcomes such as the rate of conversion of rural lands to urban uses.

In the organizational context of a state which has recently deregulated its growth-management oversight, we tackle two interrelated questions. First, how does the broader external governance environment influence the willingness of local governments to engage in a more comprehensive array of sustainability activities? Second, to what extent do these activities influence urban development patterns? We employ Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling to explore the latent mediating influences of institutional friction, citizen participation mechanisms, and financial health of local governments on the comprehensiveness of sustainable development policy instrument use, and how these choices subsequently influence conversion of rural land to urban uses. Examining cities in Florida at two time periods, we find evidence that public managers engaging in strategic planning do slow the spread of sprawling, low-density development patterns, and the influence is greater in the absence of state-level coordination. We also find evidence the governmental fragmentation at the metro scale positively influences the conversion of rural lands to urban uses, which holds broad policy importance for governments in an age of fiscal austerity and pressure for collaborative service-delivery.