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Urban Growth and the Taxation of Agricultural Land in the Northeast

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2017

Donald J. Epp
Donald J. Epp*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

The rapid population growth of the United States and the well documented concentration of that population into a few major metropolitan areas has caused significant amounts of land to shift from agricultural to urban uses. Since World War II, the shifts in land use have caused considerable concern in the Northeast, particularly in those states containing parts of the BosWash megolopolis. Concern over the loss of open space land and the rapid decline in agricultural firms led several state legislatures to consider methods of halting, or at least controlling, the spread of cities into the rural hinterland. Maryland was the first state to pass legislation to protect open space and agriculture, enacting its law in 1955. Connecticut followed with its law in 1963 and New Jersey in 1964. All of these legislative acts declare that it is in the public interest to preserve open space lands, including farms and forests. The wording may vary from state to state but the intent is clear. These legislatures were trying to hold land in open space uses, or at least to avoid forcing their conversion because of high taxes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Northeastern Agricultural Economics Council , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , June 1973 , pp. 48 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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Footnotes

∗

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Seminar on Property Taxation, Public Finance and Land Use sponsored by the Southern Land Economics Research Committee and the Interregional Resource Economics Committee, Dulles International Airport, Virginia, April, 1972. The author is grateful to the participants at that conference for their helpful comments and to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for suggesting several improvements.

References

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