2003), Zoning, Development Timing, and Agricultural Land Use at the Suburban Fringe: A Competing Risks Approach. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review

Competing risks survival analysis is used to investigate tax and zoning policy impacts on residential, commercial, and industrial development timing in a rapidly growing Midwestern county. Industrial development appears both to precede and occur concurrently with residential development, while commercial development follows other types. Although residences appear to locate away from indus-trial land, zoning decisions favoring industry may attract rather than deter residential development within a jurisdiction. Regions with higher infrastructure taxes experience development later. Because school taxes fund local public goods important to homeowners, they have little influence on residen-tial timing, but strong influences on industrial and commercial timing. Key Words: land use change, land use policy, survival models As economic growth in the 1990s boomed, large areas of agricultural and other undeveloped land converted rapidly to developed uses. While develop-ment outside a central city can benefit the local and regional economy (Gordon and Richardson, 2000), many authors argue there are negative impacts of rapid suburbanization, including inefficient use of land or other resources, reduced environmental qual-ity, and congestion, among other impacts (see, fo