Western North Carolina Planning Policies: A Decade in Review

In December 1981, a joint project of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and the Center for Improving Mountain Living (Western Carolina University), supported by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, issued a report entitled Growth Management and the Future of Western North Carolina.2 According to that report, the "future" for environmental protection and land-use planning in western North Carolina was about ten years away. The report anticipated that interest in "growth management" would increase when county leaders recognized the need for balance between economic development, traditional lifestyles and the environment. Nearly eleven years have passed since publication of that report, and, true to the prediction, concern about those issues appears to be increasing throughout the region. For example, in the early eighties, leaders of all eight of the environmental interest action groups in the region would meet periodically around a single, small conference table to discuss issues of mutual interest. Today, there are over 50 such groups active throughout the region. While some of these groups focus on only a single issue, others are involved in a broad array of environmental and land-use concerns