A Method to Monitoring Madness

Monitoring Land & Housing Markets: An Essential Tool for Smart Growth details a new method for monitoring land. Gerrit Knapp, executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, prepared the report for the National Center for Housing and the Environment and presented it in January at the International Builders' Show.

The report spells out a methodology for integrating data - in many cases publicly available - to monitor land and estimate development capacity and demand. These data include:

• population by acreage and type of home.
• vacant residential, non-subdivided tract lands, identifiable by tax files.
• residential density, tracked to identify trends.
• under-build opportunities, as housing often is not built out to allowable zoned densities.
• infill and redevelopment areas.
• infrastructure capacity, which is vital to avoiding overloading utilities — and budgets.
• housing affordability, available from geographic information systems, census data and the NAHB's Housing Opportunities Index.
• land and housing prices, which developers are pushing more municipalities to compile.

Knapp's report can be downloaded from www.housingandenvironment.org.