Published on 3 Aug 2016 Written by David Heyburn Posted in Community
As Metro Louisville begins the process to update its Comprehensive Plan, Cornerstone 2020, there is an interesting historic and strategic juxtaposition in Kentucky’s next largest city, Lexington.
Embedded within the richness of Kentucky’s horse-racing tradition, showcased every first Saturday in May, is a celebration of a land in which the urban city is but the urban city, and the rural countryside is but the rural countryside.
While the world descends on Churchill Downs in Louisville for one weekend a year for the Run for the Roses, a lesser-known, yet arguably more quintessentially Kentucky racing experience and center of horse racing industry is Keeneland Racecourse, about one hour east of Louisville in Lexington, Kentucky. Kentucky’s horse economy, primarily centered around Lexington, creates serious economic value—approximately $4 billion annually. Furthermore, world-class horse farms require a lot of land. However, the Bluegrass farmlands also have a qualitative value that mutually supports their economic value. While sitting in Keeneland’s clubhouse, you are treated to an unobstructed view of Kentucky’s natural beauty for as far as the eye can see; farmland that is meant to be farmland.
Urban Growth Boundaries preserve rural farm land by focusing urban development
The land beyond the far turn has been intentionally conserved. In 1958, with the purpose of protecting the area’s lucrative, beautiful, and signature Bluegrass farmland from being threatened and fragmented by an incremental dissolution of urban development into the surrounding rural areas, Lexington adopted an urban service boundary within their comprehensive plan.
An urban service boundary is one of many strategies utilized by the public sector to set limits on development in rural areas by restricting the limit to which costly urban services will be built and maintained. In Lexington, the minimum lot size for residential development outside the service boundary is 40 acres, and most commercial development is prohibited.
As of 2011, Lexington had 6,700 acres of vacant land within the urban service boundary, of which 4,500 acres was designated for residential growth, according to Jim Duncan, the city’s director of long-range planning. By agreeing to keep the existing boundary in the 2011 Comprehensive Plan, the community recognizes that “building our brand and our economy means that first we preserve what is special and unique about Lexington — our Bluegrass landscape,” according to Lexington Mayor Jim Gray.
USGBC