Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

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DaveKCMO
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Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by DaveKCMO »

I put this in Kansas Suburbs because I'm quite sure this effort is about preventing Lawrence from being consumed by Johnson County's westward expansion.

https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2021/jun/ ... ural-land/
At its meeting Wednesday, the Douglas County Commission voted unanimously to initiate the process to develop an amendment to the zoning and land use regulations for unincorporated or rural areas. The amendment, once developed and approved, will establish a new system and standards to evaluate requests to rezone agricultural land to another use.

The county has already been taking agricultural productivity into account when reviewing requests to rezone agricultural land under zoning regulations it adopted in February 2020. Planning staff has been doing manual reviews of properties to determine current or potential agricultural productivity, and Wednesday’s approval gives planning staff the green light to move forward with the development of standards for an automated review process called the Land Evaluation and Site Assessment (LESA) system.
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Re: Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by CorneliusFB »

I think this is more about slowing Lawrence’s sprawl and the burden it would place on County resources in the unincorporated areas just outside the City limits. There is still a long way to go before Desoto and the western JoCo sprawl hits Douglas County in earnest (noting that Eudora’s growth looks very similar to Desoto 15 years ago)
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Re: Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by alejandro46 »

The Sunflower Ammo plant is a huge chunk of contiguous land that could be developed in one relatively swift go provided it ever gets remediated. There is also a lot of agricultural land west of Bonner Springs as well.
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Re: Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by FangKC »

I've read that climate change is going to potentially reduce yields on agricultural land by 40 percent if we fail to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees celcius. Thus, we are going to need as much current farmland to remain farmland. Of course, if humans can stop eating so much meat, we won't need as much wheat, corn, and soybeans -- because a lot of it goes to feed animals.
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Re: Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by flyingember »

FangKC wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:06 am I've read that climate change is going to potentially reduce yields on agricultural land by 40 percent if we fail to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees celcius. Thus, we are going to need as much current farmland to remain farmland. Of course, if humans can stop eating so much meat, we won't need as much wheat, corn, and soybeans -- because a lot of it goes to feed animals.
a lot of people will switch to grown meat because it's going to be cheaper
not because they want to, but big companies looking to cut costs will use it

It's not just climate change, it's overuse of water from aquifers that will create a food issue

http://duwaterlawreview.com/crisis-on-t ... -ogallala/
second image down shows areas where there's a risk that farmers have to start relying on rain water and that's just one small band of food production

The Colorado River is in the news and it's basically one giant farming water source
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Re: Lawrence Urban Growth Boundary?

Post by Eon Blue »

FangKC wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:06 am I've read that climate change is going to potentially reduce yields on agricultural land by 40 percent if we fail to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees celcius. Thus, we are going to need as much current farmland to remain farmland. Of course, if humans can stop eating so much meat, we won't need as much wheat, corn, and soybeans -- because a lot of it goes to feed animals.
It's not just a matter of preserving farmland--it's important to preserve *non-irrigated* farmland. We're in a lose-lose-lose situation if we take an acre of farmland in Johnson or Douglas County to build more sprawl and replace that farmland with an acre in western KS irrigated with Ogallala Aquifer fossil water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
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