May 24, 2023

Last week, I tested a prototype data pipeline to measure conservation by town in Massachusetts, and I started to infer some patterns in the sample outputs. Some back-of-the-napkin comparisons prompted me to ask more question about the economics driving land conservation today…

Here’s the zoning legend for the below visuals

Cities and towns in the upper row have high median household income for their population cohort and are contrasted to cities and towns in the bottom row with lower median household income. Cities and towns in the left column have low populations and cities & towns in the right column have high populations.

Cities and towns in the upper row have high median household income for their population cohort and are contrasted to cities and towns in the bottom row with lower median household income. Cities and towns in the left column have low populations and cities & towns in the right column have high populations.

I suspect that there is a strong correlation between your income and the proportion of protected open space in your community. The exact relationship warrants a bit more investigation. For instance, you can see that Sherborn and Wayland, two very wealthy towns, have almost no developable open space (yellow) left! Their remaining open space is either productive or has been protected. On the other hand, it’s hard to compare Shewsbury and West Springfield, and perhaps correlation between wealth and conservation is most evident when comparing the 10% wealthiest communities to the rest.

A relationship between wealth and conservation makes a lot of sense.

Others have noticed this pattern

A handful of studies (below) produce similar findings. There’s a lot of research out there: