Arthur Christian Nelson

Biography

Arthur C. (Christian) Nelson has made significant contributions to the fields of: real estate analysis including the role of changing demographics in shifting long-term real estate development trends; urban growth management and  open space preservation, central city revitalization; infrastructure financing; planning effectiveness; transportation and land use outcomes; metropolitan development patterns; the economic effects of facility location; the role of suburban redevelopment in reshaping metropolitan America; and the new “megapolitan” geography of the United States.

Contents

1. Professional and Academic Life
2. Significant Scholarly Contributions
3. Sources
4. References

Professional and Academic Life

Arthur C. Nelson is Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona. He is also Presidential Professor Emeritus of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah where, from 2008-2014, he served as founding Director of the Metropolitan Research Center, Adjunct Professor of Finance in the David Eccles School of Business, and founding Co-Director of the Master of Real Estate Development program.

Between 2002 and 2008, Dr. Nelson was founding Director of the Urban Affairs and Planning program at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Center where he was also Co-Director (with Robert E. Lang) of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, and founder of the Planning Academy at Virginia Tech. From 1987 to 2002, he was Professor of City and Regional Planning in the College of Architecture and Professor of Public Policy in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and between 2000 and 2002 he was Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgia State University. With Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer he co-founded the nation’s only bi-university dual master of planning (Georgia Tech) and juris doctor (Georgia State) degree program. Dr. Nelson’s academic career started as visiting Assistant Professor of Regional and Community Planning at Kansas State University (1984-85) and then as Associate Professor of Urban and Public Affairs (now Planning and Urban Studies) at the University of New Orleans (1986-87) where he was Adjunct Professor of Social Work at Southern University New Orleans.

Dr. Nelson received his Bachelor of Science degree in political science with certificates in Urban Studies and Social Service at Portland State University in 1972. As a consultant in planning and fiscal analysis along the West Coast based in Portland, Oregon for a dozen years (1972-1984), he returned to Portland State where he received the Master of Urban Studies degree (1976) and later the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Urban Studies specializing in regional science and regional planning in 1984.

Dr. Nelson has received numerous distinctions over his academic career. He is a member of College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), was commissioned Honorary Lieutenant Colonial by the Georgia Governor, received research, teaching and scholarship awards, and was advisor to students winning the AICP national student project of the year award. He has also served as editor of Housing Policy Debate[21], associate editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs, and Planners’ Notebook editor and associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association. He serves in other editorial capacities for several journals.

Significant Scholarly Contributions

Urban containment and open space preservation Dr. Nelson was the first to demonstrate empirically how land markets respond to urban containment that includes Greenfield preservation. Urban containment will steer regional market demand for development to areas inside urban containment boundaries (UCBs) with the effect that the value of land for urban development rises inside UCBs and falls outside them. The value of land for farming and other working landscape uses rises as with respect to distance from UCBs because the closer to the boundary such land is, the more it is impacted adversely by negative externalities imposed by urban neighborhoods. On the other hand, the value of land just inside the UCB falls with respect to UCB distance because the positive effects of Greenbelt amenities diminish. Dr. Nelson argued for schemes that capture positive land use gains inside the UCB to compensate for losses outside. Dr. Nelson also showed that the aggregate effect of leapfrog urban development patterns is to push the value of land for working landscape purposes below that which may sustain economically viable operations.

Urban containment and central city revitalization Dr. Nelson and his colleagues have shown that by ameliorating the outward expansion of urban development, urban containment can accelerate the redevelopment of central cities.

The social benefits of urban containment While urban containment can be viewed as restricting the supply of land for development thereby raising housing prices and generally undermining efficient urban development, Nelson and his colleagues have shown otherwise. Effective urban containment planning increases development densities, facilitates mixed-use development, reduces inefficient land development, increases employment, improves fiscal resilience, and reduces socioeconomic segregation.

Infrastructure financing Critical to managing urban growth is providing public facilities to accommodate it. Ideally, users of public facilities will pay their proportionate costs. Otherwise, higher-cost development may be subsidized by lower-cost development resulting in economically perverse outcomes. Dr. Nelson has helped pioneer methodologies to achieve economically efficient pricing of public facilities as well as studies showing how such pricing leads to efficient land use patterns.

Plan effectiveness Land use plans are made in part to improve development outcomes. Whether plans are effective in doing so is illusive because of counter-factual complications. Dr. Nelson has helped pioneer the field of measuring the effectiveness of land use plans by showing plans can achieve their intended objectives of mitigating impacts of natural hazardssuch as seismic events. He has also pioneered metrics to evaluate comprehensive plan outcomes with respect to several planning objectives showing that plans can affect desired outcomes.

Transportation and land use outcomes Through a series of studies in Atlanta, Dr. Nelson developed and tested theories on how the land market responds to transit stations.  Because Atlanta is viewed by many analysts as the nation's most sprawling metropolitan area, he reasoned that if the market responded positively to the presence and location of transit stations in Atlanta in ways he theorized, one could conclude reasonably that rail transit per se could influence urban form and regional development patterns.  Dr. Nelson found that residential neighborhoods of differing incomes valued proximity to neighborhood transit stations positively.He was also the first to confirm statistically that commercial property values rise with respect to transit station proximity and that transit ridership increases when developments are clustered around transit stations. Finally, through his research he found statistical evidence that even in the nation's most sprawled and most automobile-dependent metropolitan area, rail transit influences regional development patterns and in ways that confer important social benefits.  Dr. Nelson’s research in these areas helps planners understand the relationship between rail transit and urban form in contemporary metropolitan areas.

American exurbanization Dr. Nelson pioneered much of the current insights into the drivers of “exurbanization” which he characterizes as the suburbs of the suburbs.  His early work characterized exurbanization and the role of exurban industrialization in facilitating it. His later work evaluates the behavioral motivations underlying exurban settlement, calling into question whether exurbanization is nothing more than the "suburbanization of suburbs".  Because of its land-consumptive nature and because it is fueled by the motivation to escape from urban areas, exurbanization could very well pose the greatest planning challenge in the next century. Dr. Nelson's work is pioneering in bringing to the attention of planners and scholars the implications of exurbanization.

Economic effects of facility location Dr. Nelson pioneered studies evaluating the economic effects of landfills, major sports stadiums, beltways, and regional sewerage systems. Contradicting findings in the industry, he found that landfills had adverse effects on residential property values up to a few miles away. In another, study, Dr. Nelson was the first to show conclusively that the most economically beneficial place in which to locate sports stadiums is in a central business district. He also found that locating a stadium elsewhere can lead to neighborhood blight. In the third study, Dr. Nelson found that beltways, especially multiple layers of beltways, reduce retail and service trade at the metropolitan scale by reducing the income-density thresholds needed to sustain local-serving operations. Dr. Nelson and his colleagues also found that regional-scale sewerage systems with associated land-use planning has the effect of reducing development costs, thereby shifting regional development away from areas served by smaller systems to regions served by larger systems.

Plan effectiveness Do plans matter? That is, can long-range comprehensive plans actually affect the desired outcomes? They can but only when plans have clear, measurable objectives and are implemented by regulatory tools designed to meet those objectives. This finding was confirmed when Dr. Nelson and his colleagues discovered the relationship between the factual basis of local plans and policies in mitigating damage associated with natural disasters, such as earthquakes and flooding. In other work, Dr. Nelson has demonstrated that implementing plans based on factually-grounded projections of development needs is effective at reducing financial risk associated with overbuilding. In a series of studies based on Oregon’s statewide land-use planning process, Dr. Nelson and colleagues demonstrated that plans with factual bases, clear objectives, measurable benchmarks, and rigorous implementation can achieve desired outcomes in preserving open spaces while also meeting urban development needs. As global climate change becomes an leading planning challenge, state and local governments may need to elevate plan quality and implementation rigor to mitigate potentially adverse outcomes.

Planning implications of demographic and economic change Based on demographic and changes in consumer preferences, Dr. Nelson was among the first to show that America has more homes on large lots than the market demands. By some accounts, he also created a new field of projecting large-scale nonresidential redevelopment opportunities that may be sufficient to meet all future development needs of nearly all metropolitan areas to about mid-century.

The role of suburban redevelopment in reshaping metropolitan America Dr. Nelson’s research is helping inform planning and development processes of the key role that American suburbs will play in meeting future development needs.Indeed, while the demand for downtown housing may be increasing it will account for only one to two percent of the entire demand in nearly all metropolitan areas. In contrast, most of America’s opportunity to meet future development needs is through the redevelopment of its suburbs. This demand will result in the rise of more suburban “downtowns” albeit of many different types based on their market contexts. Moreover, based on survey research, Dr. Nelson finds that members of the “baby boom” generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) may be instrumental in reshaping suburban America.

The new “megapolitan” geography of the United States Until 1900, most people in the United States lived in rural areas. Over the next half century, America’s central cities accounted for most of the nation’s population. By 1980, the urban population was comprised mostly of suburban residents but the rise of suburbia belied a more fundamental shift in America’s economic geography. Using rigorous analytic techniques, Dr. Nelson and his colleagues have created a new view of America’s economic geography: the rise of Megapolitan America. By 2040, America will be comprised of 23 economic regions composed of multiple core-based statistical areas that form a coherent economic unit. Nelson and his colleagues argue that for America to be globally competitive, it needs to leverage the economic advantages these Megapoltian areas offer.

Degrees

• Ph.D Urban Studies - Regional Planning & Regional Science
• Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA
• Evaluating Urban Containment Programs

Awards

• Presidential Professor Emeritus
• University of Utah, Spring 2014