Anticipating trade-offs between urban patterns and ecosystem service production: Scenario analyses of sprawl alternatives for a rapidly urbanizing region

Expanding demand for low-density development has restructured the urban-rural frontier throughout North America, shifting the burden of ecosystem provisioning to increasingly fragmented green infrastructure remnants. Planners have responded with approaches to control low-density development (‘sprawl’) that dominates North American exurbia. However, the ability of sprawl alternatives to preserve ecosystem services have not been systematically evaluated. Using a novel integration of land change simulation and ecosystem services modeling, we used proxies to estimate changes in water quality, climate regulation and biodiversity, and returns to landowners associated with sprawl alternatives and business-as-usual trends for the rapidly urbanizing Charlotte (NC) region by 2030. We found no single growth scenario simultaneously reduced pollution, stored additional carbon, and retained sensitive habitat, underscoring trade-offs likely encountered when balancing development and environmental outcomes. Watersheds at the extremes of the urban-rural gradient exhibited significantly different and often opposing responses to policies aimed at reducing environmental impacts. Scenarios of increased land use density yielded stronger financial returns to landowners as concentrated economic activity drove up land rents while minimizing broader pollution costs. Our simulated landscape approach overcame limitations associated with scale and data, and projected regional environmental outcomes emerging from local development events. •We evaluated impacts associated with five development scenarios using urban growth and ecosystem service modeling.•We estimated urbanization effects on non-point source pollutants, carbon, habitat, and rent, timber and crop returns.•No scenario reduced pollution, stored carbon, and retained sensitive habitat, anticipating the need for trade-offs.•Overall, development scenarios traded environmental degradation for improved financial returns.•Increased development density minimized environmental costs and maximized revenues as compared to business-as-usual.