| Although transfer of development rights or transferable development rights (or TDR as it will be referred to throughout this study) was developed nearly 40 years ago, it has recently become a topic of greater interest among planners, members of the development and conservation communities, citizens, and scholars. As many as 181 TDR programs may exist in some sense as laws or regulations that have been formally adopted by legislative and administrative entities, but the program features and performance of many them remain largely unknown. Relatively few comprehensive, empirical investigations of TDR have ever been conducted. Current empirical research has had much to say about individual programs and very small samples of individual programs, and little to say about the performance and viability of TDR in a broader sense. Based primarily on data from recent interviews with program administrators representing TDR programs from across the United States, this study establishes several indicators for measuring TDR program performance and analyzes core TDR program factors including mandatory versus voluntary programs; programs with TDR banks; public involvement in implementing TDR; programmatic goals of TDR programs. Implications for further research and policy are discussed. |
