SRS-RN: Land Use in Regional Sustainability Transitions: Establishing a Network of Research and Practice to Support Governance in Linked Urban and Rural Systems of Massachusetts

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The goal of this project is to promote sustainability and resilience in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through integrated land use planning and management. Using land for one purpose, such as energy generation, can have implications for other purposes, such as sustainable food systems and forest ecosystems. Regional landscapes reflect complex political, economic, social, and cultural forces. Over time, choices made by local, state, regional, and national actors create mosaics of land use with a range of costs and benefits. Future land use choices will affect strategies that are essential to achieve regional sustainability and climate resilience, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions; ensuring food security; supporting healthy economies and communities; and maintaining and enhancing natural environments. However, collaboration and coordination of land use planning and management across actors, regions, and scales is challenging. This project will advance sustainability and climate resilience goals in Massachusetts, support undergraduate and graduate education, and serve as a model for integrated land use governance in other regions with connected urban and rural communities. This project will explore the challenges and opportunities of integrated governance by investigating how land use choices mediate trade-offs, synergies, risks, benefits, and equity among sectors, scales, and communities. To achieve this goal, Tuler and colleagues will expand existing partnerships and lay the foundation for a Massachusetts Integrated Landscape and Land Use Research for Sustainability (MILLURS) Network to support integrated land use planning and management. The Network will be comprised of diverse policymakers, civil society stakeholders, and researchers whose work at multiple scales intersects with land use planning in urban and rural communities. The planning grant aims to 1) characterize the connections among governmental and civil society actors whose efforts impact land use choices; 2) identify the structures and knowledge systems that have common goals or are barriers to integration; 3) co-develop models and identify measures for integrated land use governance goals; and 4) propose a structure for future work and identify potential pilot programs, research questions, and educational activities to accomplish in future efforts. This work will advance the science of sustainable urban-rural regional systems through the lens of land use by drawing together lessons emerging from the MILLURS Network and insights from three streams of scholarship and practice: multi-level governance; integrated knowledge systems and tools for sustainability and resilience; and analytic-deliberative processes to support co-learning and governance among diverse stakeholders. This project will advance collaborative governance by initiating collaboration among sectors where communication and coordination for governance and climate resilience is weak.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.