It’s expensive to live in Silicon Valley, and for years
developers have pointed to the region’s many parks and conserved
landscapes as a major reason for the high cost of housing. If
land is conserved it cannot be used for homes, the argument
goes, and this forces up housing costs, pricing moderate income
buyers out of the market. It may be a logical argument, but it
not a valid one, according to recent research out of Stanford
University, which released a story in mid-March: In a study
conducted by the university’s Bill Lane Center for the American
West, executive director Jon Christensen, sociology graduate
student Carrie Denning and landscape ecologist Robert McDonald
analyzed whether land conservation efforts in Silicon Valley –
which has about 116,000 acres of protected parks, forests,
waterfronts and wildlife refuges – have hurt housing
development. Their findings, published online in the journal
Biological Conservation, suggest that land protection may not
have much of an impact on the number of housin