Amenity-led Migration Survey: Final Report
February 6, 2010
Prepared for Similkameen Valley Planning Society by Glorioso, Moss and Associates.
From the Introduction:
"Amenity migration—the movement of people to places rich in natural and/or cultural amenities—offers opportunities such as economic growth and diversification, improved services and facilities along with new ideas and experiences (McGranahan and Wojan 2007, Moss 2006, Rasker and Alexander 2003). While some high amenity, rural communities experience these benefits, there have also been serious negative effects. Socio-economic ones include lack of affordable housing, increasing cost of living, widening income disparity between earlier inhabitants and amenity migrants and social and physical dislocation of people of modest means. The most common biophysical outcomes are low - density sprawl, land fragmentation with conversion to residential development, increasing urban - wildland interface and depletion of water resources along with more general stress on ecological systems (Glorioso and Moss 2007, Gobster and Haight 2004, Power 1996)."