The Relationship of Shoreland Zoning Elements to the Aesthetics of Developed Lakeshores in Wisconsin
Abstract
Wisconsin's beautiful lakes attract people for
recreational opportunities and as places along which to
live. The main reasons why people want to live on
lakeshores are for solitude and beauty, but these aesthetic
values are threatened by shoreland development.
Wisconsin's shoreland management program, the nation's
first, has intended, in part, to protect the natural and
aesthetic quality of lakeshores by controlling development.
But very little research has been done in the program's 20-
year history to verify if lakeshore scenery is effectively
protected. This thesis examined the law's ability to
protect natural beauty by testing the hypothesis that the
aesthetics of developed lakeshores, as viewed from the lake,
are proportional to three visible shoreland zoning elements:
the building setback, lot width, and clearing of the buffer
zone. These three physical variables and two other
aesthetic variables (attractiveness of the buildings and
visual water/air quality) were used as independent variables
in the study. Values of the five variables were measured or
assessed on each of 90 photographic slides of residential
lakeshore development collected throughout the state. The
dependent variable, the overall aesthetics of developed
lakeshores, was assessed on the same slides by two different
rating groups: 1) college students and 2) lakeshore property
owners. Results by multiple linear regression analysis
showed that the strongest predictor of the aesthetics of
developed lakeshores was the amount of buffer zone that was
cleared. A high correlation between the development
aesthetic variable and the dependent variable indicates that
aesthetic judgment is focussed on the quality of the human
development. Reliability tests between rating groups showed
that very different populations agree about what is
aesthetically pleasing on developed lakeshores.