Cityscape of Lexington, Kentucky

rdf:langString Cityscape of Lexington, Kentucky

rdf:langString The urban development patterns of Lexington, Kentucky, confined within an urban growth boundary that protects its famed horse farms, include greenbelts and expanses of land between it and the surrounding towns. This has been done to preserve the region's horse farms and the unique Bluegrass landscape, which bring millions of dollars to the city through the horse industry and tourism. Urban growth is also tightly restricted in the adjacent counties, with the exception of Jessamine County, with development only allowed inside existing city limits. In order to prevent rural subdivisions and large homes on expansive lots from consuming the Bluegrass landscape, Fayette and all surrounding counties have minimum lot size requirements, which range from 10 acres (40,000 m2) in Jessamine to fifty in Fayette. Because the farmland in the southern part of the county consisted more of tobacco farms than pastures for raising horses and thus was considered "replaceable", most of Lexington's growth has been historically concentrated south of the downtown area. As a result, more than seventy percent of today's population lives south of US 60. Until the mid-1990s, most of the growth occurred in the southwest between US 68 (Harrodsburg Road) and KY 1974 (Tates Creek Road). Today, new development continues to the Madison and Clark County lines in a southeasterly direction along the Interstate 75 and US 60 (Winchester Road) corridors. Of the surrounding counties, the greatest growth is occurring in the counties through which Interstate 75 and US 27 pass, such as Scott County, Madison County and Jessamine County. Clark County and Woodford County are experiencing moderate growth, and Bourbon County is stagnant, with almost no growth. More recently, growth has begun to leapfrog the adjacent counties, with rapid increases in suburban development in Anderson County, to the west of Woodford County along the Bluegrass Parkway and also in the commuter belt of the state capital of Frankfort; and Garrard County, to the south of Jessamine along US 27. In addition to rampant suburban growth, downtown Lexington is seeing a large building boom, with the revitalization of many historical structures and the construction of many new ones. Much of the development utilizes urban infill techniques such as the filling in of parking lots and high-density or out-of-character structures. Several new projects, such as South Hill Station Lofts and University Lofts, are taking advantage of now-disused tobacco warehouses along the South Broadway corridor.