More than ever, people are visiting and moving to places with inspiring natural amenities: forests, lakes, beaches, trails, and wildlife. Local and state governments, recognizing that promoting outdoor recreation can be a powerful way to diversify economies, have devoted billions in funds to encourage more tourism and investment. Yet rapidly growing outdoor recreation economies can also come with serious drawbacks.

For many places the influx of tourists and new visitors is creating profound problems. Housing has become unaffordable, forcing long-time residents out and contributing to labor shortages. Infrastructure, municipal finances, and community well-being can be overcome by a wave of unexpected growth and fraught public discourse.

The paradox of a place with natural attractions that make it a great place to live but also threaten it with being “loved to death” is known as the amenity trap.

To help community leaders facing this paradox, Headwaters Economics has released a report, Amenity Trap: How high-amenity communities can avoid being loved to death. The report analyzes four major challenges and the ways they uniquely affect amenity communities: housing, infrastructure, fiscal policy, and natural disasters. The report includes solutions underway in communities across the country, with the goal of providing community leaders with strategies that can help them navigate a growing outdoor recreation economy while protecting needs of residents and the natural amenities they depend on.

Courtesy of Headwaters Economics. Click on image to access the 2023 Amenity Trap Report.