National Land Use Policy

Abstract

This chapter provides an explanation of American land use policy from 1893 to 1945 by examining the dynamics of economic growth and decline in that period. Three phases of economic growth and decline are examined: an accelerated phase from 1893 to 1914, a period of superspeculation and decelerated growth from 1915 to 1929, and depression and decline from 1929 to 1945. Three types of land use policy were produced in these phases: one of limited land use regulation that allowed the most rapid rate of capital investment in land, another during the period of superspeculation that aimed to develop new land markets and to rationalize inefficient ones, and finally a land use policy that developed new regulatory and governmental structures in order to shore up good land investments from abandoned and unproductive ones. From these three economic phases and their effects upon the production of a land use policy, we can then predict the contours of our current land use policy in the wave of economic growth and decline from 1945 to the 1980s.