Private Profit and Public Safety as Outcomes of Local Land-Use Regulation

Abstract

Consistent with requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), over 17000 local governments in the USA have enacted local floodplain-management programs. This paper is an analysis of whether and to what extent these local riverine regulatory policies decrease riverbank development and increase the use of protective site-design and construction measures. To address these questions, 106 developers and builders were surveyed in ten cities having floodplain policies of varying strengths. It is found that floodplain policy has a negligible effect on whether development does or does not occur in a floodplain. Such programs, however, do have significant effects on the extent to which structures built in the floodplain are protected from future flood damage.