Public Control of Land Use: Are Existing Administrative Structures Appropriate?

Abstract

The last 30 years has seen an enormous urban expansion and an increase in the complexity of metropolitan processes. This is visible in a continually greater competition for land and the renewed emphasis on land use planning. Although land allocation problems exist in all areas, this condition is especially acute in the urban periphery where competition includes not only urban industrial and development interests, but pastoral, recreational, and natural resource interests as well. Moreover, the competition does not revolve merely around traditional property rights and the economic use of land. Instead, a new land ethic of environmental interest may be emerging which suggests there is an element of livability in the development of land, that the highest good is not necessarily the economic use of land, and that this livability element can, if need be, overrule the economic element.' As a result, land use control has emerged as a central political issue in many areas of the United States.