California Coastal Commission Research Articles

On-site and in-kind: Compensatory mitigation of California Coastal Zone habitat impacts between 2010 and 2018

Planning development while minimizing negative impacts to sensitive habitats poses a challenge for global natural resource management. After impacts from development are avoided and minimized, remaining adverse impacts may be offset using compensatory mitigation. Along the California coast, the California Coastal Commission (CCC) regulates development and subsequent mitigation for allowable impacts. We reviewed publicly available CCC staff reports for approved projects that impacted coastal habitats and required compensatory mitigation from 2010 to 2018. The median project size was approximately 728 square meters and almost all permanent impacts were mitigated at a >1:1 ratio, with regional and habitat-specific planning regulations driving some variation across the state. We found that wetlands were the most frequently impacted and had higher mitigation ratios. Temporary impacts were almost always mitigated at a 1:1 ratio. While most mitigation was on-site and in-kind, mitigation that was required off-site had a median distance of 4.7 km from the site of impact. Restoration was the most frequent mitigation action, over creation, enhancement, or preservation, but proportions of each action varied across habitat types. While our findings suggest no net loss of habitat area within the California Coastal Zone, the net change in ecosystem function is dependent on the performance of the mitigation projects. This review is only the first step in evaluating the success of compensatory mitigation along California's coast.

Styrofoam Particle Collector for Use of Coastal Cleanup using Electrostatic Effect and Van de Graaff Generator

According to the California coastal commission, more than 26,000 volunteers throughout California removed more than 300,000 pounds of trash from beaches and waterways during the California Coastal Cleanup 2021 event.1 I participated in Long Beach’s ‘California Coastal Cleanup Day’2 and noticed many small, cultch like particles such as styrofoam that mingled within the sand across the entire coastal region. Upon closer examination, I have also learned that styrofoam is a particularly dangerous type of pollution that poses a great threat to humans, the environment, and animals.3 I attempted to collect the styrofoam particles by hand and found it incredibly difficult to effectively pick up the pieces that litter our beaches. I have conducted further research on styrofoam and found that its chemical makeup can become electrostatically charged and mobilized under the influence of an electrostatic field. In this letter, I propose a styrofoam particle collector where the operational principle employs the electrostatic effect and the Van de Graaff generator. I also performed experiments to validate the working mechanism of the device. Finally, using a 3D modeling software and a 3D printer, the styrofoam particle collector was designed, integrated and successfully demonstrated. As a result, it is highlighted that the proposed idea is a very cost effective method and could be scaled up in size to effectively clean up the small styrofoam particles mingled within the sand in the coastal area of Long Beach, CA as well as other areas where the styrofoam particles appear to be a major pollutant.

Sea level rise planning for resilient coastal infrastructure in California’s coastal zone

Climate change is here. Impacts already demonstrate the interconnected nature and rippling effect of extreme events in wildfires, droughts, floods, and erosion — from coastal to inland areas. Coastal California is especially at risk to impacts of sea level rise, with the potential to displace over 100,000 people and put billions in property value at risk by 2050. Sea level rise in concert with large storms can far exceed damages wrought by other natural disasters in California history, and damage will occur more frequently and extensively in the same coastal areas. The California Coastal Commission, in partnership with local governments, can address the vulnerabilities of communities to climate impacts, including sea level rise, through the land use policies and zoning ordinances that comprise their Local Coastal Programs (LCPs). As infrastructure often guides and directs land use development, so can infrastructure adaptation lead communities in preparing for the impacts of sea level rise. The Coastal Commission’s 2021 guidance, titled “Critical Infrastructure at Risk: Sea Level Rise Planning Guidance for California’s Coastal Zone,” offers a blueprint of policies for adapting transportation and water infrastructure to sea level rise in the coastal zone. This paper will describe key messages of the new guidance and present case studies of land use plans that demonstrate how some California communities are already creating a pathway for sea level rise adaptation. LCPs in San Francisco, Half Moon Bay, Pacific Grove, and Morro Bay exemplify a few of the many ways communities can plan to make transportation and water infrastructure more resilient to sea level rise using phased adaptation, nature-based projects, and asset relocation. There is no one single solution for all communities, but every community can benefit from implementing better requirements for risk assessment, risk reduction, and risk communication through their land use policies and regulations. By better communicating about the risks and restrictions on shoreline properties, local governments can educate stakeholders about sea level rise hazards and encourage public participation in adaptation planning that creates more resilient critical infrastructure.

When access is not just access: unveiling the administrative agendas pertaining to coastal access in California

Opening and maintaining public access to the coast, as it is for any coastal management agencies in the US, has long been one of the prime missions of the California Coastal Commission. In this article, we ask: what are the administrative agendas latent in coastal access in California? Using webscraping, we collected over 10,000 staff reports prepared by the Commission between 1996 and 2016 and examined how the agency used the permitting process to attain its missions. Using the topic modeling technique, we identified 18 key administrative agendas in the staff reports pertaining to public access. These agendas reveal a wide spectrum of environmental protection strategies that the Commission pursued along with maintaining public access. While some of these topics narrowly focus on coastal accessibility (e.g. easements, trails and paths), and utilization (e.g. recreational activities, piers, parking), many of them extend beyond and cover broader, more controversial environmental agendas, such as shoreline and sensitive habitat protection. We also explored the stability of these administrative agendas over time. We observed notable stability in these efforts in the past two decades, despite personnel changes.

How Have the U.S. Coasts Changed (and How Are They Going to Change) as Cultural and Policy Spaces? An Example from California

Over the centuries, the coastal zones of the world have attracted agents of political expansion and instrumental maritime (e.g., fishing, shipping, boat building) industries seeking profit, and also great numbers of the general public seeking a place for residence, relaxation, outdoor recreation, tourism and other forms of play. The impressive amenities of the coastal zone are the economic value of natural resources and the social value of a sublime biophysical and human ecology. In the United States, the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 created a mandate for special area management plans to balance protection of the coasts with provisions that allow residence, visitation, and industry. This mandate is also found in the California Coastal Act of 1974 which created the California Coastal Commission. In the time since the passage of these acts, the cultural and policy spaces of California’s coast have changed dramatically. It is, however, an open question as to whether the Coastal Commission—and the many governmental entities with which it interacts—have succeeded or failed in their mandates. Whatever the conclusion drawn, this speculative essay suggests that climate change-induced future sea level rise will render the historic coastal management institutions and approaches obsolete. The future will be very different—ecologically, culturally, economically and politically. Coastal zone practitioners will be forced to reconfigure and expand their mandates and toolkit. We encourage a recognition that the challenge before them will be a new and very different one. It will call for an adaptation of the coastal management profession and the reorientation of the training and education of the next generation of coastal leaders in the public, private and civil society sectors. This should entail an expansion of disciplinary expertise to address human dimensions topics that include planned retreat, population and infrastructure relocation, social equity and environmental justice and be intimately informed by science and stakeholder engagement.

CALIFORNIA'S EFFORTS AT DEVELOPING COMMUNITY LEVEL TOOLS FOR ADDRESSING FUTURE IMPACTS RELATED TO SEA LEVEL RISE

Sea level rise poses many daunting challenges that are economic, technical, ecological, social, scientific, cultural, governmental and legal. There have been enormous efforts to study historic sea level conditions, to analyze the main factors that have modified historic sea levels, to predict future sea levels at global, regional and local scales, to anticipate time periods for changes to flood frequency and erosion rates. While each of these efforts improves our understanding of possible future sea level rise the changes that might happen along the coast as a result, they also increase community uncertainty about what this will mean to their efforts to undertake long-term land use planning, to develop capital improvement plans for infrastructure and for future shore protection and recreational opportunities provided by existing beaches. The proposed presentation will discuss the various guidance reports that have been prepared by the California Coastal Commission staff to assist local governments in identifying and planning for sea level rise vulnerabilities. The presentation will also address many of the options that California communities are considering for sea level rise adaptation.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/-hXO0r79NKk

Introduction to animal law: Resources for online research and study

Animal law is the body of statutory and case law governing the treatment of nonhuman animals, including wildlife, companion animals, and animals used for research, entertainment, and food. Emerging rapidly on academic and legal horizons since 2000, entire programs of study at all levels are now dedicated to training students to be effective humane educators, attorneys, law enforcement officers, and citizens.High-profile court cases, such as SeaWorld v. California Coastal Commission, along with the proliferation of animal protection documentaries, such as Blackfish, Earthlings, and Tyke: Elephant Outlaw, have raised profound questions about our treatment of other species. Animal protection is now a mainstream phenomenon, largely due to the Internet and social media providing instant visibility to and awareness of the critical issues of our time.

The Future of Land Use Regulation: A Tribute to Callies One Small Point of Departure: Exactions and Impact Fees

There is a continuing debate after the Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management Dist., 133 S.Ct. 2586 (2013) decision as to whether legislatively-enacted impact fees should be subject to Nollan/Dolan scrutiny or whether only adjudicative actions in the form of physical or monetary exactions will require this heightened scrutiny. Nollan/Dolan heightened scrutiny developed when the Court in Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825 (1987) held that the California Coastal Commission’s requirement that the Nollans dedicate a easement across their beachfront property in exchange for a permit to rebuild a new property did not have an “essential nexus” to the effects of the proposed land use. The Court in Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994) refined this test to require that in addition to the exaction having an essential nexus, “that an adjudicative exaction requiring dedication of private property must also be “rough[ly] proportiona[l]” ... both in nature and extent to the impact of the proposed development.” In Koontz, the Court extended the use of Nollan/Dolan scrutiny to apply to monetary as well as physical exactions. Practitioners and scholars anticipate that this issue will come before the U.S. Supreme Court once litigation presents the appropriate case for the Court to give guidance to state and federal courts. This article, as well as the author’s prior article, When Local Government Misbehaves, 2016 Utah L. Rev. 105, argues that courts should apply deferential scrutiny to legislative impact fees. Instead of subjecting such legislative fees to the Nollan/Dolan test, courts should apply applicable state standards, which range from a deferential rational basis test in California to a searching inquiry in North Carolina. As explained by the Court in Koontz, exactions pose a special concern because “land-use permit applicants are especially vulnerable to the type of coercion that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine prohibits because the government often has broad discretion to deny a permit that is worth far more than property it would like to take. . . . [and] [e]xtortionate demands of this sort frustrate the Fifth Amendment right to just compensation.” Therefore, courts should apply heightened scrutiny to exactions in order to “provide important protection against the misuse of the power of land-use regulation,” however state and local legislative actions should continue to receive judicial deference. Takings challenges to legislative action should remain subject to the per se takings tests under Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419 (1982) (finding a taking “where government requires an owner to suffer a permanent physical invasion of her property”) and Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992) (finding a taking where regulations “completely deprive an owner of ‘all economically beneficial us[e]’ of her property”), or to the Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York, 438 U.S. 104 (1978) three-factor test (based on the “magnitude of a regulation's economic impact and the degree to which it interferes with legitimate property interests”), if it constitutes a partial taking. Until the Court speaks directly to the distinction between adjudicative exactions for individual development permitting and legislative impact fees designed to offset general development externalities, local governments, courts, litigators, and scholars will continue to struggle with whether the Nollan/Dolan test applies to municipal impact fees.

Shaping the Coast with Permits: Making the State Regulatory Permitting Process Transparent with Text Mining

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the California Coastal Commission's permitting process. Using several text mining techniques, including web scraping, information extraction, and supervised classification, I demonstrate how to retrieve empirical data from unstructured texts, namely public meeting agendas and staff reports. Contrary to the concern that the Commission routinely delays or rejects permitting requests, the data reveal that outright rejection of permit applications is rare. On average, eight of ten applications were approved. Single-family homes and commercial development projects were approved about 80% of the time; the rates were about 70% for seawalls and retaining walls, and 60% for land-use changes. Most applications were processed swiftly, with a median application length of 3 months. The agency's influence comes primarily from negotiating each application. Qualitative study of 50 cases pertaining to single-family home construction reveals that the agency adopts a “managed development” approach, that is, allowing development but scrupulously managing various aspects of development. These case studies illustrate how the agency interprets the broad, abstract state laws and translates the mandates into enforceable actions as permitting conditions. In areas where the state mandates conflict, particularly over development in receding shorelines, the agency has the largest leverage in creating and implementing its preferred policies. The text mining techniques demonstrated in this paper can be applied to study any governmental agency. These techniques help to extract information from a massive volume of papers and organize them into a database for analyses. The empirical data extracted from texts can significantly increase bureaucratic transparency.

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Compensate: The Case for a Federal Damages Remedy in Koontz 'Failed Exactions'

In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994), the Supreme Court held that an agency could not, consistent with the Takings Clause, condition a permit on a land exaction unless the exaction bears an “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” to the harms the government seeks to mitigate. Then, in Koontz v. St. Johns Water Management District, 133 S. Ct. 2586 (2013), the Court extended Nollan and Dolan to exactions that were never completed because the property owner refused to acquiesce to the demand. Nevertheless, the Court held that such property owners suffer a “constitutionally cognizable injury” under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine because the government has significantly burdened their right not to have property taken without just compensation. Because the case arose under a Florida statute, the Court did not decide what the proper federal remedy would be in these “failed exaction” cases.This Article argues that failed exaction plaintiffs should be entitled to actual damages under the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Because failed exactions do not involve a completed taking, the Just Compensation Clause is not the proper remedy. But a recognized constitutional injury cannot go uncompensated. Limiting the remedy to invalidation of the offending condition suffers from two faults. First, it fails to provide property owners with adequate compensation. Second, it does not serve as a deterrent to agencies. An invalidation remedy standing alone gives permitting agencies a “do-over” and encourages them to use to permitting process to prevent development through the use of unconstitutional conditions. On the contrary, a damages remedy is supported by Section 1983 and serves the twin aims of deterrence and compensation. Courts should hold that property owners bringing a failed exaction claim under Koontz are entitled to their actual economic damages.Along with that federal damages remedy, the Article argues that these plaintiffs should be able to bring their claims directly in federal court. Because failed exaction plaintiffs have not suffered a taking, they cannot seek Just Compensation. Therefore, the ripeness rule for federal takings claims established in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 185 (1985), which generally requires property owners to seek just compensation in state court to “ripen” a takings claim, does not apply to failed exactions. Property owners suing under a Koontz theory should be able to assert their federal constitutional rights directly in federal court.

Legislative Exactions after Koontz v. St. Johns River Management District

Decided in June, 2013, Koontz v. St. Johns River Management District settled a long-running debate among scholars as to whether the nexus test — first pronounced in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission — applies in review of monetary exactions. In the preceding years, the lower courts had largely resolved this question in the government’s favor — limiting Nollan to its facts, and holding the nexus test inapplicable if a challenged permit requires the applicant to pay or expend money as a condition of permit approval. Further, the trend among the lower courts held the nexus test inapplicable in review of legislatively imposed exactions, regardless of whether the contested condition requires a dedication of real property or money. Without question, Koontz has set the monetary exactions issue to rest. The Supreme Court squarely repudiated those cases holding the nexus test inapplicable. But the question remains as to whether the nexus test applies in review of legislatively imposed exactions. Accordingly, this article examines the theoretical foundations underpinning Koontz; we conclude that those doctrinal principles ultimately dictate that the nexus test applies in review of legislatively imposed exactions. Further, we address other recurring questions in land-use permitting cases, including the legality of aviation and open-space dedication requirements, and the constitutionality of affordable housing linkage fees. We conclude that, in the wake of Koontz, the nexus test should apply whenever the government demands such exactions as a condition of permit approval. The Takings Clause prevents permitting authorities from requiring permit applicants to give up any interest in property — including the dedication of negative easements, or the dedication of money into any sort of public fund — unless the permitting authority can demonstrate that those conditions are necessary to proportionally mitigate negative externalities from the proposed project.

Saving the Golden Shore

This essay celebrates the commitment of Peter Douglas, the executive director of the California Coastal Commission from 1985 to 2011, to conservation principles and his efforts to apply them to California’s coastal zone.

Economic Substantive Due Process: Considered Dead is Being Revived by a Series of Supreme Court Land Use Cases

This article describes how the Supreme Court, in a series of land-use cases, is resurrecting economic substantive due process, which has been presumed dead since its rejection in the 1930s for blocking legislation aimed at fighting the Great Depression. The most dramatic step in this reversion to Lochner is Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, a case handed down on June 25, 2013. Koontz extended the reach of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, cases that expanded takings law to include the lack of sufficient connection between a property interest required for mitigation of a permitted project and the project’s adverse impacts. Those cases changed the judicial standard for reviewing permit conditions requiring the dedication of land from rational basis to the heightened takings standard, which includes the government bearing the burden of persuasion. In Koontz, the Court ruled that this takings concept was applicable to the requirement that the permit applicant expend money to compensate for the impacts of the permitted activity despite the fact that the Fifth Amendment and previous case law confine takings analysis to property interests. The practical effect of Koontz is that courts must implement substantive due process review to a vast amount of permit decisions of local, state, and federal government. This article examines the doctrines of takings, substantive due process, and unconstitutional condition to arrive at the conclusion that the takings test created by Nollan, Dolan, and Koontz revives economic substantive due process. The article recognizes the legitimacy of the desire of property rights advocates for more than rubber stamp, rational basis review of progressively more stringent land-use regulation. To that end, the article concludes by proposing alternatives that accomplish this without resurrecting economic substantive due process that is a bad doctrine now for the same reasons it was rejected in the 1930s.

Coastal adaptation: The case of Ocean Beach, San Francisco

This paper examines the way coastal adaptation at the local level works citing one of the more successful cases of adaptation planning in Ocean Beach, San Francisco. Recent erosions that endangered San Francisco's wastewater treatment system helped push coastal adaptation initiatives to produce the Ocean Beach Master Plan. The plan included scenarios and trade-offs to engage multiple stakeholders including the San Francisco (SF) Public Utilities Commission, the California Coastal Commission, the National Park Service, the SF Department of Public Works, and the user groups of the beach. Investigation into the planning process reveals the benefits of increased public awareness and partnerships as well as limitations of implementation and lack of longer-term solutions.

Nollan and Dolan and Koontz Oh My! The Exactions Trilogy Requires Developers to Cover the Full Social Costs of Their Projects, But No More

This article argues that, contrary to appalled assertions of some observers, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District is a straightforward application of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard. Nollan and Dolan established that when government requires a permit applicant to give up property in exchange for a permit, the demand must be closely related and roughly proportional to the development’s social cost. Anything that exceeds those bounds violates the unconstitutional conditions doctrine by burdening the right to just compensation for a taking. Koontz, like Nollan and Dolan, recognizes that government may legitimately require landowners to carry their own weight, mitigating their development plans so that they do not impose costs on their community. But government cannot use the permitting process to coerce landowners into giving up more. That simple rule will not end land-use planning or permit negotiations.

Koontz: The Very Worst Takings Decision Ever?

This article argues that Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the most widely discussed of the Supreme Court’s takings trilogy in the 2012-13 term, represents a major, unprincipled break from prior law and casts an unfortunate pall of confusion and uncertainty over takings doctrine, partly reversing the Court’s recent, successful effort to make takings doctrine more coherent and predictable. The Court ruled that the relatively heightened standard of judicial review established by the Supreme Court for so-called “development exactions” in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard applies both (1) when the government denies a development permit after the developer rejects a government demand for an exaction as a condition of project approval, and (2) when a permit condition requires a developer to pay or expend money to mitigate project impacts. In so ruling, the Court rejected the position that claims challenging such government orders should be evaluated under either the Court’s relatively forgiving regulatory takings analysis or deferential due process analysis. Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent for herself and three other justices, arguing that the case did not involve an actual demand triggering Nollan and Dolan and that the standards established by those cases do not apply to permit conditions requiring the expenditure of money. This article contends that the Koontz decision is one of the worst decisions, if the not the worst decision, in the pantheon of Supreme Court takings cases. In doctrinal terms, the majority opinion flagrantly contradicts or ignores established precedent, fails to acknowledge its departure from prior law, and does not attempt to offer any new, coherent justifications for its novel holdings. As a practical matter, the decision creates a perverse, wasteful incentive for local officials to decline to work cooperatively with developers in designing projects that make business sense and protect the interests of the community. Finally, the decision injects new uncertainty into takings law, setting the stage for future debates over the legitimacy and appropriate scope of intrusive judicial review of local land use decision-making, including whether local governments retain the authority to reject development proposals based on unacceptable project impacts without triggering stringent judicial review.

CZM in California: Successes and Challenges Ahead

California has a forty-year history of successful coastal zone management. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California Coastal Commission, and the State Coastal Conservancy have protected and made accessible hundreds of miles of shoreline. While each agency has played a critical role, this article focuses on the Coastal Commission. Implementing the California Coastal Act, the Coastal Commission has partnered with local government, other agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public to concentrate new development in already developed areas, and much of the rural coastal zone looks as it did in 1972. The Commission has protected and expanded public shoreline access through its regulatory actions. Using strong ecological science the Commission has protected a wide variety of sensitive habitats and wetlands. And under the authority of the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Commission has reviewed thousands of federal projects to assure that they are consistent with the Coastal Act. Challenges continue, though, including population growth, sea-level rise, and inadequate funding to update local coastal land use plans to address new issues, such as climate change adaptation. New investment is needed at the national, state, and local level to continue the success of the California program.

Pushing the CZMA Envelope: California: The First State to Litigate the New Federal Law

As noted often by the former California Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas, the history of how the California coast was saved is a great repository of untold stories. Although the Commission has had a dramatic and tangible impact on California's coastal geography, the public is largely unaware of many of its early accomplishments. This article begins to chronicle the rich stories of California's coastal legacy by telling the story of how the Commission utilized the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) to prevent Southern Pacific Railroad from developing a seven-mile stretch of the Monterey Bay shoreline. In so doing, the Commission helped make possible the creation of the Monterey Peninsula Recreational Trail, a public bicycle and pedestrian path that has grown to sixteen miles in length and runs through the heart of John Steinbeck's world-famous Cannery Row. The controversy also was the subject of the first judicial challenge of a state's federal authority under the CZMA and precluded private commercial and residential development that would have dramatically altered the urban form of the Monterey Peninsula. It is important to tell the story as the Coastal Commission's role in this remarkable accomplishment has been almost completely overlooked.

Takings Formalism and Regulatory Formulas: Exactions and the Consequences of Clarity

A vocal minority of the U.S. Supreme Court recently announced its suspicion that lower courts and state and local administrative agencies are systematically ignoring constitutional rules intended to limit, through heightened judicial review, exactions as a land use regulatory tool. Exactions are the concessions local governments require of property owners as conditions for the issuance of the entitlements that enable the intensified use of real property. In two cases decided over the past two decades, Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994), the Court has established under the Takings Clause a logic and metrics for constitutionally permissible exactions that requires concessions to have an essential nexus and be roughly proportional to the harms a proposed development is expected to cause. This Article argues that the Court's suspicions are well-founded, but that blame for judicial and administrative non-compliance lies with the Court's bifurcated approach to the Takings Clause. This approach, which the Court recently reaffirmed in Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, requires certain types of regulatory acts, including exactions, to be reviewed under a rule-formalist heightened scrutiny, while the majority of regulatory acts enjoy deferential treatment in an ad hoc balancing test. The Supreme Court's formalist efforts in Nollan and Dolan have failed to establish doctrinal clarity in, or regulatory control of, the dealmaking processes of local land use regulation. What the Article describes as the Court's takings formalism fails to constrain regulatory practices in its intended way, and results in constraints on the variable, locally situated, and intensely political context of local governance. These constraints, which include incentives for local governments to develop preconstituted regulatory formulas and disincentives against individualized, negotiated concessions, often promote neither the Court's preferred normative vision of strong property rights protection nor the Court's stated secondary concern for better, more efficient land use regulation. Most perniciously, the Court's limited doctrinal, normative, and utilitarian visions of takings law may block or even damage the essential political and social processes necessary to legitimate and functional local governance. At stake, ultimately, in Nollan and Dolan's failures is not only their unfortunate consequences for local land use regulation, but also the integrity and legitimacy of takings formalism and the wisdom of the Court's bifurcated approach to the Takings Clause.

The housing market effects of discrete land use regulations: Evidence from the California coastal boundary zone

The California coast line borders some of the most beautiful and expensive land in the entire world. The California Coastal Commission was created in 1976 to protect the coast line and to regulate land use within the coastal boundary zone. This well defined regulatory boundary offers a unique opportunity to study the consequences of land use regulation on nearby housing located in the same political jurisdiction. Using two different geocoded data sets, we document gentrification within the boundary and discuss possible explanations for these patterns.