Private Land Use Research Articles

The State's Police Power is Not (Yet) the Power of a Police State: A Reply to Professor Girard

Abstract In his two-part series entitled “Constitutional ‘Takings Clauses’ and the Regulation of Private Land Use,” 34 LAND USE L. & ZONING DIG. No. 10 at 4 and No. 11 at 4, Professor Robert Girard examined the relationship (or, as he sees it, the lack thereof) between overly stringent land use regulation and the constitutional proscription against taking private property for public use without paying compensation.

Constitutional ‘Takings Clauses’ and the Regulation of Private Land Use: Part II

Constitutional ‘Takings Clauses’ and the Regulation of Private Land Use: Part II

Constitutional ‘Takings Clauses’ and the Regulation of Private Land Use: Part I

Abstract Editor's Note: In this commentary, Robert Girard examines the relationship between takings clauses and land use regulation. Part II, dealing with remedies, will be presented next month.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Areas of Critical State Concern: Florida's Experience With the Green Swamp

Public concern has been expressed in most states over the adequacy of present allocative mechanisms to guide land and water use effectively. Private land and water use decisions are seen to have effects far beyond those intended by the decision makers. People intuitively recognize that society's natural resources are not being used to the greatest good when these “spillovers” occur. Ervin et al. (p. 4) have described the situation: “… given our (society's) broader viewpoint where impacts are taken into account which do not enter a firm's profit calculations (or a consumer's), the decision may well be socially inefficient.” The concern about these “spillovers” has led to calls for increased government intervention by way of regulation (Healy and Rosenberg). The implicit assumption is that government action can improve the efficiency of land and water use.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:History in One Word James W. Martin, State Tax Systems under Changing Technology: The Problem of the Roadways, ed. Richard E. Gift.A Redefined Redefinition Andrew Marshall Hamer, ed., Urban Atlanta: Redefining the Role of the City, Research Monograph no. 84.Where It Hurts Donald Phares, Who Pays State and Local Taxes?Feminine Subtleties Ralph E. Smith, ed., The Subtle Revolution: Women at Work.The Golden State John H. Culver and John C. Syer, Power and Politics in California.Multiregional Models F. Gerard Adams and Norman J. Glickman, eds., Modeling the Multiregional Economic System: Perspectives for the Eighties.All the Models That Fit Norbert Oppenheim, Applied Models in Urban and Regional Analysis.Social Fabric Roger S. Ahlbrandt, Jr. and James V. Cunningham, A New Public Policy for Neighborhood Preservation.In Search of a Model Charles I. Zinser, The Economic Impact of the Adirondack Park Private Land Use and Development Plan.Weighing Alternatives Kirkpatrick Sale, Human Scale.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Canadian Regional Planning and Development in Transition Regional Development in Britain, 2nd Edition, by G. Manners, D. Keeble, H.B. Rodgers, and K. Warren. The Economic Impact of the Adirondack Private Land Use and Development Plan, by Charles I. Zinser. Transportation for the Elderly: Changing Lifestyles, Changing Needs, by Martin Wachs. The Political Economy of Underdevelopment: Dependence in Senegal, by Rita Cruise O'Brien (ed.). Spatial Time Series, by R.J. Bennett. Industrial Movement: Experience in the US and the UK, by P. M. Townroe.

Transfer of Development Rights: A Market Analysis

Increasing concern about the quality of life in urbanizing areas and the impact of urbanization both on environmentally sensitive areas and on the land resource base for agriculture has led some state and local governments to consider policies designed to alter market forces affecting private land use decisions in ways that foster retention of open space. Among these policies is a series of related proposals known as the transfer of development rights (TDR), the generic feature of which is the provision for an increase in the density of urban development in some areas in exchange for the permanent retention of open space in other areas. The type of TDR program analyzed here provides for a designated open space or preservation zone in which urban development is prohibited. As compensation for the resultant reduction in the current market value of their land, owners of land in this zone are issued certificates of development rights (DRCs) which can be sold to any willing buyer. A receiving zone in which these DRCs can be utilized is also delineated. Residential development without the utilization of DRCs is permitted in this receiving zone, but only up to the density limit authorized by the basic zoning ordinance; development to a higher bonus density limit requires the utilization of DRCs. Critical to the implementation of such a TDR program is the compensation issue: there must be a reasonable possibility that owners of land in the open space zone can sell their DRCs at a price which represents some acceptable level of compensation. The determination of that level is a normative issue which will not be dealt with here. Rather, this note examines the nature of the demand for

Ervin, David, James Fitch, Kenneth Godwin, Bruce Shepard, and Herbert Stoevener. Land Use Control: Evaluating Economic and Political Effects. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1977, 184 pp., $@@‐@@17.50

Public programs to intervene in the private land use market are designed to achieve land use and distribution of costs and benefits much different from those that would prevail under market conditions. This book suggests a framework for evaluating these public-policy measures from the standpoint of three economic efficiency criteria: how land-use-planning measures contribute to the avoidance of certain negative effects resulting from interdependencies among land uses; how they perform in providing land-related public goods; and, are they likely to lead to an efficient provision of public services. Beyond these economic-efficiency considerations the study emphasizes the distributional consequences and the political acceptability of land-use-planning measures. Land-use techniques--traditional zoning, zoning by eminent domain, and transferable development rights--are evaluated and compared. Although none of these techniques can be judged superior to the others on the basis of all or several of the evaluative criteria, zoning ranked highest in terms of political acceptability while the extensions of zoning are improvements over zoning for meeting equity and efficient provision of public goods.

Constitutional Rights and Land Use Planning: The New and the Old Reality

Controls on the private use of land are not of recent vintage-they go back at least to the Romans,' if not into the darker past, and find expression in various statutes and judge-made doctrines of centuries ago.2 Despite Blackstone's overly broad pronouncement that private property rights could not be violated even for the general good of the whole community,3 property rights had in fact been limited for centuries before Blackstone's

Attitudes Toward Land-Use Planning and Controlled Population Growth in Jackson Hole

This paper examines the attitudes of Wyoming’s Jackson Hole toward controlled growth. Faced with population growth, a severe limitation on the availability of private lands, and a community concern about protecting the scenic beauty of the area, land-use planning and controls have become one of the most significant public issues in Teton County. A survey of attitudes toward land use disclosed that newer residents generally supported local government control in contrast to older residents and large landowners who favored control by the individual landowner. The older residents and large landowners are a numerical minority whose views no longer dominate the political strength of the county. Such strength now resides in the newcomer group. The newcomers are attempting to limit and to control the change which they themselves have brought to the county. This study implies that future population growth and economic development will continue within a framework of local government control over the use of private land.

Development Rights Transfer: Easing the Police-Power—Eminent-Domain Deadlock

Abstract The current is running so swiftly in land-use affairs today that choosing a title for an essay on the problems in this turbulent field is perilous, a risk reflected in this essay's reference to the “police-power-eminent-domain deadlock.” Adherents of two trends that recently have attracted national attelltion might well dismiss an inquiry, so styled, as sterile, a throwback to misconceptions of the recent past. The first trend, fueled by the 1973 Council on Environmental Quality publication, The Taking Issue, urges that, short of actual appropriation, public measures that restrict private land use can never constitute a taking. The “deadlock” vanishes, of course, if constitutional notions of compensation as a constraint upon government regulation can be so easily defused. The second, a product of Bernard Siegan's provocative studies in Houston and his dalliance with University of Chicago economics, largely moots the issue by substituting the marketplace for public regulation as the source of land...

Use of State and Private Lands by Pheasants and Waterfowl in South Dakota

Use of State and Private Lands by Pheasants and Waterfowl in South Dakota

Private Land Use Restrictions in Virginia

Private Land Use Restrictions in Virginia

Private Land Use Control. Zoning Attacks on Traffic Congestion

Private Land Use Control. Zoning Attacks on Traffic Congestion

Postwar Agricultural Credit Problems and Suggested Adjustments

TWO assumptions must be made regarding postwar land ownership and agricultural tenure if any discussion of credit needs in that period will be most meaningful. They are: (1) Fee simple ownership of land will continue to be the predominant type of ownership, and (2) Owner-operation will continue to be the predominant pattern of tenure. The assumption of continued fee simple ownership, as the predominant pattern, does not imply the same unrestricted freedom in the use of privately owned land which our forebears knew in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is recognized that various restraints upon the use of private land will persist which have developed since a conservation conscious nation became aware of the social value of wise land use. Indeed, such restraints will probably increase in number and scope. However, they need not, and probable will not, interfere with the basic right of a fee simple owner to transfer title to whomever and in whatever manner he chooses. Nor will such restraints on land use seriously affect the utilization of credit to implement the transfer of land ownership. On the other hand, they may necessitate modifications in the extension of credit for production. The second assumption-namely, that owner-operation will continue as the predominant pattern of tenure-implies neither increase nor decrease from present levels of tenancy. A minimum amount of tenancy is desirable and necessary as a step on the road to owner-operation. In this paper separate treatment will be accorded a number of facets of the post-war agricultural credit problem. The discussion will be neither exhaustive nor definitive, but will serve chiefly to raise issues which should be resolved if future credit needs of agriculture are to be served soundly and efficiently.