Judges Commons^™

Confronting The Local Land Checkerboard, Daniel B. Rosenbaum

University of Richmond Law Review

Fractured public land is hidden in plain sight. In communities across the country, a patchwork assortment of local governments share splintered ownership over surplus public properties, which can be found scattered in residential neighborhoods and alongside highways, in the shadows of development projects and in the scars of urban renewal. The ripple effect of this fragmentation extends across the spectrum of local governance. It creates needless costs and bureaucratic headaches at a time of acute fiscal distress for cities and counties. It contributes to an inequitable imbalance of local power between formal and informal landowners in a community. And curiously, …