Law Commons^™

Home Is Where The Art Is: The Impact That Housing Laws And Gentrification Policies Have Had On The Availability And Affordability Of Artist Live/Work Spaces, Mary T. O'Sullivan

Mary T O'Sullivan

Artists have long been praised as creative innovators, respected and admired for their unique perspectives and ability to portray life in a new light. Federal and State Governments have long recognized the cultural value that art and artists provide, and thus, legislatures have passed protective housing laws that provide artists with affordable live/work spaces. Today, though artists have often been portrayed as “starving,” studies on urban policy/planning have shown that where artists live, money and capital growth will follow. Artists are pioneers of gentrification. Thus, urban planners and many communities have sought to provide incentives that promote artist relocation in …

Hydropower: It's A Small World After All, Gina Warren

Gina Warren

Global warming is here. As exhibited by the recent droughts, heat waves, severe storms and floods, climate change is no longer a question for the future, but a problem for the present. Of the many ways to help combat climate change, this article discusses the use of the most abundant renewable energy source on the plant – water. While large-scale hydropower (think Hoover Dam) is unlikely to see increased development due to its negative impact on the environment, fish, and wildlife, small-scale hydropower (think a highly technologically-advanced water mill) is environmentally-friendly and would produce clean, renewable energy to benefit local …

Community Benefits Agreements And Comprehensive Planning: Balancing Community Empowerment And The Police Power, Patricia E. Salkin, Amy Lavine

Patricia E. Salkin

Traditionally, the states have empowered local governments to develop plans and implement regulations for neighborhood and community development. When accomplished at the local or regional level, the interests and benefits of the community as a whole are to be weighed against the detriments to individuals. Much has been studied and written about the lack of meaningful public participation in the planning and land use regulatory process, suggesting that often low-income and minority communities are not fully engaged in the process, even when it may result in decisions negatively impacting their neighborhoods. Case studies have also shown that governments are sometimes …

The Oregon And California Railroad Grant Lands’ Sordid Past, Contentious Present, And Uncertain Future: A Century Of Conflict, Michael Blumm

Michael Blumm

This article examines the long, contentious history of the Oregon & California Land Grant that produced federal forest lands now managed by the Bureau of Land Management (“O&C lands”), including an analysis of how these lands re-vested to the federal government following decades of corruption and scandal, and the resulting congressional effort that created a management structure supporting local county governments through overharvesting the lands for a half-century. The article proceeds to trace the fate of O&C lands through the “spotted owl wars” of the 1990s, the ensuing Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), the timber salvage rider of 1995, and the …

Walking The Tightrope: Balancing Conservation, Local Growth, And The Uncertainty Of Rural Development, Michael A. Powell

Michael A Powell

Economic development is a complex issue, and placing it in a rural context complicates it further, primarily due to issues with local governance and the difficulty in defining the term “rural.” The result is that economic development policies often ignore development in rural areas, and development in those areas becomes uncoordinated and unproductive. One exception is the Growth Management Act (GMA) enacted by the State of Washington, which established a rural development regime that decentralized planning but retained regional and statewide oversight. This paper uses a lawsuit filed against one of the GMA’s regional boards as a case study to …

Opening Doors: Preventing Youth Homelessness Through Housing And Education Collaboration, Courtney L. Anderson

Courtney L Anderson

This article will contribute to the general literature on homelessness by recommending that permanent supportive housing units for homeless children, youth and families provide education services in order to prevent and end homelessness among families, youth and children. I will explain how the legal framework for such housing requires a broad interpretation of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, and assert that federal programs provide a foundation for the creation of such housing. Identifying and educating homeless youth is particularly challenging as the majority of homeless youth live on the streets or in the homes of others, suffer from serious mental …

Exclusionary Zoning Enforcement, Passé Or Alive And Kicking?, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This article reviews several recent state cases challenging zoning actions as exclusionary. It identifies patterns in the cases and finds that under certain circumstances courts will limit local governments’ exclusionary actions.

A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Analysis Of The Use Of Eminent Domain To Create A Leasehold, Carol Zeiner

Carol Zeiner

A THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF EMINENT DOMAIN TO CREATE A LEASEHOLD

ABSTRACT

Therapeutic jurisprudence provides an excellent tool to analyze and guide the development of the law on the use of eminent domain to create leaseholds. These are takings in which the objective is for the condemnor to become a tenant under a “lease,” rather than the fee simple owner.

I am perhaps the only scholar who has written extensively on the topic of takings to create a leasehold. In a previous work I provided an exhaustive analysis of the conclusion that government can use eminent domain …

Land Use Regulation: It Just Gets Worse, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Some commentators treat suburban sprawl (by which I mean automobile-dependent land development) as the result of the free market at work. This article reviews City Rules, by urban planning professor Emily Talen. In this book, Talen shows not only how zoning and similar land use regulations generate automobile-dependent suburban sprawl, but also how these regulations have become stricter, more pro-sprawl, and more complex over time. Talen proposes to reform these regulations through municipal codes that promote more walkable, less automobile-dependent development.

Sprawl In Canada And The United States, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

The purpose of this Article is to ascertain whether (1) suburban sprawl is as widespread in Canadian metropolitan areas as in their American counterparts, and (2) Canadian government policies, and in particular Canadian zoning law and transportation policies, encourage sprawl. The article concludes that Canadian metropolitan areas are in fact somewhat less sprawling than most of their American counterparts, but that in Canada, as in the United States, government land use regulation and government transportation policy do favor sprawl to some extent. For example, in both nations municipal zoning regulations, by limiting density and forcing landowners to build parking lots, …

Empower The Neighborhood And Save The City: Why Courts Should Permit Neighborhood Control Of Zoning, Kenneth A. Stahl

Kenneth Stahl

Whether cities should delegate zoning authority to neighborhood groups is one of the most hotly contested issues in municipal politics, yet it is also essentially a moot point. Since a bizarre series of Supreme Court cases in the early twentieth century, it has been largely settled that cities may not constitutionally delegate the zoning power to sub-municipal groups, at least where the power is delegated specifically to landowners in a certain proximity to a proposed land use change.

This article argues that courts have erred in prohibiting cities from devolving zoning control to proximate landowners, a scheme I designate a …