Law Commons^™

Equitable, Affordable And Climate-Cognizant Housing Construction, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The almost universal sentiment by a growing body of physical and social scientists is that climate change--with its floods, drought, heat, and cold-- portend losses of life, communities, property, and the rhythms of living. Some are more vulnerable to these impacts than others: individuals and the poor, who through official government policy and self-interest in the housing markets, have been relegated to live in poorly-constructed and poorly-placed structures--in the wake of ocean surges; in the path of strong winds; near hazardous and noxious facilities; stranded in urban heat islands. Failing to heed climate change omens will lead to a world …

Adaptive Rezoning For Social Equity, Affordability And Resilience, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I will show how the legacies of the institutional barriers to housing still persist to deprive many of the predicates for economic thriving and personal flourishing and how existing zoning philosophy cannot be justified by the need to protect health and safety. Righting the inequities of the past and of the present will require dismantling some of the institutions, apparently legitimate and well-meaning, but operating devilishly to create and perpetuate hardship and exclusion. This will require laying bare the institutions to reveal their ignoble essence. We need a radical overhaul of the historic zoning regime from one …

Zoning’S Centennial: A Complete Account Of The Evolution Of Zoning Into A Robust System Of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part Iv), John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Fracking is happening and local governments are subjected to many of its associated risks. They either need to act, or know—clearly and convincingly—why they should not. The federal government has stopped far short of comprehensive regulation of fracking; the states’ regulations range from fair to poor, sometimes preempting local regulation but most often sharing regulatory authority over land use impacts.

Defining And Closing The Hydraulic Fracturing Governance Gap, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Grace Heusner, Allison Sloto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As recent examples in Texas and Colorado have shown, if local governments ban fracking, they risk pushback from state governments. This pushback, in turn, can result in preemption making an outright local ban on fracking self-defeating because it could ultimately result in less local control over the impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Given this potentially self-defeating nature of local fracking bans, local governments should address the impacts of fracking through more traditional local governance mechanisms that do not pose as great a risk to local authority.

On this premise, this Article seeks to make the case for the importance of, and …

Zoning’S Centennial: A Complete Account Of The Evolution Of Zoning Into A Robust System Of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part Iii), John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In land use, there are two things that Americans dislike: one is sprawl, the other is density. This catch-22 can be resolved by mitigating those aspects of urban living associated with density: congestion, bulky buildings, sameness, design incongruities, unsafe streets, inefficiency, and the sense that neighborhoods are not livable and pleasant. These characteristics of density cut against sustainability. They define places that people want to leave as soon as they can. To reduce vehicle miles travelled and carbon emissions, as well as to prevent sprawl, we must create places of enduring value, located next to transit in walkable and sustainable …

Zoning’S Centennial: A Complete Account Of The Evolution Of Zoning Into A Robust System Of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part Ii), John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The idea that local land use law can intelligently shape settlement patterns was not a familiar concept in the late 1960s when the Town of Ramapo, New York adopted an ordinance that delayed development permits until the Town could provide needed infrastructure. Ramapo was experiencing unprecedented growth as one of the closest northern suburbs of New York City. Developers, who in some cases had to wait years for services to their land, sued; they argued that these phased development controls were intended to prohibit subdivisions and restrict population growth, which is not authorized under the state’s zoning enabling legislation.

New …

Zoning’S Centennial: A Complete Account Of The Evolution Of Zoning Into A Robust System Of Land Use Law—1916-2016 (Part I), John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

2016 is the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the first citywide comprehensive zoning law. Its original purpose was to create districts that separated incompatible land uses and building types in order to protect property values and promote the health, safety, and welfare of the community. 100 years later, zoning is used to achieve an impressive number of public objectives such as permitting transit oriented development, creating green infrastructure, preserving habitat, species, and wetlands, promoting renewable energy facilities, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and preserving the sequestering landscape.

Zoning Neighborhoods For Resilience: Drivers, Tools And Impacts, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A new urban design is needed, one that if not climate-determinist, is climate-cognizant. The built environment should be structured and the natural environment must be managed and protected in a way that regards climate forces that if left unchecked will sap the energy, the very existence of the city.7 A new urban design must begin with a statement of clear ends to be achieved, be based upon authoritative scientific, legal and social principles and must be implemented with an understanding of the costs--monetary and socio-political, that are demonstrably justified in the light of the alternatives. The extravagant and pretentious historical …

Mitigating Climate Change By Zoning For Solar Energy Systems: Embracing Clean Energy Technology In Zoning’S Centennial Year, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Adopting land use regulations that encourage solar and other clean energy systems is an essential strategy for promoting clean power and one that focuses on the essential role that local governments play in mitigating climate change. This article explores efforts at the state and local level to reform zoning and land use regulations to permit, encourage, require, and incentivize rapidly-evolving clean energy systems, particularly solar, that, in the aggregate, have the ability to significantly increase power generation and decrease carbon emissions. The article illustrates how zoning, as it approaches its 100th anniversary, is encrusted with provisions that prohibit or discourage …

Mitigating The Adverse Impacts Of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Role For Local Zoning?, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the action localities have taken toward mitigating some of the adverse impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking. The Article will explore impacts at the local level and will show the governance gap that has resulted from federal and state regulations that leave many local impacts unmitigated. Zoning laws and other practices that local governments are adopting are also discussed, explaining why state preemption over the traditional role of local governments in regulating this particular heavy industrial activity is not the ideal situation.

Zoning, Transportation, And Climate Change, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

On February 2, 2006, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expressed the consensus of the scientific community that global warming is unequivocal and that its main driver is human activity. On April 7, 2007, the IPCC issued a second report detailing the likely consequences of climate change: widening droughts, more severe storm events, increased inland flooding, sea level rise, and consequent inundation of low lying lands. The Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University estimates that sea levels around New York City’s boroughs will increase by five inches by 2030, with some estimates predicting up to 12 inches …

Clustered Zoning Approaches Reduce Congestion, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The effect of local zoning on our lives usually goes unnoticed despite its profound influence on human behavior. Zoning controls where we live and work, how we get from point A to point B, and what sort of homes we live in. This article provides examples of successful transit-oriented development projects at the local level as well as how state and federal government can contribute to the clustering effort via financing and research programs as well as providing appropriate infrastructure.

Local Inclusionary Housing Programs: Meeting Housing Needs, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article explores the expansive legal authority that local governments in many states have to meet housing needs directly by providing for the production of new affordable homes. There is not a great deal of scholarship on the subject as we approach it. The emphasis in the academic literature in the field of affordable housing is on top-down, systemic, or theoretical solutions: urging reforms in federal and state finance programs, imploring courts to penalize localities that engage in exclusionary zoning, describing in detail a variety of inclusionary zoning techniques, or explaining relevant theories or the economics of the issue of …

Real Estate Law Review: Creating A Local Environmental Law Program, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Local governments are adopting with increasing frequency local laws to facilitate low-impact development, ensure the construction of green buildings, and coordinate land use and transportation planning to lower greenhouse gas emissions. This builds on their progress over the past two decades in adopting an impressive number of local laws to protect natural resources. These include ordinances designed to protect trees, stands of timber, hillsides, viewsheds, ridgelines, stream beds, wetlands, watersheds, aquifers and water bodies, and wildlife habitat. At the same time, provisions designed to protect environmental features from the adverse impacts of development have been added to basic land use …

Climate Change, Zoning And Transportation Planning: Urbanization As A Response To Carbon Loading, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article explores the relationship among zoning, transportation planning, and climate change. It discusses the relationship between land use densities and transportation choices, reviews the trend toward transit oriented development in higher density communities and transportation efficient development in lower density areas, presents several case studies where land use and transportation planning are beginning to intersect, and ends with a strategic approach for communities to consider.

Inclusionary Zoning: The Effect Of Market Forces On Local Housing Law, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As the price of housing continues to rise in the New York metropolitan area, municipalities have begun creating inclusionary housing ordinances to ensure working families have a place to call home. This article analyzes the effects of inclusionary zoning ordinances on the economics of affordable housing and suggests several potential methods that local, state, and federal government may utilize to ease the financial burden on developers willing to construct affordable housing projects.

Champions Of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the prospects of achieving policy coherence in the field of land use regulation. It explains how, as municipal governments react to pressures and crises at the local level, they discover and adopt new strategies in a constant process of experimentation. Through a properly constructed legal framework, critical information can be relayed from local to higher levels of government, state and federal legislators and judges can respond, and a "system" of law can evolve. Using theories developed in the fields of systems analysis and diffusion of innovations, the Article describes the process by which local communities perceive land …

Zoning Exemptions: Granting Immunity To Private Wireless Providers, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Contrary to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the New York Court of Appeals in the Matter of Crown Communication New York, Inc. v. Department of Transportation of the State of New York, City of New Rochelle et al., held that, both private companies who contract with local governments to build towers on public land, and the private companies who build attached antennae to these towers, are immune from local zoning regulations. The court’s decision is due to the public nature and importance of the mass communication these structures will provide. Of particular importance, was public good to be served by …

Comparative Land Use Law: Patterns Of Sustainability, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Land use scholars and practitioners in the United States trace the development of domestic land use law to 1916, when the City of New York adopted the nation's first comprehensive zoning law, and then on to 1926 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared zoning constitutional in Euclid v. Ambler Realty. Some have studied European influences stemming from late nineteenth century regulations and the urban design principles imported from the great cities of the era. Others know about the catastrophic London fire of 1666 and how it transformed society's understanding of why individual property rights, to some degree, must be subject …

Development Agreements: Bargained-For Zoning That Is Neither Illegal Contract Nor Conditional Zoning, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the new model of land use decision-making that is based upon bargaining with the landowner. The fact of a bargain raises the issue of whether such bargaining amounts to “contract zoning” based upon a bilateral contract between the municipality and the landowner, which is largely held to be illegal, or a related form of bargaining, not involving an exchange of promises in the context of a bilateral agreement--“conditional zoning.” Part II of this Article discusses the emergence of the development agreement, which involves a contract with a municipality and the developer under which the developer is assured …

Golden And Its Emanations: The Surprising Origins Of Smart Growth, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article provides the background for the adoption of the Ramapo ordinance, explains its precocious inventions in some detail, and describes other dramatic local inventions emanating from the Ramapo approach to smart growth. It ends with a reflection on the Quiet Revolution, the continuing disquiet that accompanies the spectacular smart growth inventions of local governments in this country, and modest recommendations for reform. Along the way, the reader will encounter the rebirth of performance zoning, local environmental laws that protect critical environmental resources, a local abandoned property reclamation act, the use of mediation to solve border wars between localities, an …

Performance Zoning: Shaping Land Development Patterns Today, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Over thirty years ago The United States Court of Appeals upheld municipal efforts to control growth in the case Golden v. Ramapo. Since then, municipalities have come up with novel tools to harness development into sustainable patterns while mitigating damaging effects of sprawl. This article focuses on the renaissance of one popular land use device, performance zoning, and how the Town of Hyde Park uses this tool to promote growth in community centers and protect undeveloped areas.

Preserving Open Lands: Local Zoning And Financing Authority Work Together, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

State governments vest great authority in local governments to decide how and where private development shall occur, and in the alternative, where to preserve open land. The New York state legislature recognizes the importance of protecting open lands, and as such, has created several laws to facilitate local municipal action. Several methods exist that municipal government may use to accomplish this goal and this article provides several examples. For instance, the New York Court of Appeals, in the case of Bonnie Briar Syndicate, Inc. v. Town of Mamaroneck, held that a local zoning ordinance, which rezoned a large area for …

Grassroots Regionalism Through Intermunicipal Land Use Compacts, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The question raised by this article is whether these statutes and this experience provide an opportunity to develop an effective regional approach fitted to the great diversity of New York's regions. It examines first the role local governments play in determining land use and then the statutes that authorize municipalities to cooperate with respect to land use planning and control. The article traces the use of this authority through two phases of evolution revealing ever more complex and potentially effective intermunicipal strategies. It ends with some thoughts as to how the state government could facilitate effective regional processes by providing …

Flexibility In The Law: Reengineering Of Zoning To Prevent Fragmented Landscapes, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The continued existence vernal pools and other sensitive environmental areas greatly depends upon local and state land use decisions. Practices such as Euclidian Zoning, where land uses are separated into different districts, usually fail to account for the protection of these sensitive areas. However, local governments in New York, using implied municipal power created by state legislation, have a variety of land use tools to help alleviate the destruction of environmentally sensitive areas. These tools include: overlay zoning, incentive zoning, conservation easements, floating zones, and transferring development rights. By using these tools within a well-integrated strategy, New York communities can …

Recreational Zoning: Concept Used In Inappropriate Context Raises Troubling Issues, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Second Department Appellate Division’s holding in Bonnie Briar Syndicate, Inc. v. Mamaroneck upheld local rezoning in Mamaroneck, New York, from residential to recreational use despite legal challenges that the zoning change constituted an unreasonable use of municipal police power as well as a regulatory taking. The case cited several New York precedents. Each held that so long as rezoning is in accordance with the local comprehensive plan, the zoning shall be held constitutional. However, concerns linger among private residents and local municipalities regarding recreational rezoning projects, which despite providing significant benefits for the community, must be justified by a …

Comprehensive Land Use Planning: Learning How And Where To Grow, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article explores the origins, evolution and contemporary workings of the legal system that determines the use of land. In Part II, the development of zoning and comprehensive planning laws in the United States is traced, emphasizing the importance that zoning be “in conformance with” a comprehensive land use plan, a requirement meant to provide direction and purpose to land use regulation. This retrospect shows that, from the beginning, the framers of the nation's land use regime were indecisive. They failed to define a comprehensive plan, to detail what such a plan should contain, and to prescribe how planning should …

The Erosion Of Home Rule Through The Emergence Of State-Interests In Land Use Control, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The conventional wisdom is that New York's failure to adopt a comprehensive state-wide land use system is due to reluctance of the state legislature to diminish local control of land use. The purpose of this article is to explore that assumption as part of a larger examination of the proper course of land law reform in New York. The case and statutory law that have developed since the experiences of the early 1970s indicate that local “home rule” authority is neither a legal nor a political barrier to effective land use legislation in the broader state interest. Part II briefly …

Law And A New Land Ethic, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As open space comes under increasing development pressure, existing-use zoning provides a direct and forthright way to preserve the line between urban and non-urban land use. Ultimately it may be the only practical means for protecting high-demand or sensitive areas such as wetlands, coastlines, lakeshores, floodplains, stream corridors, and pristine reservoir watersheds. This Article reviews the viability of existing-use zoning under United States Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution's takings clause. It concludes that nothing in those interpretations disallows this straightforward approach to preserving our country's familiar patterns of land use and development.

Expanding Traditional Land Use Authority Through Environmental Legislation: The Regulation Of Affordable Housing, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article is devoted to an examination of local land use regulation in the context of the use of SEQRA and its mandate, to mitigate environmental impacts to require the provision of affordable housing in high cost housing markets. As such, it looks at one contemporary manifestation of the growth of police power authority to meet new land use challenges.