Law Commons^™

Rules Of The Road: The Struggle For Safety And The Unmet Promise Of Federalism, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

American streets have become increasingly dangerous. 2020 saw the highest year-over-year increase in roadway death rates in 96 years, and the last year for which we have data on non-drivers, 2018, was the was the deadliest year for pedestrians and cyclists in three decades. Though this resurgence of road violence has many complex causes, what makes American roads uniquely deadly are laws that lock in two interrelated design problems: unfriendly streets and unsafe vehicles.

Design standards articulate how streets and vehicles look and function. As they have been enshrined in law, they favor drivers and their passengers over any other …

Towards An Urban Disability Agenda, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

The overwhelming majority of Americans with disabilities live in metropolitan areas. Yet those areas continue to contain significant barriers that keep disabled people from fully participating in city life. Although political and social debate has periodically turned its attention to urban issues or problems — or even the so-called “urban crisis” — during the past several decades, it has too rarely attended to the issues of disability access. When political debate has focused on disability issues, it has tended to address them in a nationally uniform way, without paying attention to the particular concerns of disabled people in cities. Even …

Distributional Consequences Of Public Policies: An Example From The Management Of Urban Vehicular Travel, Winston Harrington, Elena Safirova, Conrad Coleman, Sébastien Houde, Adam M. Finkel

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses a spatially disaggregated computable general equilibrium model of a large US metropolitan area to compare two kinds of policies, “Live Near Your Work” and taxation of vehicular travel, that have been proposed to help further the aims of “smart growth.” Ordinarily, policy comparisons of this sort focus on the net benefits of the two policies; that is, the total monetized net welfare gains or losses to all citizens. While the aggregate net benefits are certainly important, in this analysis we also disaggregate these benefits along two important dimensions: income and location within the metropolitan area. The resulting …

Back To The Future: Is Form-Based Code An Efficacious Tool For Shaping Modern Civic Life?, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This Essay serves as a critique of the New Urbanism in general and of form-based code in particular as a tool of the New Urbanism. It may be true that form-based code offers more flexibility than traditional zoning schemes and thus may offer some respite from acknowledged ills such as social and racial divisions created by exclusionary zoning and other tools, and from the relative inutility of single or limited use districts. However, I will argue that these benefits are eclipsed by some of the problems of form-based code. Form-based code is frequently hailed as a back to the future …

Providence Needs An Effective 'Land Bank' Policy, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Recent disclosures on the purchase of vacant lots in Providence by certain city officals have raised two serious questions, only one of which has been addressed."

Statewide Land Use Plan For R.I., Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"The Rhode Island section of the American Institute of Planners has called it "the most significant single item of legistlation in the history of land planning in this state," and yet there is the real possibility that this far reaching measure may not be introduced for enactment in this session of the General Assembly."

Make The Full Investment In Downtown Renewal, Chester Smolski

Smolski Texts

"Just how much money is the city of Providence willing to invest in revitalizing its downtown? The answer to this question is soon to be given when the City Council acts on the recommendations of the Committee on Urban Redevelopment headed by Councilman Ralph R. Fargnoli. the committee voted Wednesday in favor of a $6-million downtown renewal project."

Book Review. The Zoning Dilemma By D. R. Mandelker, A. Dan Tarlock

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Governing The Suburbs By Charles E. Gilbert, A. Dan Tarlock

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. The Zoning Game By R. F. Babcock, A. Dan Tarlock

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Evolving Judicial Attitudes Toward Local Government Land Use Control, Terrance Sandalow

Articles

The year 1967 begins the second half-century of zoning in the United States. The first comprehensive zoning ordinance was adopted by New York City in 1916. In the fifty years that have elapsed, zoning has become, notwithstanding a growing disenchantment with it on the part of planners, the most widely employed technique of land use control in the United States. At the present time only Houston, of all the major cities in the United States, lacks a zoning ordinance. And, though I have not obtained precise figures, we are all familiar with the increasingly large per centage of small municipalities, …

Sanctions Against Governmental Violations Of Planning And Zoning Ordinances, Frank Edward Horack Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Book Review. Regional Plan Of New York And Its Environs Vol. Ii, Frank Edward Horack

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.