Land Use Law Commons^™

Utah Leads The Way In Regulating Land Use Exactions Through Statute But Still Has Room To Improve, Andrea B. Pace

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Introduction, G. Emlen Hall

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Making Sense Out Of Nonsense: A Response To Adverse Possession By Governmental Entities, Andrew Dick

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Didden V. Port Chester: Placing Eminent Domain Debate In Proper Perspective, John R. Nolon, Jessica A. Bacher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Controversy often arises when landowners in blighted areas resist government driven urban-renewal condemnation of their property. Often, these urban-renewal areas, the scope of which is determined after extensive study, are condemned and transferred to a private developer who has an overall plan for the entire designated area. This article discusses the issues that arise when private property interests are overridden by public interests and how urban renewal will help revitalize the economies of troubled inner-city regions.

Time To Step Up: Modeling The African American Ethnivestor For Self Help Entrepreneurship In Urban America, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

Almost $6 billion in taxes paid by the American people have been rather ubiquitously placed in the hands of a federal subsidy program for investors in low income communities. The subsidy is in the form of a tax credit. The program is entitled the New Markets Tax Credit (“NMTC”) initiative. Under the program, the tax credit is used to lure investors to provide equity capital into low income areas, urban and/or rural (i.e. a new market for equity funding). According to my companion law review article (Florida Tax Review, Spring, 2007; The Florida Tax Review was ranked 1st among tax …

Cityland – Vol. 4, No. 1, Center For New York City Law

CityLand - 2007

The February 2007 issue of CityLand covers major land use, preservation, and development actions across New York City. The City Council re-designated the First Avenue Estate buildings in Lenox Hill, reversing a 1990 Board of Estimate decision. A controversial rezoning in Douglaston and Little Neck was modified and approved. The Planning Commission approved a rezoning and special permits for a mixed-use development near Lincoln Center, including a new bulk waiver affecting ten community districts. BSA decisions included variances for a modern condo on Greenwich Avenue, denial of a catering hall in a Brooklyn yeshiva, and refusal to grandfather Park Slope …

The Takings Clause, Version 2005: The Legal Process Of Constitutional Property Rights, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

The search for coherence in takings jurisprudence has resulted in a multitude of theories but no consensus. Each theory -- whether based on conceptions of common law property rights or constitutional conceptions of justice, or based on utility, natural law, or communitarian or republican conceptions of the good --offers significant insight into the vexing legal, political, and normative issues that judicial enforcement of the Takings Clause raises. But no single theory of property or of constitutional limits on state regulation and expropriation has proven capable either of satisfactorily rationalizing existing takings law or of persuading the courts or the theory's …

Jutstice Kennedy And The Environment: Property, States' Rights, And The Search For Nexus, Michael Blumm

ExpressO

Justice Anthony Kennedy, now clearly the pivot of the Roberts Court, is the Court’s crucial voice in environmental and natural resources law cases. Kennedy’s central role was never more evident than in the two most celebrated environmental and natural resources law cases of 2006: Kelo v. New London and Rapanos v. U.S., since he supplied the critical vote in both: upholding local use of the condemnation power for economic development under certain circumstances, and affirming federal regulatory authority over wetlands which have a significant nexus to navigable waters. In each case Kennedy’s sole concurrence was outcome determinative.

Justice Kennedy has …

Don't You Be My Neighbor: Restrictive Housing Ordinances As The New Jim Crow , Marisa Bono

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Status Of Nollan V. California Coastal Commission And Dolan V. City Of Tigard After Lingle V. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 539 (2007), David L. Callies, Christopher T. Goodin

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like In Kelo?, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 609 (2007), Debra Pogrund Stark

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Lingle: Implications For Takings Doctrine, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 573 (2007), Dale A. Whitman

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Penn Central To Lingle: The Long Backwards Road, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 593 (2007), Richard A. Epstein

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Kelo V. City Of New London: A Reduction Of Property Rights But A Tool To Combat Urban Sprawl, Gregory V. Jolivette Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note will analyze the two opposing interests of property owners and of cities in the context of the Supreme Court's Public Use Clause jurisprudence and show that while the Court's decision in Kelo may have diminished property rights, the decision could render an overriding positive impact on combating urban sprawl. Part II defines urban sprawl and identifies some of its associated costs. Part III briefly describes Public Use Clause jurisprudence prior to the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo. Part IV discusses the Court's opinion in Kelo and Justice Kennedy's concurrence. Part V examines the substantial criticism of Kelo and …

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.

Disaster Mitigation Through Land Use Strategies, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The persistent question this book raises is who should decide whether and how to mitigate the damages caused by natural disasters. Our understandable preoccupation with response, recovery, and rebuilding makes it hard to focus on this question as a central, even relevant, one. But it persists, nonetheless. The high-profile “blame game” played following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast is emblematic. In pointing fingers first at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), then at the city of New Orleans, and then at the state of Louisiana, public officials exhibited an appalling lack of understanding of the roles that each …

The Law And Policy Beginnings Of Ecosystem Services, James Salzman, J.B. Ruhl

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an introduction to a symposium issue of the journal on ecosystem services. As the brief descriptions of recent developments make clear, the field has changed greatly since the late 1990s and there are a lot of exciting developments underway. With the partnership of the Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, we thought it important to revisit the state of the field five years after the Stanford workshop. Thus we invited experts across the range of environmental law to Florida State for a two-day workshop assessing the current status of ecosystem services in environmental law. The results …

The Tragedy Of The Commons And The Myth Of A Private Property Solution, Amy Sinden

University of Colorado Law Review

According to generally accepted wisdom of welfare economics, there are two potential solutions to the tragedy of the commons: 1) government regulation, or 2) privatization. Government regulation and privatization can usefully be distinguished from each other based on who answers the "how much" question. Under the former, government answers the "how much" question, and under the latter, the market answers it. When the U.S. environmental movement began in the 1970s, government regulation seemed the obvious choice. But in recent years, intellectual fashions have changed, and privatization has become the preferred solution. The privatization solution, however, is a myth that exists, …

Mississippi River Stories: Lessons From A Century Of Unnatural Disasters, Christine A. Klein, Sandra B. Zellmer

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the nation pondered how a relatively weak Category 3 storm could have destroyed an entire region. Few appreciated the extent to which a flawed federal water development policy transformed this apparently natural disaster into a "manmade" disaster; fewer still appreciated how the disaster was the predictable, and indeed predicted, sequel to almost a century of similar disasters. This Article focuses upon three such stories: the Great Flood of 1927, the Midwest Flood of 1993, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005. Taken together, the stories reveal important lessons, including the inadequacy of engineered flood …

Reparations, Social Reconciliation, And The Significance Of Place: A Legal And Philosophical Examination Of Indigenous Cases In The United States And Their Global Implications, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

During genocide, populations are frequently displaced from their homelands. In the process of reparations, displacement is often viewed as a problem of shelter, food, and safety. In this framework, land is treated as an economic commodity—any given piece of land is interchangeable with another or for money. This approach is a product of Enlightenment thinking, which emphasizes the rights of the individual over communal rights to land, and conceptualizes land and social identity as strongly separated. This Enlightenment framework of rights, and the accompanying de-emphasis of place, is particularly strong in the United States. Because American legal principles have played …

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 …

Planning Ahead: Consistency With A Comprehensive Land Use Plan Yields Consistent Results For Municipalities, Nathan Blackburn

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Appalachian Stereotypes And Mountain Top Removal, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

The fight to save Appalachia from absolute devastation by mining companies has, thus far, been a losing battle. As the photographs recently published in Vanity Fair and Audubon so vividly proclaim, Appalachia—the great hidden forest of the United States—is still being laid to waste, mile by mile, despite the work of valiant activists. Although there have been numerous obstacles, the primary reason for failure is wrapped up in the image of Appalachia in the public consciousness. This single hurdle—the image of Appalachia—stands behind, buttressing numerous obstacles to ending mountain top removal mining.

Squaring The Circle On Sprawl: What More Can We Do?: Progress Towards Sustainable Land Use In The States, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

With almost ten years of nationwide dialogue and experimentation with the legal implementation of smart growth concepts at the state and local levels, this paper pauses to consider whether and to what extent success has been realized. The one certainty in this dynamic intersection of land development and conservation is that there is no one best model adaptable to all fifty states. Rather, to accommodate national diversity in local government structure, cultural relationships of people to the land, and differences in geography and a sense of place, the best lesson learned is that advocates and lawmakers alike must shape and …

Ensuring Continuing Community Amenities Through Golf Course Redevelopment, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article examines some of the issues faced by municipalities hoping to preserve their golf courses or to ensure their strategic redevelopment and focuses on how local governments can most effectively employ planning and zoning techniques to ensure that community amenities, including affordable housing and recreational areas, are an important part of golf course redevelopment projects.

From Walden To Wall Street: Frontiers Of Conservation Finance, Edited By James N. Levitt, Patrick J. Redmond

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Joe Stell's Life, Career, & Contributions, Susan Kelly

Water Matters!

Representative Joe Stell's retirement after 20 years in the New Mexico Legislature has many people wondering: How will we fare without his knowledge and history ofNew Mexico water matters? Stell viewed one of his most important roles as that of helping new legislators get up to speed on w ater issues. We hope that Water Matters! may assist in this role by providing legislators with background information on some of the issues they will encounter. The Utton Center also wanted to acknowledge Joe Stell's outstanding service to New Mexico, and we have therefore included a brief sketch about his career, …

Wrestling With Muds To Pin Down The Truth About Special Districts, Sara Bronin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Federal, state, and local governments encourage and empower special districts-board-run, special purpose local government units that are administratively and fiscally independent from general purpose local governments. Special districts receive incentives, grants, and freedom from limitations (such as limitations on tax and debt) imposed on general purpose local governments. Special districts are treated favorably because they are small in size, which theoretically means they foster democratic participation; are limited in purpose, meaning that states can tailor special districts' powers to serve specific problems; and are viewed as efficient solutions to specific problems. Though special districts have tripled in number over the …

Anti-Exclusionary Zoning In Pennsylvania: A Weapon For Developers, A Loss For Low-Income Pennsylvanians, Katrin Rowan

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Planning As Public Use?, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Journal Articles

This short Essay explores the Supreme Court's suggestion in Kelo v. New London that public, participatory planning may be a constitutional safe harbor that separates impermissible private takings from presumptively valid public ones. After briefly reviewing the Court's discussion of the planning that preceded the Kelo litigation, the Essay examines how Kelo's emphasis on planning departs from standard rational basis review of economic policies and asks what such a departure means for future public-use litigants. The Essay then explores three possible practical benefits of a constitutional rule that encourages the government to engage in detailed planning before exercising the power …