Land Use Law Commons^™

Negotiations In The Aftermath Of Koontz, Daniel P. Selmi

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Development: Assategue Coastal Trust, Inc. V. Schwalbach: An Applicant Must Satisfy The "Unwarranted Hardship" Standard To Be Granted A Variance; The Variance Must Have No Adverse Impact On The Environment And Conform To The Purpose Of The Critical Area Program, Michael Louis Brown

University of Baltimore Law Forum

The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that the Worchester County Board properly applied the “unwarranted hardship” standard and correctly granted a variance under local critical area law. Assateague Coastal Trust, Inc. v. Schwalbach, 448 Md. 112, 140, 136 A.3d 866, 882 (2016). The court held that the variance would not have an adverse impact on the environment and the development was in conformity with the Critical Area Program’s purpose and intent. Schwalbach, 448 Md. at 143-44, 136 A.3d at 883.

Enhancing The Urban Environment Through Green Infrastructure, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is adapted from Chapter Seven of John R. Nolon, Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, published by ELI Press. The book describes how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This Article follows the steady advance in the use of green infrastructure in recent years, and details its value as a strategy for adapting to climate change, bettering air quality, lowering heat stress, creating greater biodiversity, conserving energy, providing ecological services, sequestering carbon, preserving and expanding habitats, enhancing aesthetics, increasing …

Rluipa And The Limits Of Religious Institutionalism, Zachary A. Bray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

What special protections, if any, should religious organizations receive from local land use controls? The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”)—a deeply flawed statute—has been a magnet for controversy since its passage in 2000. Yet until recently, RLUIPA has played little role in debates about “religious institutionalism,” a set of ideas that suggest religious institutions play a distinctive role in developing the framework for religious liberty and that they deserve comparably distinctive deference and protection. This is starting to change: RLUIPA’s magnetic affinity for controversy has begun to connect conflicts over religious land use with larger debates about …

Sharing Property, Kellen Zale

University of Colorado Law Review

The sharing economy-the rapidly evolving sector of peer-topeer transactions epitomized by Airbnb and Uber-is the subject of heated debate about whether it is so novel that no laws apply, or whether the sharing economy should be subject to the same regulations as its analog counterparts. The debate has proved frustrating and controversial in large part because we lack a doctrinally cohesive and normatively satisfying way of talking about the underlying activities taking place in the sharing economy. In part, this is because property-sharing activities-renting your car out to a tourist for a day, paying to spend the weekend in a …

Insuring Takings Claims, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Local governments typically insure themselves against all kinds of losses, from property damage to legal liability. For small- and medium-sized governments, this usually means purchasing insurance from private insurers or participating in municipal risk pools. Insurance for regulatory takings claims, however, is generally unavailable. This previously unnoticed gap in municipal insurance coverage could lead risk averse local governments to underregulate and underenforce existing regulations where property owners threaten to bring takings claims. This seemingly technical observation turns out to have profound implications for theoretical accounts of the Takings Clause that focus on government regulatory incentives. This Article explores the impact …

To Transfer Or Not To Transfer, That Is The Question: An Analysis Of Public Lands Title In The West, Andrea Collins

Montana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning Both Directions: How Better Federal-Local Land Use Collaboration Can Quiet The Call For Federal Lands Transfers, Michelle Bryan

Montana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Zoning For Solar Energy: Resource Guide, Jessica A. Bacher, John R. Nolon

Environmental Law Program Publications @ Haub Law

This document is designed to help New York State localities amend zoning and other land use regulations to permit the development of solar energy systems in their jurisdictions. While it applies to many types of solar energy systems, this resource guide focuses primarily on solar electric or photovoltaic (PV) systems. It begins by describing the local government’s role in land use planning and regulation. It then discusses the importance of defining all solar energy systems that a community wants to allow in existing zoning districts and shows how to incorporate those definitions in the zoning ordinance. Next, the guide explains …

Land Use Planning For Solar Energy: Resource Guide, Jessica A. Bacher, John R. Nolon, Tiffany Zezula

Environmental Law Program Publications @ Haub Law

This document was created to help New York State localities develop and adopt solar friendly policies and plans. It begins by presenting the local government’s role in land use planning and regulation and introduces common characteristics of “solar friendly” communities. The resource then describes how municipalities should begin a solar energy initiative through an official policy statement that provides support for solar energy and that authorizes a task force to shepherd the process, appropriate studies, training programs for staff and board members, inter-municipal partnerships, and outside funding sources. Next, the document explains how municipalities should engage the entire community in …

Land Use And Climate Change Bubbles: Resilience, Retreat, And Due Diligence, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines events on the ground in several localities where climate change is lowering property values and analyzes how those changes in value can be reckoned with by regulators. It merges practices and principles of real estate transactions and finance with those of land use and environmental regulation.

Climate change is a planetary phenomenon whose environmental implications are far-reaching. Reports on climate change consequences increasingly focus on what is happening locally and presently, while speculation continues about long-term global consequences. In numerous communities, property values are declining because of repeated flooding, continued threats of storm surges, sustained high temperatures, …

Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination And Segregation Through Physical Design Of The Built Environment, Sarah B. Schindler

Faculty Publications

The built environment is characterized by man-made physical features that make it difficult for certain individuals — often poor people and people of color — to access certain places. Bridges were designed to be so low that buses could not pass under them in order to prevent people of color from accessing a public beach. Walls, fences, and highways separate historically white neighborhoods from historically black ones. Wealthy communities have declined to be served by public transit so as to make it difficult for individuals from poorer areas to access their neighborhoods. Although the law has addressed the exclusionary impacts …

The Politics Of Chinese Land: Partial Reform, Vested Interests And Small Property, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

This paper investigates the evolution of the Chinese land regime in the past three decades and focus on one question: why has the land use reform succeeded in the urban area, but not in the rural area? Through asking this question, it presents a holistic view of Chinese land reform, rather than the conventional "rural land rights conflict" picture. This paper argues that the so­called rural land problem is the consequence of China's partial land use reform. In 1988, the Chinese government chose to conduct land use reform sequentially: first urban and then rural. It was a pragmatic move because …

Land Use Law Update: Reed V. Town Of Gilbert Redux, Sarah Adams-Schoen

Scholarly Works

The Winter 2015 Land Use Law Update asked whether the Supreme Court’s decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert would require municipalities throughout the country to rewrite their sign codes. The short answer is “yes.”

At a minimum, following the Supreme Court’s decision that the Town of Gilbert’s temporary directional sign regulations violated petitioners Good News Community Church’s and Pastor Clyde Reed’s First Amendment rights, municipalities will want to act quickly to amend their sign codes if they regulate different categories of signs differently. A code that places fewer restrictions on political or ideological signs than on directional signs likely …

Land Use Law Update: Will Reed V. Town Of Gilbert Require Municipalities Throughout The Country To Rewrite Their Sign Codes?, Sarah Adams-Schoen

Scholarly Works

The author discusses the imminent Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert. Depending on how the Court decides the case, municipalities may need to act quickly to amend their sign regulations.

Internally Buffered Districts: A New Technique To Make Zoning Less Exclusionary, William Leaf, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Proposes creating a new kind of zone called an "internally buffered district." Within these zones, intensive land uses like stores and apartments are allowed, so long as the latter uses are physically separated from nearby residential districts. The article suggests that developers compensate homeowners for rezoning their property to the internally buffered classification, thus allowing for both more compact development and more protection of homeowners' interests.

Further Developments In Land Use Ethics, Patricia E. Salkin, Darren Stakey

Scholarly Works

Ethical considerations continue to play a fundamental role in shaping the course of land use and developmental regulatory proceedings throughout the country. From an innocuous donation by one public official to his alma mater, to the outright bribery of a former mayor, the past year has been rife with a range of conduct implicating professional responsibility and land use.

Billy Joel: The Chronicler Of The Suburbanization In New York, Patricia E. Salkin, Irene Crisci

Touro Law Review

Artists often chronicle historical developments through their chosen medium. In the case of Billy Joel, some of his lyrics can be traced to the early sustainability movements as he wrote about the migration of people from the cities and the attendant problems with rapid suburbanization. Described by Tony Bennett as “a poet, a performer, a philosopher and today’s American songbook,” his lyrics address, among other topics, land use, community development, and environmental issues. Following World War II, there was a major shift in population settlement patterns in the United States. As war heroes returned home, not only did the country …

An Environmental Understanding Of The Local Land Use System, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is adapted from Chapter Three of John R. Nolon, Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, published in 2014 by ELI Press. The book updates and expands on the author’s previous work, describing in detail how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This Article outlines a comprehensive framework for understanding how traditional local land use authority can be used to preserve natural resources and environmental functions at the community level.

The Ripeness Game: Why Are We Still Forced To Play?, Michael M. Berger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Other Tributes To Fred Bosselman, Edward J. Sullivan, Nancy E. Stroud

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Limitations On Sovereignty, 2014 Edition, Garrett Power

Book Gallery

This is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property.

The readings provide an historical context, and an up-to-date focus on many of the constitutional issues facing today’s Supreme Court: imperium versus dominium; the public trust, inverse condemnation, the …

Mirebalais, Haiti Planning Initiative, Urban Harbors Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Boston University, University Of The West Indies Centre

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Mirebalais Planning Initiative (MPI), a joint project of the Urban Harbors Institute, UMass Boston; Boston University; and the University of the West Indies funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The MPI is a community-based participatory planning process designed to expand community leadership and decision-making capacity among community members in Mirebalais, Haiti.

Participatory Democracy And The Entrepreneurial Government: Addressing Process Efficiencies In The Creation Of Land Use Development Agreements, Ramsin G. Canon

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Can the development agreement become a tool for community-based planning? Development agreements and related land use planning instruments have steadily increased in popularity over the last few decades. Standard zoning regimes have proven to be too rigid and inflexible to accommodate the evolving nature of large-scale, and particularly mixed-use, developments. The bilateral nature of development agreements also allows cities and counties to effectively compete for development dollars by crafting incentives. However, this type of ad-hoc planning can run afoul of the reserved powers doctrine and its progeny, and can face vehement political and social opposition. This type of opposition results …

Unpermitted Urban Agriculture: Transgressive Actions, Changing Norms And The Local Food Movement, Sarah B. Schindler

Faculty Publications

Roberta keeps four chickens in her backyard. Bob snuck onto the vacant lot next door, which the bank foreclosed upon and now owns, and planted a vegetable garden. Vien operates an occasional underground restaurant from his friends’ microbrewery after beer-making operations cease for the day. The common thread tying these actions together is that they are unauthorized; they are being undertaken in violation of existing laws and often norms. In this Article, I explore ideas surrounding the overlap between food policy and land use law, specifically the transgressive1 actions that people living in urban and suburban communities are undertaking to …

Requiem For Regulation, Garrett Power

Faculty Scholarship

This comment reviews U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past 100 years which have considered the constitutional limitations on governmental powers. It finds that at the three-quarter mark of the 20th century, a remarkable set of Court precedents had swollen the regulatory powers of governments while shrinking private rights to property and contract. But since the Reagan years, a more conservative Court has undertaken to curtail governmental activity in general, and to limit federal, state, and local planning in particular. A number of 5-4 decisions expanded private property rights and contracted the scope of the federal “commerce power.” The comment …

Still An Issue: The Taking Issue At 40, Patricia E. Salkin

Touro Law Review

In October 2013, with the launch of Touro Law Center’s new Institute on Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, the Touro Law Review held a symposium to commemorate the 40th anniversary of “The Taking Issue: A Study of the Constitutional Limits of Governmental Authority to Regulate the Use of Privately-Owned Land Without Paying Compensation to the Owners” (The Takings Issue), the Council on Environmental Quality’s seminal report by Fred Bosselman, David Callies and John Banta. For this symposium Touro Law Review assembled some of today’s leading luminaries to reflect on how the taking issue has evolved and to assess where …

Storm Surges, Disaster Planning, And Vulnerable Populations At The Urban Periphery: Imagining A Resilient New York After Superstorm Sandy, Andrea L. Mcardle

Publications and Research

In the aftermath of Sandy, the destructive superstorm that had a devastating impact in New York City and other parts of the Northeastern U.S. in 2012, ideas and data proliferate about how coastal cities, such as New York, can pursue strategies of resilience to help withstand the next weather-related onslaught. This article argues that whether the city in fact acts resiliently must take into account the extent to which its proposals respond to the needs of vulnerable people housed along its coastline. Superstorm Sandy put a face to vulnerability, including 6,800 evacuees assigned to shelters, 1,800 of whom were residents …

Preface To Protecting The Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Protecting the Environment Through Land Use Law: Standing Ground takes a close look at the historical struggle of local governments to balance land development with natural resource conservation. This book updates and expands on his four previous books, which established a comprehensive framework for understanding the many ways that local land use authority can be used to preserve natural resources and environmental functions at the community level. Standing Ground describes in detail how localities are responding to new challenges, including the imperative that they adapt to and help mitigate climate change and create sustainable neighborhoods. This body of work emphasizes …

The Spirit Of The Buffalo: The Past And Future Of An American Plains Icon, William Holland

Animal Law Review

Though bison are iconically associated with the United States, their historical fortunes have often been opposite those of the U.S. As the nation expanded westward, government policy, de­mand for bison products, and changing land use perilously re­duced bison numbers. Efforts to restore bison have been complicated by overlapping legal concerns: state, federal, tribal, and constitutional. This Note examines the legal context sur­rounding bison restoration, focusing particularly on the critical herd connected with Yellowstone National Park. Former mem­bers of the Yellowstone herd, in turn, are the subjects of the Montana Supreme Court's 2013 ruling in Citizens for Balanced Use v. Maurier, …