Real Estate & Property Law
Land Use Prof Blog 
Post Frequency: 0.9/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 14:57:46 Recent Entries: 302
By Paul Boudreaux
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New Preservation Battleground
Posted on November 20, 2009A recent article by Stephanie Strom, "A Revolutionary Widow's Estate Becomes a Preservation Battleground," New York Times (Nov. 17, 2009), describes a brewing fight over one of the most significant of the great Hudson River properties: Montgomery Place...
Agins Strikes Again
Posted on November 20, 2009Okay - here's my rant for the day. Why, oh why, couldn't the US Supreme Court have overruled Agins v. Tiburon in Lingle v. Chevron? This case trips up my students every semester. You all will remember Agins as the...
City Journal on Le Corbusier
Posted on November 20, 2009Theodore Dalrymple has an article in City Journal called The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier?s baleful influence. From the intro: Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. Wow! There's something to be said for telling...
Battle for the Beach: Property Rights and the Open Beaches Act
Posted on November 19, 2009Public access rights to privately-owned beachfront property has been a contentious land use issue for decades. I mentioned that on Election Day, on my ballot was not just the mayoral election (which always has some land use issues in the...
ULI conference: focus on planning during downturn
Posted on November 19, 2009The Urban Land Institute recently held its fall meeting in San Fransisco. According to a summary from the California Planning & Development Report, the tenor of the meeting was that during tough economic times such as this, developers should invest...
Lehavi on the Taking/Taxing Taxonomy
Posted on November 19, 2009Amnon Lehavi (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliyah--Radzyner School of Law) has posted The Taking/Taxing Taxonomy, forthcoming in the Texas Law Review, Vol. 88, No. 6, 2010. The abstract: Takings jurisprudence is engaged in a constant paradox. It is conventionally portrayed as chaotic...
Palmer and Maher on the Mortgage Meltdown as Normal Accident
Posted on November 18, 2009Donald Palmer and Michael W. Maher (UC-Davis, Graduate School of Management) have posted The Mortgage Meltdown as Normal Accident Wrongdoing. The abstract: We argue that the mortgage meltdown can be considered a ?normal accident?. Our analysis suggests that the mortgage...
Preservation News from the Top: Anthony Wood in Charleston
Posted on November 18, 2009Acclaimed preservationist, author, and professor Anthony Wood paid a visit this week to Charleston, South Carolina, where he serves as Chairman of the Drayton Hall Site Council. Click here for a link to Drayton Hall and to learn more about...
The Nature of the Property Curriculum
Posted on November 17, 2009Joanne Martin recently published "The Nature of the Property Curriculum in ABA-Approved Schools and its Place in Real Estate Practice" in the Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law Journal. The author surveys law professors and practicing attorneys, and provides an...
New Ruralism
Posted on November 17, 2009From time to time I'll be posting guest blogs by Land Use Clinic students related to their clinic projects. Today's blog is by Emily Stratton, who is a second year law student here at UGA. The New Urbanist movement is...
Welcome to Las Vegas...
Posted on November 17, 2009When I'm not researching, writing, and teaching about land use and development, I have a bit of a guilty research pleasure: amusement park law. It all started early on in my lawprof career when one of my mentors recommended selecting...
Juergensmeyer Symposium in March 2010
Posted on November 17, 2009Georgia State University has announced a symposium in honor of Julian C. Juergensmeyer's 45th year of teaching, to be held in Atlanta March 25-26, 2010. Entitled "A 2020 View of Urban Infrastructure," the draft agenda offers both national and international...
White on Shame, Fear, and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis
Posted on November 16, 2009Brent T. White (Arizona) has posted Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis. The abstract: Despite reports that homeowners are increasingly ?walking away? from their mortgages, most homeowners continue to make their...
2009 Endangered Historic Sites
Posted on November 16, 2009What do a mountain, the Enola Gay's hangar, a Los Angeles hotel, a temple, and a stadium have in common? They're all listed on this year's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Click here...
Update on 2009 National Preservation Conference
Posted on November 16, 2009The 2009 National Preservation Conference took place several weeks ago, but for historic preservationists who could not attend in person, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has made attendance possible virtually. Click here for selected webcasts and seminar materials...
Sports stadiums: if you build it, will they come?
Posted on November 15, 2009For you football fans out there, here is a Sunday post about the recurring issue in many cities about building a new sports stadium, either for the local team or to attract a new team to town. There are a...
Solar Rights Scholarship (Bronin, Rule)
Posted on November 14, 2009There have been a few good articles out lately about solar rights. I have been meaning to post them. Here are the abstracts: Sara Bronin (Connecticut) has a pair of articles relevant to the topic. The first is Solar Rights,...
19 Urban Development Types
Posted on November 14, 2009A post on CoolTown Studios speculates on what the "19 development types" would be if they were focused on new urbanism rather than suburban sprawl: Thanks to Chris Leinberger, author of the The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New...
New York Times forum on Pfizer & Kelo
Posted on November 13, 2009The other day I discussed some possible ramifications of the Pfizer pullout from New London. Today, the New York times published a forum on the topic at the Room for Debate opinion blog: A Turning Point for Eminent Domain? When...
Ninth Circuit Opinion on Federal Land and Policy Management Act
Posted on November 13, 2009The Ninth Circuit has issued its opinion in National Parks & Conservation Ass'n. v. Bureau of Land Mgmt., No. 05-56814. The Association challenged the exchange of private lands, including parcels surrounding a mine site, owned by the Bureau of Land...
Small signs of economic recovery
Posted on November 13, 2009From Las Vegas - CityCenter is due to open soon. MSNBC has the following description: SoHo with slot machines Set to open its multi-billion-dollar doors in December, CityCenter is more than just another casino resort. It?s also the largest privately....
Green Cities, Cool Cities (Florida, Kotkin)
Posted on November 12, 2009Richard Florida of "Creative Class" fame has posted Greening the City on his blog at The Atlantic. Why not consider devoting different streets to different kinds of transportation? And surely cities need more green space and some are actually getting...
News from Seattle
Posted on November 12, 2009Two recent land use legal items from Seattle. First, on Election Day the voters approved Proposition 1, an affordable-housing levy. From the Seattle Times: At Capitol Hill?s Sole Repair, campaign workers were ecstatic over the success of Proposition 1, the...
What if you built a brand new city...
Posted on November 12, 2009...and nobody moved in? --Chad Emerson
More Demolition by Neglect in Detroit
Posted on November 11, 2009Detroit has lost another key building in its skyline to the wrecking ball, along with another opportunity for adaptive re-use, as a result of demolition by neglect. ("Demolition by neglect" refers to the gradual deterioration of a building by a...
Nolon and Grzan on Stop the Beach Renourishment
Posted on November 11, 2009John R. Nolon and Kristen M. Grzan (Pace) have posted Rising Tides--Changing Title: Walton County v. Stop the Beach Renourishment, published in the Real Estate Law Journal, 2009. The abstract: This article first discusses the facts of the Walton County...
Ireland on empirical analysis of neighborhood foreclosure
Posted on November 11, 2009Mark Ireland (Hamline) has posted Bending Toward Justice: An Empirical Study of Foreclosures in One Neighborhood Three Years after Impact and a Proposed Framework for a Better Community. The abstract: It has been at least three years since the initial...
Salkin on Local Laws on Planning & Zoning Board Composition
Posted on November 11, 2009Patricia Salkin (Albany) has posted Providing for Alternate Members of Planning and Zoning Boards: Drafting Effective Local Laws, Planning and Environmental Law, American Planning Association, Vol. 61, No. 8, August 2009. The abstract: It is not uncommon for members of...
Baron on the Contested Commitments of Property
Posted on November 11, 2009Jane Baron (Temple) has posted The Contested Committments of Property, forthcoming in the Hastings Law Journal. The abstract: The means by which property organizes human behavior and social life is the subject of profound and heated debate. On one side,...
Well-Being Index for the 50 States
Posted on November 11, 2009The website LiveScience just posted an article entitled "The Well-Being of 50 U.S. States." It's actually a survey called "the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index," which purports to show which states are the happiest. Some of the factors that contribute to happiness...
Providence Moves Highway, Improves Connectivity and Economy
Posted on November 11, 2009In a move that will likely encourage other cities to follow its example, city leaders in Providence, Rhode Island, have decided to relocate a major highway from the heart of downtown to its outskirts. Providence is also the city which,...
The Dallas Fed Chief...
Posted on November 11, 2009...recently gave a speech that pretty much explains why municipalities should not expect increased land development anytime soon: I am wary of the consensus view. For a good while now, I?ve suggested that we are more likely to see a...
Veterans Day & Land Use
Posted on November 11, 2009A very happy Veterans Day to all, with thanks to those who have served. In honor of the day, here are a few desultory land use issues involving military veterans. The idea of rewarding veterans for their service with grants...
Recent Land Use Scholarship Roundup
Posted on November 10, 2009I've been out of town for a few days, and have noticed a number of interesting articles recently published in the journals or posted on SSRN. Check them out!: Richard K. Green (George Washington) & Susan M. Wachter (Penn--Wharton, Real...
As long as we are discussing the Supreme Court, how about Salazar v Buono?
Posted on November 10, 2009I have been remiss in not including the recent Supreme Court arguments on Salazar v Buono. The case was argued on October 7, 2009 and the Justices have not yet issued a ruling. I was reminded of the case today...
Kelo's next twist: Pfizer to close New London facility
Posted on November 10, 2009This is going to get some serious attention among eminent domain watchers. Pfizer just announced plans to close its R&D headquarters in New London, Connecticut. You will recall that Pfizer's facility was a major factor in the redevelopment plan at...
Street Design and Safety...
Posted on November 09, 2009The Congress for New Urbanism recently wrapped up its annual transportation conference--this year in Portland, Oregon. You can read more about the event and several of the initiatives here. One of the most pressing issues in this area is how...
Paging the Local Codes Inspector in China...
Posted on November 09, 2009The reason for paging the inspector? It's real simple. Check out this image and explanation at the Global Economic Analysis blog. Pretty startling, eh? I mean, really. An entire 12 building simply falling over. I've seen some bad Lincoln Log...
The Pilgrims & Land Use
Posted on November 08, 2009If you missed Nathaniel Philbeck's NYT bestseller from 2006, Mayflower, November is a good time to check it out as we approach Thanksgiving 2009. Philbeck gives new insight into the question, "How did American begin?" Of interest to land use...
Bikes & Cars & Cities
Posted on November 08, 2009In Los Angeles, a doctor has been found guilty of reckless driving, battery, assault with a deadly weapon (his car), and "mayhem," and could face ten years in prison, for braking in front of two bicyclists. Here's the story (with...
Education, Wealth, and Land Use
Posted on November 08, 2009Professor Edward Glaeser of Harvard posted recently on the New York Times' Economix Blog about the connections between investments in education 100 years ago with income levels in 2009. Click here to read "Education Last Century, and Economic Growth Today...
Preserving New York
Posted on November 08, 2009Although many people think of New York City as a place that never looks back, it has managed to retain a wealth of architectural evidence from the past, even as it has experienced significant losses. In his book Preserving New...
In Local News...
Posted on November 06, 2009Here in Athens, Georgia we didn't have a local election on Tuesday, but there is some interesting downtown development news. The Athens-Clarke Commssion (we're a consolidated city/county) just voted to construct a new parking deck downtown, over the last minute...
Atlanta is America's Most Toxic City
Posted on November 05, 2009My colleague Helen Kang, director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Golden Gate University, just sent me a link to this article on Forbes.com proclaiming Atlanta the nation's most toxic city. But, look out Matt Festa, Houston's hot on Atlanta's....
Climate Change & Land Use
Posted on November 05, 2009Over the last week or so there has been an debate on the Environmental Law Professors listserv about climate change. John Nolon sent an interesting overview of his latest article on how encouraging more compact land use addresses climate change...
U.S. Home Construction and the Mexican Economy
Posted on November 04, 2009Last night on NPR I heard a very interesting story about how the crash of the home building market in the United States has impacted the Mexican economy. Listen to it here. (As a former immigration practitioner I'm always interested...
The Home-Buying Tax Credit Fallacy is Growing...
Posted on November 04, 2009As one of my earlier posts noted, the $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers was originally a bad idea because, among other reasons, it allowed the same practice (extremely low down payment amounts--as low as 3.5% in some cases)...
Land Use and the Municipal Bond Crisis...
Posted on November 04, 2009While the story is starting to gain traction, the plight of municipal budgets remains woefully underreported. Maybe its the fact that the federal and state governments are so stimulus-happy that some just assume that cities and counties would be enjoying...
Kiawah Island, Revetments, & Walls
Posted on November 03, 2009A Kiawah Island developer who lost an initial request to build a revetment surrounding the pristine southern tip of the island (i.e., dunes), a decision now on appeal, has now received the go-ahead by state regulators to submerge a wall...
Reiss on Subsidizing Mortgages of Small Multifamily Buildings
Posted on November 03, 2009David Reiss (Brooklyn) has posted Landlords of Last Resort: Should the Government Subsidize the Mortgages of Privately-Owned, Small Multifamily Buildings? The abstract: The absence of stable financing options has long caused difficulties for owners of small multifamily buildings...
Las Vegas water pipeline potentially plugged
Posted on November 03, 2009The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) received a setback to its proposed pipeline to pump groundwater from Northern Nevada to Southern Nevada. A Nevada district court denied the SNWA authority to tap the northern counties' groundwater. The decision will be...
RLUIPA Working Papers...
Posted on November 02, 2009Both Shelley Saxer (Pepperdine Law) and my colleague at Faulkner, Adam MacLeod, have recently posted working papers on RLUIPA. Shelley, who participated in the real estate workshop at last summer's SEALS conference with me, discusses RLUIPA from a building and...
LaCroix on Urban Agriculture
Posted on November 02, 2009Speaking of urban agrictulture, Catherine LaCroix (Case Western Reserve) has posted on SSRN Urban Agriculture and Other Green Uses: Remaking the Shrinking City, forthcoming in the Spring 2010 Urban Lawyer. The abstract: For many decades, the primary challenge of land...
Urban Lawyer, Vol. 41 No. 3
Posted on November 02, 2009The most recent issue of the Urban Lawyer (Vol. 41, No. 3) has been published. Looks like there are several interesting land use articles in the table of contents, including: Regulatory Takings and Free Trade Agreements: Implications for Planners, MILDRED...
Changes in Demographics Affect Housing Demand
Posted on November 02, 2009Josh Martin, urban planning dynamo of South Carolina's Coastal Conservation League, circulated an informative article today: Arthur C. Nelson, "Demographic Outlook," Urban Land (Sept. 2009). The article predicts that the United States will experience an unprecedented shift in demographics between...
Election Day: land use issues!
Posted on November 02, 2009Most of the national attention for Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3d, is focused on the horse races in New Jersey, Virginia, and NY-23. But here in Houston and across Texas we have some land use issues both on the...
Scary Parking
Posted on November 01, 2009Chad Emerson has posted a couple of times about parking requirements in land use regulations. Architect Roger K. Lewis takes on parking garage aesthetics in his Washington Post column yesterday called Where You Park Doesn't Have to be Scary. Think...
Institute for Justice report on eminent domain in New York & the Goldstein case
Posted on November 01, 2009The Institute for Justice, the libertarian pro-property rights group that famously represented Susette Kelo, has issued a report called Building Empires, Destroying Homes: Eminent Domain Abuse in New York. From the intro: New York is perhaps the worst state in...
Next American City on Smart Growth and Miami 21
Posted on October 31, 2009Speaking of DPZ, and apropos of the discussion here on the blog about Miami 21 (DPZ is the lead consultant), the Next American City magazine has a piece by Mike Lydon on the very recent passage of the new form-based...
Duany on Agricultural Urbanism
Posted on October 31, 2009Andres Duany, of DPZ and CNU fame and generally esteemed as the godfather of new urbansim (and who recently called Brad Pitt's New Orleans architecture "bullshit"), gave a speech to a packed hotel ballroom in Houston last night (sponsored by...
Planetizen's Halloween Costumes for Urban Planners
Posted on October 31, 2009For the Halloween edition of my month-old tradition of more humorous posts on the weekend, Planetizen's Nate Berg has Halloween Costumes for Urban Planners, 2d ed. A taste: Cities One way to celebrate Halloween is to dress up like a...
Bogart on the Glorious Revolution and Transportation
Posted on October 30, 2009Daniel E. Bogart (Economics, UC Irvine) has posted Did the Glorious Revolution Contribute to the Transport Revolution? Evidence from Investment in Roads and Rivers, from the 4th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. The abstract: The Glorious Revolution has been...
3rd Quarter GDP and Land Development...
Posted on October 30, 2009Much has been made about the 3.5% 3rd quarter GDP number released this week and how it seems to suggest an end to this deep recession. As Lee Corso would say though, "Not so fast, my friend!" Indeed, the Calculated...
Right to the City
Posted on October 29, 2009I recently received the fall 2009 newsletter of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. Among many timely and interesting articles, the newsletter includes a piece titled "Right to the City: Social Movement and Theory." The Right to the City...
Presenting at the National Community Land Trust Network
Posted on October 29, 2009As I posted earlier this week, the National Community Land Trust Network is having their annual conference here in Athens. Four UGA busloads of folks came over from the Atlanta airport Tuesday and Wednesday and they're all now safely ensconced...
Austin's Transit-Oriented Development
Posted on October 28, 2009Molly Scarborough, Senior Planner with the Austin Planning Department, gave a presentation today on Austin's transit-oriented planning at the Houston-Galveston Area Council, as part of Houston Tomorrow's "Livable Houston Initiative." Interestingly, the promo blurb indicated that she would be talking...
Building Economically Healthy Communities
Posted on October 28, 2009I've been reading the really excellent new book Building Healthy Communities: A Guide to Community Economic Development for Advocates, Lawyers and Policymakers edited by Roger A. Clay, Jr. and Susan R. Jones. Here's the blurb from the ABA website: The...
The Visual Order of Cities
Posted on October 28, 2009One of the arguments Jane Jacobs makes in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities 372-91 (1961), is that "a city cannot be a work of art." She writes: When we deal with cities we are dealing...
McCall on Modern Housing Finance and Ancient Principles of Justice
Posted on October 28, 2009Brian McCall (Oklahoma) has posted Learning from Our History: Evaluating the Modern Housing Finance Market in Light of Ancient Principles of Justice, which was part of a mortgage crisis symposium in the South Carolina Law Review. The abstract: Since I...
The $8,000 Question...
Posted on October 27, 2009The Washington Post has a good analysis piece that considers the usefulness of the soon-to-expire $8,000 homebuyer federal tax credit. Here's an interesting snippet from the article: What happens when you artificially prop up housing prices? Imagine the credit were...
Community Land Trusts in Athens
Posted on October 27, 2009This week the National Community Land Trust Network is having its annual conference here in Athens, Georgia. Here's their mission statement from their website: The National Community Land Trust Network provides training, advocacy and resources for its member organizations which...
The Bailout of Sprawl
Posted on October 27, 2009Christopher Leinberger (U. Michigan & Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program) has a post at The New Republic's The Avenue blog called The Bailout of Sprawl: When the financial history of this era is told, it is possible that it will be...
Kennedy on Property Rights and Economic Development
Posted on October 26, 2009David W. Kennedy (Harvard) has posted Some Caution about Property Rights as a Recipe for Economic Development. The abstract: In recent years, enhancing the security and clarity or formality of property rights has become something of an idée fixe among...
Playa Vista & Spruce Goose
Posted on October 26, 2009One of my colleagues, Professor William L. "Billy" Want, is a treasure trove of information about land use law and anything related to the environment. Click here for information related to his background and publications. Listed in "Best Lawyers," Professor...
Miami & Pedestrians
Posted on October 26, 2009As a follow up to Chad Emerson's very helpful Oct. 26, 2009, posting here on form-based codes, the Congress for the New Urbanism is calling "Miami 21," Miami's new zoning code, "the most ambitious contemporary zoning reform yet undertaken by...
Transect-Based Land Use Codes...
Posted on October 26, 2009With Miami's recent adoption of a new transect-based/form-based land use code, a great deal of interest is being generated in what other communities have adopted a similar type of code. Here's a link to several case studies and reports on...
Land Use: The Other Inconvenient Truth?
Posted on October 25, 2009Jonathan Foley (director of the Institute on the Environment and professor, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, Minnesota) has an opinion piece on Yale Environment 360, a web publication of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, called The...
Tattoo Zoning?
Posted on October 24, 2009I have written before about how Houston's Montrose neighborhood recently made it into the American Planning Association's Top 10 Neighborhoods in America. Montrose is an eclectic neighborhood that is home to Houston's arts and LGBT communities, as well as a...
Baron on The Contested Commitments of Property
Posted on October 23, 2009Jane B. Baron (Temple) has posted The Contested Commitments of Property, forthcoming in the Hastings Law Journal. The abstract: The means by which property organizes human behavior and social life is the subject of profound and heated debate. On one....
Urban Problems in Rural Georgia
Posted on October 23, 2009As promised earlier, today I report about our field visit Tuesday to Hawkinsville, Georgia. Hawkinsville/Pulaski County is a small community (population 10,000) south of Macon. Its primary industry is agriculture, and it has an award winning regional hospital...
Choo Choo Trains Meet the Space Age
Posted on October 22, 2009In contrast to the spiderweb of interstate highway and railway connections typical of the eastern United States, much of the west - particularly the southwest - has far less transportation infrastructure. Las Vegas and Phoenix are connected in large part...
Support the Economy...Shop at The Fed?
Posted on October 22, 2009Deep in the heart of Oklahoma oil country, the United States Federal Reserve Banks owns...a...shopping mall. Unfortunately, its pretty well dormant. Except, that is, for the oil pump slowly grinding away in the parking lot (albeit one that the Fed...
The Truth About Smart Growth?
Posted on October 22, 2009On Wednesday in Houston there was an interesting conference called "The Truth About Smart Growth: Setting the Stage for the Housing Collapse--National Conference on What Works and What Hurts." It was organized by Houstonians for Responsible Growth, a local developers'...
Land Use Seminar
Posted on October 21, 2009In the spring semester I will be teaching the land use class as a seminar. Our seminars are limited to 20 students and geared toward fulfilling the law school's graduation writing requirement of producing a substantial, original research paper. I'm...
Federal Initiative for State & Local Housing
Posted on October 21, 2009The Obama Administration has announced a new "Initiative for State and Local Housing Finance Agencies": WASHINGTON - As part of its comprehensive plan to stabilize the U.S. housing market, the Obama Administration today announced a new initiative for state and...
Congressional Report on Foreclosure Mitigation
Posted on October 21, 2009The Congressional Oversight Panel has released its October Oversight Report: An Assessment of Foreclosure Mitigation Programs After Six Months. The Panel, chaired by Elizabeth Warren, is charged with reviewing "the current state of the financial markets and the regulatory system"...
Small Improvements, not Grand Designs
Posted on October 20, 2009Andrew M. Manshel (executive vice president, Greater Jamaica Development Corp.) has written A Place is Better than a Plan: Revitalizing Urban Areas is Best Done Through Small Improvements, not Grand Designs for the Autumn 2009 issue of City Journal. The...
Form-Based Codes and Jurisdictional Questions
Posted on October 20, 2009I wanted to give a preview of tomorrow's local hearing over what appears to be a form-based code designed for an area near Charleston's port. One of the issues I've mentioned in prior posts is whether the adoption of a...
Market Rate Parking Regs...
Posted on October 20, 2009Have you ever driven by a large retail center and noticed rows upon rows of empty parking spaces? If so, did you ever wonder why one big box retailer really needed such a large amount of empty asphalt in order...
Brad Pitt, New Orleans, and "Houses of the Future"
Posted on October 20, 2009Wayne Curtis has a very interesting article in The Atlantic, called Houses of the Future. The intro: Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting...
Slow Recovery in States Dependant on Home Construction
Posted on October 20, 2009According to this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, states like Georgia and Florida whose economies are heavily dependent on the home construction industry are struggling harder to emerge from the recession. It's interesting that cities in the Sunbelt that have...
St. Andrews needs preservation?
Posted on October 20, 2009The Wall Street Journal has an article about the dilapidated state of one of the most prominent and historic buildings at St. Andrews, the Home of Golf: For one of golf's most famous buildings, Hamilton Hall in St. Andrews, Scotland,...
Festa Italiana
Posted on October 20, 2009I wanted to post this on Sunday as part of my longstanding (two-week-old) tradition of posting a more lighthearted entry on the weekend (such as the End of the Universe and America's Favorite Cities). But here it is. This weekend...
Zoning for "Car Homes"...
Posted on October 19, 2009I've been reading more and more stories about people who are being evicted or foreclosed on and, in turn, end up living in their cars. This type of situation leads to a whole set of potential land use regulatory questions....
Even more on Miami 21 Code...
Posted on October 19, 2009The much hyped (deservedly so in my mind) Miami 21 land development code is scheduled for a second reading before council this Thursday. The code's use of the transect as a regulatory organizing tool is particularly innovative and useful. In...
Internalizing Externalities?
Posted on October 18, 2009Charleston's Post & Courier published an article today that might come in handy when teaching the concept of externalities and how parties may or not be able to resolve them through internalization (the second concept). The article, by journalist Tony...
9th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference
Posted on October 16, 2009From the good folks at EPA: Conference registration is now open for the 9th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, which will be held on February 4-6, 2010 in Seattle, Washington. The multi-disciplinary program will feature cutting-edge policies and...
Peterson on Foreclosure, Subprimes, and MERS
Posted on October 16, 2009Christopher L. Peterson (Utah) has posted Foreclosure, Subprime Mortgage Lending, and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System. The abstract: At the roots of the worst recession since the Great Depression were unaffordable home mortgages packaged into securities, sold to investors, and...
More on Local Farming - Georgia Seizes Raw Milk
Posted on October 16, 2009This morning I found an e-mail in my inbox from Eric Wagoner, director of Athens Locally Grown. Locally Grown is a twist on food cooperatives - rather than receiving a box each week, we order just what we want from...
Diversity of Use
Posted on October 16, 2009Continuing on with my re-read of Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), she describes in Chapter 12 "some myths about diversity" that seem relevant in Charleston, SC, as the City moves forward with revising its...
NYT on Environmentalism in the Suburbs
Posted on October 16, 2009The New York Times published several articles on environmentalism in the suburbs, seemingly on the same day last week but on different pages of different sections in different editions (NY, NJ, CT, LI) of the paper. (I don't get the...
The Youngest Planner?
Posted on October 16, 2009In Manchester, Vermont, an 18-year-old high school student has been appointed to the planning commission: MANCHESTER ? Effective Oct. 22, Burr and Burton Academy (BBA) student Megan LaValley will make history by becoming the youngest person at the age of...
The Mess Just Keeps Getting Messier...
Posted on October 15, 2009This Boston Herald article demonstrates how the housing mess continues to result in unintended consequences: A real estate judge is refusing to reverse a landmark ruling that opens the door to voiding tens of thousands of Bay State foreclosures dating...
The CRA debate
Posted on October 14, 2009In the continuing debate over What Caused the Mortgage Crisis (was it planners?), many have blamed the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. Don't expect the debate to die down anytime soon. Here is a new article from Edward Pinto (a former...
Glaeser on home subsidies
Posted on October 14, 2009Harvard economist Edward Glaeser (who has written a lot of interesting papers on the economics of land use regulation) wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe last week called "Rolling the Dice on Wasteful Home Subsidies." He argues that the...
The Trans-Texas Corridor is Dead
Posted on October 14, 2009Ding, dong. Last week the Texas legislature killed (or "stuck a fork in") the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Corridor was supported by Governor Rick Perry as a visionary network of high-volume superhighways to crisscross the state and link it to transportation...
More on Miami 21 transect-based land use code...
Posted on October 14, 2009Thanks to Alan for his guest post on Miami 21. I've been following the process closely as several colleagues from the New Urban world are working on the project. In addition to the information from the earlier post, here is...
"You Don't Have to be Black to Protect Black History"
Posted on October 13, 2009My friend Christine McCauley, executive director of Buckhead Heritage, just told me about a very interesting historic preservation case. It seems that a developer wants to move a black graveyard in Buckhead, which is now an very upscale area of...
News from Florida
Posted on October 13, 2009Alan Krischer sends us the following update from Miami: As with Denver, the City of Miami is also in the process of adopting a completely new zoning code. The "Miami 21" rewrite is a form-based code reflecting many tenets of...
Legal Happenings in the Mortgage World...
Posted on October 13, 2009With the housing market still pretty moribund, both the federal and state governments are trying out new regulatory equivalents of an AED to get a pulse back for the industry. A few recently announced include this one in California that...
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Revisited)
Posted on October 13, 2009We've received several queries recently in regards to comprehensive planning, and different cities' efforts at updating their comprehensive plans. For those not familiar with her work, Jane Jacobs' books are an excellent resource. One that I'm reading again right now...
How Food Safety Affects Land Use
Posted on October 13, 2009Many of you have already read the recent compelling piece in The New York Times about beef safety. The article chronicles the devastating story of a young dance instructor paralyzed by a virulent strain of E. Coli in a patty...
Tyler and Markell on Public Regulation of Land Use Decisions
Posted on October 12, 2009Tom Tyler (NYU, psychology) and David L. Markell (Florida State, law) have posted The Public Regulation of Land Use Decisions: Criteria for Evaluating Alternative Procedures, forthcoming in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Here is the abstract: In this article...
New Zoning Code for Denver?
Posted on October 12, 2009Denver is trying to adopt a new zoning code. The bill appears on track to be voted on in city council early next year. It would replace the existing zoning code entirely. Some excerpts from the Denver Business Journal's recent...
Smart Growth Books...
Posted on October 12, 2009As someone who spends a great deal of time researching, writing, and speaking on the intersection between smart growth and the legal/regulatory world, I'm frequently asked for recommendations on books regarding that topic. I generally start with these three titles:...
Houston, do we have a problem?
Posted on October 01, 2009Sorry to lead with the corny, overused NASA Apollo 13 reference, but everytime a national media outlet does a story on the City of Houston (or the energy industry, or Houston sports teams, or hurricances, or Whitney Houston), it seems...
Kent on Impact Fees as Takings
Posted on September 30, 2009Michael B. Kent (Stetson/John Marshall) has posted Theoretical Tension and Doctrinal Discord: Analyzing Development Impact Fees as Takings, forthcoming in the William & Mary Law Review. Here is the abstract: One of the lingering questions about the law of regulatory...
Property law careers
Posted on September 30, 2009Today at my law school the student Real Estate Law Society hosted a panel of property lawyers from the Real Property Division of the Harris County Attorney's Office (that's the county that Houston is in). The two panelists were attorneys...
The Definition of Ridiculous...
Posted on September 30, 2009Remember when evidence of a ridiculous decision was often followed by "and if you believe that, then I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you"? Well, that quip is now so very 1900's. These days, the new motto...
A short introduction
Posted on September 29, 2009I am happy that Land Use Prof is back and I am pleased to be working with a great group of editors. I practiced and taught community development in Baltimore, Maryland for several years before moving to Las Vegas in...
A Big Hurdle to Future Land Development...
Posted on September 29, 2009While a variety of government officials and media outlets are suggesting (if not outright proclaiming) the Great Recession to officially be over, there is still a big hurdle facing land development (both residential and commercial): the shadow inventory...
Getting Started
Posted on September 29, 2009Many thanks to Joe Hodnicki for getting us started! We're busy right now in Charleston, SC, at the Charleston School of Law working with one of the nation's oldest (and latest) preservation law, following adoption in 2008 of a new...
Project Development Class Simulation...
Posted on September 28, 2009Well, I suppose its fitting that my first Land Use Prof blog post will occur just minutes before the Land Planning and Development course that I teach here at Faulkner. This semester, I've eliminated the textbooks and hornbooks and replaced...
Signing on to the Blog
Posted on September 28, 2009I'm Jamie Baker Roskie and I'm one of the new co-editors of the Blog. As Matt Festa has already mentioned, I'm the managing attorney of the Land Use Clinic at the University of Georgia. The Clinic started in 2002, and...
Welcome Back to the Land Use Prof Blog!
Posted on September 27, 2009The Land Use Prof Blog is Back! We have a new team of editors on board. My co-editors can introduce themselves in more detail, and over on the left you can find links to our faculty bio pages and publications,...
About Land Use Prof Blog
Posted on August 16, 2009The Law Professor Blogs Network has ceased publication of this blog.
The end of Land Use Prof Blog ...
Posted on July 12, 2009The Land Use Prof Blog has been canceled. I pass along my thanks to everyone who has read and commented on this blog over the past three years. For future commentary from me on land use and community development law,...
The risks of relying on rail ?
Posted on July 09, 2009This is another ?hometown week? post about my old hometown of Silver Spring, Md. I don?t usually write about transportation policy in this blog, in part because the topic can swallow up everything else. But today is an exception. Near...
?Hometown week? ? and the tentative success of diversity ?.
Posted on July 07, 2009I?m spending July in my old hometown of Silver Spring, Md., which in my humble opinion is a rich locale for examining topics of land use law. Accordingly, I introduce ?hometown week.? Silver Spring is a large suburb in Montgomery...
Floodplains and FEMA ? and parentalism in Washington State ?
Posted on July 01, 2009In this year of federal government intervention throughout the economy (do we really need standards for light bulbs when we have a cap-and-trade system coming, which would allow for the expression of preferences in carbon emissions?), it is no surprise...
Clash of history and density ?
Posted on June 29, 2009It?s common to think of community-oriented land use laws ? historic preservation, smart growth, pedestrian-friendly design ? as being complementing pieces of a whole. But this is not always the case: sometimes one goal clashes sharply with another. Let?s continue...
Bright line or discretion in land use law?
Posted on June 25, 2009The heat of summer draws the mind to the coolness of the Pacific Northwest. But there is a story in the Portland Oregonian that highlights interesting questions about the difficult choices between bright-line rules and discretion in land use law....
?Exacting? a riverfront greenway in Philadelphia? ?
Posted on June 24, 2009The city of Philadelphia, one of the nation?s oldest, used to have a reputation for being somewhat staid. And this traditional conservatism has been reflected in its land use law. Until recently, Philadelphia followed an unwritten and very old-world-style policy...
Pace Environmental Law Review is now peer-reviewed and seeking articles ?
Posted on June 23, 2009Continuing with the environmental theme this week, the Pace Environmental Law Review has asked me to pass along the announcement below. As we learn, for example. how suburban lawns affect water quality, how housing density affects air quality, and how...
International perspective: land use law and property in the Amazon
Posted on June 22, 2009When I was kid in the 1970s, I thought that if I really wanted to get out of going to school, I could head for the Brazilian Amazon, which on my atlas seemed like an endless expanse of impenetrable rainforest....
Striking at the conformity of domestic requirements ?
Posted on June 18, 2009?Conformity? is a failing of land use that I often attempt to skewer. But as the United States becomes more diverse in myriad ways, and the benefits of diversity become more widely know, governments are slowly breaking down some of...
Who ?pays? for land use lawsuit judgments against a town?
Posted on June 17, 2009One of the benefits of a system of litigation that allows for the award of punitive and other open-ended ?damages? is that the litigation may force the defendant to ?internalize? the full costs of its actions. A negligent driver not...
When efforts to curb sprawl backfire ?
Posted on June 16, 2009Ask an economist what happens if you regulate by law the supply of a good, and the economist will tell you that, not only will the price of that good rise, but that people will seek out alternatives that are...
What ? Not every city protects it history??
Posted on June 11, 2009Tomorrow the climactic game of the National Hockey League season will be played at Joe Louis Arena in ?Hockeytown,? Detroit, Mich., where thousands of rabid fans will pack the downtown riverfront arena. The sight (more crowded for games than those...
Protection for nude dancing, deep in the heart of Texas ?
Posted on June 09, 2009Whenever I mention to students that some courts have held that ?nude dancing? businesses receive some first amendment protection, I get back snickers and looks of disbelief. I then quickly add that not everyone agrees with this conclusion. Last Friday,...
Who needs the city council?
Posted on June 08, 2009What?s the role of the local legislature in the creation of land use laws? The history of the past 100 years has been one of a general accretion of power and authority away from city, town, and county councils, and...
If you love land use and politics ?
Posted on June 04, 2009Scenes from a nation with greater political control over land use: A Chicago alderman was indicted last week for allegedly taking bribes in order to push a major zoning change, while members of Congress yesterday chastised the auto company executives...
Growth control? Don?t you know that there?s a recession on? ?
Posted on June 03, 2009Florida Governor Crist signed this week a controversial new law that makes it easier to build new development in the sunshine state. Here?s a nearly final version. Much criticized by environmentalists, the bill was signed into law with little ceremony...
No minimum lot size exception for you! ?.
Posted on May 28, 2009A developer sues and get the right to subdivide into smaller lots than otherwise permitted under local zoning rules, through a state statute designed to build more affordable housing. Can a purchaser from the developer take advantage of this special....
Decline of the yard and rise of the rowhouse ?
Posted on May 26, 2009For most of a century, the detached home has been the American ideal, and land use laws were crafted to match, foster, and nurture this ideal. But cracks are starting to form. Today, I don't focus on the usual suspects...
Too many businesses ? of your kind, that is ?
Posted on May 20, 2009The fundamental purpose of the ?variance? in land use law is to provide an outlet when the zoning does not make sense for a particular parcel. Zoning is inherently a blunt instrument, and simply drawing zones on a map may...
A ?sign? of the times ?
Posted on May 19, 2009One can either frown, chuckle, or ignore the story of the efforts of Reading, Ohio (north of Cincinnati), to regulate the placement of a busty mannequin as an attraction outside a barbecue restaurant. (After asserting that the mannequin was an...
The limits of the appeal of the car-free community ?
Posted on May 18, 2009Can American communities exist without cars? The New York Times published last week a ?running commentary? on whether American towns can be successful that ban cars, or at least relegate them to outskirts. As assessed by expert contributors and hoi...
A new chapter of the American Dream in Orange County, California ?
Posted on May 12, 2009For people like me who grew up in 1960s & 70s, Orange County, Cal., and its city of Anaheim seemed like the quintessential white-bread America: Disneyland, outdoor sports, and a sunny sea of suburban houses inhabited by conservative whites, many...
Another perspective on whether cars are loosening their grip ?
Posted on May 08, 2009Are Americans forsaking their cars ? at least to some extent? I?ve had a number of posts on this over the past year or so. Here?s an interesting perspective from super statistician Nate Silver, in Esquire, who reports on his...
The land use (and other) costs of our non-urban university system ?
Posted on May 06, 2009Commentaries are filled these days with stories about the crunch on college students, whose savings (or parents? savings) have diminished, while college fees continue to rise, especially at state schools, whose own parent governments typically are desperate to raise more...
Walmart wars (no hyphen any more), an update ?
Posted on May 04, 2009It?s become a cliché that the most notable American business that is doing well in the recession is the biggest one of all, which also happens to be the haven of the penny-pinched American: Walmart (and here?s a note to...
The fall (literally?) of certain American city neighborhoods ?
Posted on April 29, 2009Cities rise and fall. Famous places such as ancient Jericho, Chang-an, and even Rome declined and nearly disappeared, and their abandoned buildings were torn down, as the cities? economic or political reasons for being dissolved. There has been a lot...
Pedestrian malls, cities, and shoppers ?
Posted on April 21, 2009Whither the pedestrian mall? I considered the paradox of the foot-only shopping thoroughfare as I visited the fairy unsuccessful example of Franklin Street, once upon a time the prime shopping street (here?s an old photo), of downtown Tampa, Florida. Why...
Density debates in Oakland, the Brooklyn of the West ?
Posted on April 17, 2009Few places in the nation crystallize modern America as well as Oakland, California. One of the most diverse cities in the country ? diverse both in range of wealth as well as in race ? Oakland stretches from fantastic million-dollar...
Public transportation, in the heart of the Sunbelt ?
Posted on April 16, 2009I went to Ft. Worth, Texas, this week and decided, as I often do on travel, to check out the public transportation, both for the adventure of it and to assess the nation?s commitment, or lack thereof, to alternatives to...
Bacchus versus Stoic, on the beach in Florida ?
Posted on April 13, 2009Among the contradictions of the American psyche that worm their way into land use law is the combination of, on one hand, an acceptance of even wild-eyed ?individual expression? with, on the other, a puritan regulation of alcohol use. This...
Jobs, like people, sprawled over the past decade ?
Posted on April 09, 2009Okay, we?re in the middle of a recession in which nothing is being built, exurbs are hemorrhaging foreclosures, and we?re still shook up from last year?s spike in gasoline prices. Does this truly signal the ?end of sprawl,? as so...
Will this be a landmark? How might I know?
Posted on April 07, 2009Imagine that you?re on the landmark commission of a big city with a lot of architectural history ? say, Chicago. What would you prefer as criteria for designating landmarks or landmark districts? You?d like a lot of flexibility, of course,...
Preserving a pawn shop, in the heart of affluent America ?
Posted on April 02, 2009When is a LULU (locally unwanted land use) no longer a LULU? Perhaps when it becomes a comfortable part of the community. Perhaps when exclusionary land use laws squeeze out an established business. And perhaps when economic times call for...
Helping the homeless with housing first ..
Posted on April 01, 2009Which should come first in responding to homeless persons with alcohol or drug addictions: cleaning them up or getting them into permanent housing? Much of traditional thinking has been that addressing the personal problems needs to come first. But a...
Summertime is coming ? and the book is about Euclid ?
Posted on March 30, 2009This is the time of year to start making one?s summer reading list. At the top of my list is a new book by Professor Michael Allan Wolf, ?The Zoning of America: Euclid v. Ambler.? In the epochal Euclid case...
Wilderness or renewable energy? ?
Posted on March 25, 2009The federal Wilderness Act, enacted back in the optimistic year of 1964, defines such areas as federal land ?where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.?...
Demolishing America ?
Posted on March 24, 2009Whither goes the law of construction in a country where little is being built? Perhaps it moves to the law of demolition. Here are two interesting stories about the very literal disappearance of old industrial America: the disassembly of the...
The future of urban land use ? courtesy of a more diverse America? ?
Posted on March 19, 2009How will the increasing ethnic diversity of America affect land use law? One way that immigration is bound to change the law is that people from other nations will bring different perceptions of what makes a pleasant community. The San...
A history of the making of the ghetto ?
Posted on March 18, 2009What causes racial segregation and ?ghettos?? Behavioral economists point out that if most people prefer not to be a racial minority in their neighborhood, rather extreme segregation may occur by private sorting. Sociologists point to the isolation that ghettos engender,...
The rise of tent cities ?
Posted on March 12, 2009In another depressing parallel to the 1930s, there are more stories about tent cities ?- the synthetic age?s equivalent of Hoovervilles or shantytowns ?- popping up in the news. One of the most striking stories is from Sacramento ?- the...
What do homeowners want?
Posted on March 10, 2009What do property owners want from their local land use laws? I read this week a good student paper on zoning, in which the student cited many economic analyses that stated, with only slight generalization, that what homeowners want from...
Supply and demand, and revisiting the land use law causes of the housing bubble ?
Posted on March 05, 2009The future of cities is ... well ? ahead of us ?
Posted on February 26, 2009It?s an old joke that making predictions is difficult, especially about the future. In response to posts earlier this week, Catherine LaCroix at Case Western Reserve directs us to a website (with references to a report and book) about the...
Whither environmental land use laws in a depressed land? ?
Posted on February 24, 2009How will the economic depression (I?m not the first to say it) affect environmental land use polices? For some large-scale issues, such as suburban sprawl and natural resource degradation, the slump will diminish the harms and make conservationist land use...
The future of our cities .. and two perspectives ?
Posted on February 20, 2009How will land use and law change in our collapsed economy? In March's Atlantic Monthly, commentators Richard Florida and Sandra Tsing Loh offer opinions - and, provocatively, offer far different conclusions. Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class,"...
If you could live where you wanted ?
Posted on February 17, 2009This week I?ll write about the growing number of assertions that the collapse of the housing boom and the American economy spells the end of sprawl and the revival of the dense city ?- an assertion that runs counter to...
Seaside, age, and Kunstler ?
Posted on February 13, 2009Whenever I show my students pictures of Seaside ?- the famous New Urbanist community in the Florida panhandle ?- I invariably get titters and comments from students that it looks ?creepy.? Why is this? Is it because they remember it...
Happy and sad endings for historic theatres ?
Posted on February 11, 2009One of the biggest drawbacks to historic preservation is when the building or area doesn?t fit modern economic needs. It?s all well and good to say ?adaptive reuse,? but sometimes it?s difficult to find a successful adaptation. Some of the...
Redesigning the suburbs?
Posted on February 05, 2009In an entry in the New York Times this week, design writer Allison Arieff wrote for the second time on the topic of ?saving the suburbs.? The first entry raised questions of what to do with new McMansion developments that...
Enlightenment isn?t so easy, when though land use choices must be made ?
Posted on February 02, 2009It?s one thing simply to advocate for greater density and more public transportation; it?s another thing to make the tough policy choices that these land uses entail. I noticed that commentators Peter Katz and Walljasper annointed my old home county....
A scene from the quiet expansion of impact fees ?
Posted on January 29, 2009While news reporters tell us that the public is putting environmental concerns on the back burner during our current financial recession, this lack of national attention doesn?t mean that environmental steps in land use law are not moving forward ?-....
Time for leadership, not honoring ?
Posted on January 26, 2009President Obama has promised as his one of his first major actions to approve the funneling of federal money to local infrastructure projects and other economically stimulating land use projects. But the latest word from Congress is that proposed bills...
Inaugurations, crowds, and the problems of bus transportation ?
Posted on January 23, 2009As the world watched the presidential inauguration this week, and the world?s first impression of the new regime was the Chief Justice?s botching of the oath of office and a part-fake classical music performance (reportedly, the music heard was prerecorded),...
Where will the planes land? ?
Posted on January 09, 2009What?s the biggest and most potentially controversial public land use in metro areas? Airports, of course. They are essential to a city, need to be fairly close to downtowns, but use enormous tracts of land and are not welcome neighbors....
Senses, surf, and seals in San Diego ?
Posted on January 08, 2009In San Diego for the first time in more than a decade this week, I find that the city?s once-proud main street, Broadway, still holds more homeless people pr block than almost any place in the nation, that the downtown...
Holidays v. law? ?
Posted on December 31, 2008To end the year, two vignettes about clashes between private ?holiday? displays and the strictures of land use law. First, in Anchorage, Alaska, the city has for a number of winters battled a large snowman on property. Although it received...
Not much hope for homeowners so far ?
Posted on December 18, 2008What?s as difficult to find as a new private housing development? Perhaps it?s a successful large-scale government program to help Americans in difficult housing financial condition. After the disappointment of the effort to help New Orleanians find ?the road home?...
Here comes the money ? but where is it going? ?
Posted on December 10, 2008Some of the first things to go in a time of economic recession are grand ideas of public policy. But David Brooks ?- sometimes dismissed as merely ?the conservative? columnist for the New York Times ?- laments this week that...
A clash of laws ? and another victory for local control of cell phone towers ?
Posted on December 03, 2008Few land use topics involve a clash of federal and local law as much as cell phone towers. The issue creates a social conundrum: everyone loves cell phones, but everyone hates the ugly towers. Federal law, pushed by the economics...
From Thanksgiving to ? Hollywood of the East? ?
Posted on November 25, 2008Should you give a rich person money, in the hopes that he or she will then reward you with an even larger gift? It sounds risky. But many American localities are in effect taking this step by adopting favorable land...
Housing the hurricane homeless, and the barrier of local land use law ?
Posted on November 19, 2008In this year of big government solutions, one would think America would welcome the federal government?s assistance to those made homeless by hurricanes. After all, one of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina a few years ago is that one government...
The third rush hour ... ending talk of the end of sprawl? ?
Posted on November 13, 2008Just a few months ago, with gasoline over $4 a gallon, chatter was full of talk of the ?end of sprawl? with a rush to small cars and avoiding driving. Land use law needed to adapt to a dense new...
The brave new world of billboards ?
Posted on November 10, 2008If law can tell a homeowner that she can?t have a three-story house, or that her backyard shed is too big, or that she can?t paint her house pink, way can?t law restrict electronic billboards? In Los Angeles, where many...
The time for buying up land for the public?
Posted on November 06, 2008What benefits to land use policy arise by virtue of the housing price slump? One answer is that governments and private organizations may be more able to buy the ownership of, or at least the development rights to, environmentally important...
The changing hues of suburbs and city ?
Posted on November 04, 2008If there were any doubt that the old model of a poor and diverse central city surrounded by affluent white suburbs is now thoroughly outmoded, here?s a fascinating story from the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, which have been some...
Public-private partnerships and low-cost housing ?
Posted on October 29, 2008While the market for private housing loans for low-income people is pinched, the federal government, having started its financial support for banks, is pushed to help other types of firms. With this shakiness in the private markets, therefore, the times...
Mastering New Orleans? ?
Posted on October 28, 2008Many American legal systems require that zoning regulations and decisions be ?in accord with a comprehensive plan,? as stated in the Standard Zoning Enabling Act. This principle is often given merely lip service in practice, however. When it comes to...
Should governments worry about a return of redlining? ?
Posted on October 24, 2008Should law refocus its attention on the practice of ?redlining? ?- the practice of avoiding mortgage lending and other services because of race or location? Some conservative chatter asserts that the housing and financial mess was generated in large part...
A few cattle and a tax break ?
Posted on October 21, 2008The recent fiancial disasters have made dubious many arguments about ?trusting? the free market to made good choices for the nation. But when government makes these choices, there is no guarantee that it will do better. Government too may be...
If we don?t help them park ? will they not come with their cars? ?
Posted on October 16, 2008If you want to discourage something, making it more difficult will have some effect. But what if the effort to discourage results more in exasperation than in affecting long-term behavior? The dilemma that faces any parent trying to figure out...
The revival of an old Main Street ? with a new mission ?
Posted on October 14, 2008I got away from bad news this weekend with a trip to the sunny Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where I discovered this fascinating and informative local land use story (well, I do tend to look for these) about Stephens City,...
Which history? Location or building? ... in Gettysburg ?
Posted on October 09, 2008Here?s a fascinating story that, blissfully, has nothing to do with housing. Which is more important: preservation of an historic location, or preservation of an historic building? According to the National Park Service, in Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania,...
Are we bailing out foreclosures? ?
Posted on October 07, 2008Local governments and American citizens hope expectantly that the financial bailout plan may do something to stem the tide of foreclosures that runs like toxic waste through many American localities, especially in low-income areas. (And by the way, did anyone...
Social segregation ? in schools and crime ?
Posted on September 30, 2008Yesterday I argued for a assigning some blame to social segregation in the mortgage-backed financial crisis. Today, I relate two other stories from the American scene that highlight the role of social segregation, which is often fostered by our exclusive...
Social segregation and the financial crisis ?
Posted on September 29, 2008How could it be that some unwise mortgage loans made during a time of national prosperity threaten a collapse of the American financial system? There is, of course, plenty of blame to go around. But today I want to highlight...
Why not a landmark? Yankee Stadium and elsewhere ?
Posted on September 22, 2008In many American cities, any famous and historic building that was more than 80 years ago, even if it had been remodeled thirty years ago, wouldn?t be torn down. Why? Because it would be designated an historic landmark, even if...
Of billboards and beautification ?.
Posted on September 19, 2008In a week in which the lines between private business and the government became blurrier than ever, it?s worth thinking about the line between land boundaries. Although we often think of property boundaries as being absolute, we know that one...
Land use law and the Gulf of Mexico, today and tomorrow ?
Posted on September 16, 2008?Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.? Many beachfront communities along the Gulf of Mexico have in the past few years experienced hurricane devastation that is all-too predictable, based on the history of colossal storms...
Lessons from the memorial process ?
Posted on September 11, 2008A depressing repetition each September 11 is a story about how the slow progress, or lack of progress, of the rebuilding at the former World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Here?s a story from NPR today, along with companion stories...
Making future fannies and freddies think twice ?
Posted on September 08, 2008The federal government?s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may do some short-term good in ?reassuring financial markets,? we are told, with the result that housing credit may be loosened somewhat, meaning that fewer Americans will lose their homes...
The roller coaster of preservation laws ?
Posted on September 04, 2008Should government pay special attention to the effect of land use laws on distinctive private land uses? Should government act affirmatively to try to preserve these distinctive land uses? Today brings a sad announcement: The operator of Astroland, the unique...
While Gustav misses, the rebuilding from Katrina remains off target ?
Posted on September 02, 2008While we can be very thankful that hurricane Gustav did not batter Louisiana and Mississippi nearly as badly as Katrina did three years ago, the anniversary also brought some assessment of the government land use projects that were adopted after...
Tacos 1, L.A. County 0, but the game isn?t over ?
Posted on August 28, 2008In the latest development in the growing field of mobile-food vending land use law, a Los Angeles county judge struck down yesterday a county ordinance (applicable outside the city of Los Angeles) that made it a crime to park a...
Sprucing up foreclosure lanes ?
Posted on August 26, 2008While Congress is busy mortgaging the nation?s financial future to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, local governments are busy with more urgent efforts to ameliorate the social harms of abandoned and foreclosed homes, especially those concentrated in low-income neighborhoods...
Which kind of downtown should government offer?
Posted on August 25, 2008What sort of walkable ?downtown? do Americans like? The answer may inform what types of projects that governments foster and approve, in an area when vitalization of the city is the mantra of urban land use law. Here?s an anecdote...
Is there still growth in the exurbs?
Posted on August 21, 2008Will high gas prices and tight credit stifle the exurbs? Many stories so assert, of course. But this may not be the complete picture. NPR today ran a nice segment (including some quotes from Penn?s urban commentator Witold Rybczynski) about...
A tale of two regions ? in land-use restricted California ?
Posted on August 20, 2008A California vacation last week got me thinking about ? well, land use law, of course. Urbanists argue that legal restrictions on sprawl would foster development in the central city and encourage a high-density, walkable sense of community, in contrast...
Unhappy homeless news ? and a debate in Philadelphia ?
Posted on August 07, 2008Last week I wrote about good news in the effort to assist the chronically homeless in finding stable and fairly permanent housing. This week comes less sanguine news ?- a controversy in Philadelphia over homeless people in downtown Rittenhouse Square...
Replacing smokestacks with cooling towers? ?
Posted on August 05, 2008What?s the most extreme locally unwanted land use (LULU) that generates the NIMBY response? Is it a half-way house? An oil refinery? Or, as I tell my students when we read the infamous Supreme Court decision in Village of Belle...
Urban residence revival ? even in the OKC ?
Posted on August 01, 2008In a former job, I got to see a detailed wide-area aerial photo of downtown Oklahoma City, not long after the 1995 bombing. It was an eye-opening sight. Like many American cities, about half of the land use in downtown...
Good results from the ?housing first? approach to homelessness ?
Posted on July 31, 2008Surprisingly news from HUD this week is that the number of chronically homeless people fell dramatically from 2005 to 2007, according to the agency. Analysts attribute the success largely to a policy of ?housing first,? which focuses on getting homeless...
Socks and the city ... and groceries in the Tenderloin ?
Posted on July 29, 2008I often suggest to my students that the success of re-urbanization depends on the ?white sock? test. How far does a central city dweller have to travel to buy a pair of plain white socks? (And no, one sock doesn?t...
If we still drive to lunch, will we accept land use changes?
Posted on July 25, 2008The mainstream news is filled with stories and anecdotes about how Americans, to pay for gas, are doing things such as giving up steak and trying to trade in their SUVs for Priuses. But the big land use policy question...
Birds of a feather ? buy houses together? ?
Posted on July 22, 2008In the 1950s, economist Charles Tiebout argued that people can choose where to live based on government. Citizens can choose, for example, whether to live a town that is noted for good schools, on one hand, or low taxes, on...
Transit and satire ?
Posted on July 18, 2008Satire is notoriously difficult, and attempts at it often leave me cold. But I picked up an ?environmental? issue of the satirical newspaper the Onion recently and laughed out loud at a ?news? story about public transportation, which neatly and...
A toilet tale .. and its meaning ?
Posted on July 17, 2008Here?s a story that crystallizes the challenges of American urban public land use policy: Seattle is junking its public toilet system. Four years ago, the high-tech-savvy city ballyhooed the introduction of the sleek and expensive potties that gave aural instructions...
Too many TDRs?
Posted on July 16, 2008High agricultural prices have encouraged many farmers to plant on land that has been left unplowed in recent years, often because of government subsidies or incentives to leave wetlands and other lands undisturbed. What should government do to keep land...
The battles of booze and land use law ?
Posted on July 14, 2008Since at least 1856, in which a New York court held in Wynehamer v. People that liquor restrictions can violate the right to property, public efforts to suppress alcohol consumption have often clashed with assertions of land use rights. And...
The Rockies and the never-ending federal-private squabbles ?
Posted on July 10, 2008The sweltering days of July send the mind toward the cool altitudes of the Rocky Mountains. With this mind, I recently picked up at second-hand store a copy of Frank Clifford?s ?Backbone of the World,? in which the author travels...
The foreclosure crisis: local government to the rescue?
Posted on July 02, 2008Okay, here?s your challenge, local government: You?ve got an explosion in home foreclosures, which pushes thousands out of their homes, pulls down neighborhood values even further, encourages crime, and shrinks government tax coffers. And for years, you?ve fretted about the...
A depressing story about social integration ? and crime ?
Posted on July 01, 2008In this space and elsewhere, I have written about the success and promise of better-low cost housing and better social understanding offered by the federal ?section 8? voucher program and other efforts to integrate recipients of housing assistance within a...
Infill in a venerable old city ?
Posted on June 26, 2008Infill in a western city might mean building a garden apartment complex on land formerly used as a parking lot of the edge of downtown; infill in an established suburb might mean construction of three-story houses in a neighborhood of...
Infill and neighborhood control, in Tulsa and elsewhere ?
Posted on June 25, 2008One of the dilemmas of infill ?- allowing new construction in an already developed area ?- is that it often upsets the expectations of landowners and residents concerning the land use and density of the community. Whether it is allowing...
Infill week ?
Posted on June 23, 2008Infill! One can?t tune into the domestic policy debate this year without encountering assertions that we are experiencing a sea change in the nation?s metropolitan land use: the end of cheap oil, the end of rapid sprawl, and even the...
The LULU of offshore drilling ...
Posted on June 20, 2008One more post about federal land law use before a return to local law next week. The big domestic news this week was President Bush?s call for lifting the moratoria on drilling for oil off American shores (okay, it?s not...
What to do when the water rises? ?
Posted on June 17, 2008Just as we Floridians begin to worry about the approach of another hurricane season, overflowing rivers in and around Iowa remind us that far more people are harmed by interior fresh water than by salt water. Both types of flooding...
Some surprising data about the biggest culprits in land use and greenhouse gas emissions ?
Posted on June 12, 2008So, it?s finally time for land use policies to take account of global climate change and carbon footprints, right? Sure. But what types of consumer activities contribute most to the dilemma of too much carbon in the atmosphere? Often, policy...
The housing bust and the role of the government ?
Posted on June 10, 2008Here?s a shocker: The Washington Post reports today that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase subprime-mortgage-backed securities early in the decade. This encouraged risky loans that are now often resulting...
Bucking the anti-oil land use trend, in South Dakota ?
Posted on June 04, 2008With much of the domestic politics in the nation addressing plans for a future with less oil (such as the big climate change bill now pending before Congress) and efforts to develop energy from sources other fossil fuels, energy companies...
Land use and the maybe-navigable L.A. River ?
Posted on June 03, 2008The federal Clean Water Act has long served as a thorn in the side of land developers, in large part because construction work that dumps soil or fills in a stream or wetland can be considered a form of water...
An oily change to federal land use policy? ?
Posted on May 29, 2008My question about the upcoming presidential election is whether gasoline prices will be a major issue of the campaign ? or whether it be the only major issue of the campaign. What does this have to do with land use...
Today, granny flats; tomorrow ??
Posted on May 28, 2008Where do Americans go when their houses are foreclosed? The enormous downward movement in housing demand is likely to increase the pressure on local governments to allow more non-traditional forms of housing units, such as ?granny flats? and other accessory...
Libertarianism and land use law ...
Posted on May 23, 2008The Libertarian Party is holding its presidential convention this weekend in Denver. This year, some expect that the libertarian message of ?get government off our backs? might appeal to a large enough number of conservatives to affect the election. In...
Cutting out cul-de-sacs?
Posted on May 22, 2008Suburban sprawl usually conjures up images of massive exurbs outside a big (or formerly big) city. But even smaller American cities have experienced residents leaving the central town for planned subdivisions with big houses, winding streets, and ?choke? points at...
LULUs, natural gas, and local versus national needs ?
Posted on May 21, 2008How is a liquefied natural gas terminal like a low-cost housing project? Both are LULUs -? locally unwanted land uses. But both are also necessary for the wider community ?- the metro area (at least) in the case of the...
Hot times for American farmers ?
Posted on May 15, 2008The temperature in Sacramento is supposed to reach 103 degrees today, but even the early arrival of summer won?t stop the enormous farm production of California?s central valley, which is one of the greatest efforts of land use in human...
Give me liberty and give me clothespins! The right to dry?
Posted on May 14, 2008Alongside the right to free speech and the right to exercise one?s religion, should law establish the ?right to dry?? Environmentalists and libertarian activists are taking aim at community rules, covenants, and land use laws that prohibit the drying of...
Green lights for brownfields development?
Posted on May 12, 2008Among the many hurdles to revitalizing the central city is the problem of brownfields. Sites that used to hold industry or commerce may be contaminated with hazardous materials, which both makes development unattractive and may impose tremendous environmental cleanup costs...
Will billboards destroy Vermont?
Posted on May 08, 2008A handful of states, including Vermont, have long banned the placement of billboards along the state?s roads. But in an effort to protect a cute painted barn mural with a 1940s-looking car on it that says, ?See Bellows Falls, Vermont?...
Big plans in Las Vegas ? with a twist ?
Posted on May 06, 2008"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.? The famous dare of century-ago century Chicago architect Daniel Burnham proved to be a daunting challenge in the last century for American cities. Big projects such as the...
Left and libertarians and big bad boxes ?
Posted on May 01, 2008What?s an article from the libertarian ?Reason? magazine doing reprinted in ?Utne Reader,? an alt-left reader with a picture of Barack Obama on the cover this month? The reason is an essay by Michael C. Moynihan arguing that land use...
The food crisis and the changing land uses of rural America ?
Posted on April 30, 2008What?s happening to food and how has law contributed to the shock? The Washington Post printed a readable primer on the complex topic this week; the report today concerns the massive increase in corn farming over the past few years,...
Of history, Hitler, hofs, and hip hop ?
Posted on April 28, 2008It's settled law that demolition or alteration of buildings can be restricted by law simply because something historic happened there. But can, and should, historic preservation laws extend to restricting the "use" of a building, when no significant change to...
Density?s growing pains: Will zoning finally come to Houston?
Posted on April 23, 2008Who needs zoning in a metro area that has been an exemplar of sprawl, and where land uses have been separated well by covenants and culture? These are some of the reasons why Houston has resisted thorough zoning and land...
Density?s growing pains: Homestead ? and homesteading the central city ?
Posted on April 21, 2008Is the idea of density really causing significant changes in land use law and practice in the United States? One example of a possible missed opportunity has been the rapid development of Homestead, Florida, south of Miami. As much as...
Density?s growing pains: Mixed-use in Dallas ?
Posted on April 16, 2008Will Americans accept living above stores? A generation ago, the answer probably would have been a resounding ?No!? in a nation suckled on the notion of separation of commerce and residences. A few optimists might have offered: But what about...
Density?s growing pains: Los Angeles ?
Posted on April 15, 2008?Density? captures the essence of most plans to foster ?smarter? growth and change the American tradition of sprawling land use law. But the seemingly simple idea of allowing ?- or maybe even encouraging ?- denser development often runs into opposition...
Too much affordable housing?
Posted on April 14, 2008Can a town have too much affordable housing? May local governments think so, as they try to avoid the presumed tax and other unwelcome consequences of allowing low-income residents into their jurisdiction. So it was in Canton, Mass., an affluent...
More land put to the plow ... and more problems ?
Posted on April 09, 2008With the dollar plummeting and the reputation of the United States at a low point throughout much of the world, in which ways is the United States still the leader in the world economy? One way is our agriculture ?-...
Even if you can't get a burger there anymore, you can get a landmark ?
Posted on March 31, 2008Can a boarded-up Denny's restaurant be considered a landmark? Yes, according to the Seattle Landmarks Board, which recently designated such a building in the Ballard section of the city. The decision was made in part because of the once-futuristic "googie"...
Whose homeless are these, anyway? ?
Posted on March 28, 2008Like many cities that feel overburdened with homeless people, the city of Ontario, Cal., has decided to take steps against those who it does not believe are its responsibility. Earlier this week, the Ontario police entered a "tent city" and...
The curious case of smoking at the Curious Theater ?
Posted on March 26, 2008The play tempOdysssey, which has received many favorable reviews, involves a character who dies because of smoking. The plot calls for smoking on stage. Can government uses its powers of land use law to ban such smoking indoors, even in...
Does lawful land use depend upon the popularity of music?
Posted on March 24, 2008If my memory is correct, an English defendant represented by the fictional Rumpole of the Bailey back in the ?60s testified that he could not have committed the crime because he was seeing the Rolling Stones with a mate at...
Changes in Harlem ?
Posted on March 19, 2008Meanwhile, about 1300 miles up Route 1 from Key West, Manhattan?s Harlem is coming to grips with a variant of a change in ?character.? The famous African American section, which has had its ups and downs over the years, is...
Render unto tourists ?
Posted on March 18, 2008Historic places that have turned into tourist towns inevitably face the dilemma of trying to preserve charm while at the same time facilitating the modern amenities desired by the lumpen tourist. Such a challenge is facing Key West, Florida, which...
The end of the auto culture? ? and a time for glee?
Posted on March 17, 2008Last week I wrote about the creep of auto-based residential land use into Europe. This week I give time to the opposite viewpoint ?- in particular, to one of the latest manifestos of James Howard Kunstler, Scourge of the Suburbs....
European land use -? old and new ...
Posted on March 13, 2008When one hasn?t visited a more traditional town in Europe for a while, the distinctions in land use seem remarkable. I was in the beautiful city of Granada, Spain, last week, where I was struck both by the increasing homogeneity...
Why the housing roller-coaster? Easy credit or tough laws, or both?
Posted on March 10, 2008Are restrictive land use laws the real culprit in the housing bubble dilemma? Yes, according to Randall O?Toole of the libertarian-minded Cato Institute. He argues that laws inflated the price of housing ?- mostly by restricting the supply ?- which...
Who?s responsible for this abandoned house?
Posted on March 04, 2008The distressing boom in foreclosures is imposing costs on local governments, which find that many houses are abandoned, especially in poorer neighborhoods, both serving as annoyances to neighbors and attracting vandalism and crime. Some cities are resorting to demanding that...
Why aren?t you walking and shopping in our newly designed downtown?
Posted on March 03, 2008A goal of many land use laws for the central city is to make our cities look like they did before 1950 ? or like many European cities still do ?- a mixture of commerce and residences, few parking lots,...
A donkey in the wrong place ...
Posted on February 28, 2008The most remarkable thing about nuisance law is its flexibility -? conduct that might be perfectly reasonable in a rural area isn?t acceptable when the area becomes more crowded. NPR ran a story today about ? no, not a pig...
No new mobile homes, please ?
Posted on February 26, 2008What?s less popular with suburban neighbors than a small mobile home? Why, a large mobile home, of course! In an interesting decision handed down today, a Connecticut court held that old mobile homes in a nonconforming mobile home park could...
The ascent of single-family suburban slums?
Posted on February 22, 2008I often write skeptically about the long-predicted demise of the suburbs and the return of urban living. But some interesting counter-arguments are made by Christopher B. Leinberger, of Brookings and the University of Michigan, in the March issue of the...
Preserving culture on the Sea Islands?
Posted on February 20, 2008Can land use law succeed in preserving a local culture, in the face of changing economics? We often hear about fears of ?gentrification? in urban neighborhoods, but one of the most interesting stores comes from the rural coast of South...
It?s not a car, it?s not a pedestrian, it?s a ?
Posted on February 15, 2008One striking modern American invention is our reliance on the automobile for tasks undreamt of even a generation ago. In much of America, including outer St. Petersburg, Florida, where I travelled today, there is now a mini rush-hour from noon...
Looking for the future ?
Posted on February 13, 2008Once upon a time, innovations in land use came from the United States?the skyscraper, the shopping mall, zoning, the drive-through burger joint. But as United States land use law has discouraged innovation, other countries have taken up the challenge...
Parking, transit, and a public purpose ?
Posted on February 11, 2008The flurry of post-Kelo state legislation designed to limit eminent domain caused some observers to predict that local governments would be hampered in their ability to engage in useful public projects. Just such an example arguably is playing out in...
Sprawl: the ogre that wouldn't die ?
Posted on February 08, 2008Sprawl is slowing down, right? This has been the prediction for quite some time. But here is a Census-derived map that appears to paint a different tale. The map of county population growth over the first six years of the...
Affordable housing ?- from direct set-asides to indirect ?
Posted on February 07, 2008Land use law is unique because land is unique. Because location is so important, real estate can?t always be easily replaced by trying to buy it in the market. This is a reason that ?set-asides? are such a powerful tool...
The plateau of decisions ?
Posted on February 06, 2008How should land use law balance environmental concerns with essential economic needs? I remember the argument, back in the 1970s, that we should replace much of our unreliable foreign sources of oil with good ol? American coal. Today, we?d reject...
The right to live as one desires?
Posted on February 05, 2008How far can or should government go in regulating the details of residential land use? When does a regulation infringe on a resident?s ?rights?? I saw on TV this weekend a segment about the ongoing battle in Coral Gables, Fla.,...
An ?impact fee? for foreclosures?
Posted on January 31, 2008Communities across the nation are wincing at the boom in foreclosures. In my state of Florida, about two percent of all households encountered some form of foreclosure last year. The problem hits hardest in low-income areas, of course, where many...
A suburb forges ahead with its housing ban plan ?
Posted on January 29, 2008Competition encourages localities to use land use laws to foster social goals and to push away undesirable uses ? and people. In the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, the city is persistent in efforts to make it both illegal and...
Unchain my dog?
Posted on January 28, 2008If you walk around a suburban neighborhood or pass through a public park on a lovely Saturday afternoon, you recognize that Americans have become a nation of people who eschew being outside simply for the pleasure of it. Unless we...
Panhandlers and a struggling downtown ?
Posted on January 22, 2008I noticed yesterday on the window of a downtown restaurant at an MLK Day parade in St. Petersburg, Fla., a reprint of a flyer from the Nashville Downtown Partnership, encouraging people to say ?no? to panhandlers. Is this simply being...
The lending nuisance?
Posted on January 17, 2008So, foreclosed homes are a blight upon your city, encouraging crime and arson, battering your already stressed community, and causing a further drop in limited tax revenues. What?s a poor city to do? In the case of Cleveland, the city...
When there?s no home in Seattle ?
Posted on January 16, 2008The dilemma of homeless people living in public spaces is one of the most gut-wrenching in all of land use law. On one hand, the argument, ?Where are the homeless supposed to live, if not in public parks?? has no...
Democracy and the making of land use law ?
Posted on January 11, 2008If the presidential election season doesn?t completely make one cynical about the workings of democratic elections, one can consider the significant role of ?democracy? in the making of land use law. For the most part, courts have applauded laws that...
The new power of religion over land use ?
Posted on January 08, 2008Most of land use law is determined by local authorities, of course. But the federal government, which has taken over large areas of environmental and employment law (which used to be reserved mostly to the states), is playing a more...
The past and future in New York ?
Posted on January 07, 2008Before I get to a more serious land use comment, please indulge a little architectural criticism from a complete amateur, just back from New York. As styles of commercial buildings continue to change radically from one generation to the next,...
Remembering a founder of urbanism ...
Posted on January 03, 2008New York's Urban Center (at Madison and 51st), run by the Municipal Arts League, is showing an exhibit about the late critic and activist Jane Jacobs. Although some of her strong opinions have since been questioned by urbanists, the current...
The future of the great metropolis ?
Posted on January 02, 2008The New Year's celebration inevitably brings to mind New York City, where I'm heading this week. So I'll finish the week with some thoughts about America's largest city. Today the Times published some thoughts by New Yorkers about what city...
What fast-food breakfasts tell us about land use law ?
Posted on December 27, 2007[New Suburbia: One of a series about new aspects of the suburban realm.] Critics of the suburbs like to excoriate fast-food joints as the quintessence of soulless, auto-bound, conformist, fattening suburbia. But it is interesting to relate the fate of...
Housing Law as Potter ?
Posted on December 26, 2007Over the Christmas weekend I watched again "It's a Wonderful Life," the great 1947 film about housing and credit (and other things, I suppose). This year, I was struck by a scene early in the film in which the evil...
Dimmer red lights in Amsterdam ?
Posted on December 19, 2007Here's another striking example of land use law being employed as a surrogate for other social values. In Amsterdam, the famous and infamous red light district has long been one of the city's most popular "attractions." In 2000, the Dutch...
Requiring a walk before a drink ?
Posted on December 17, 2007Other nations may now be as automobile-crazy as America has been for decades, but I doubt that any nation can touch the United States for the amount of things that one can do in one's car. Although Americans have largely...
Requiring buildings to take the LEED in being ?cool? ?
Posted on December 13, 2007Because of their voracious gobbling of energy for heating and air conditioning, buildings directly or indirectly account for a large share (estimates range from 30 to 50 percent) of the United States? emission of greenhouse gases. As the American legal...
Planning for a more diverse future with a diversity of housing ?
Posted on December 11, 2007[?New Suburbia?: This is one of a series on the changing aspects of suburbia.] While most reports have emphasized the demand aspects of the home mortgage crisis -? homebuyers of meager means were given the ability by lenders to buy...
Gated communities -- neither boon nor doom?
Posted on December 10, 2007[?New Suburbia?: This is one of a series on the changing aspects of suburbia.] Left-leaning social critics have long disparaged the phenomenon of ?gated communities? as an anti-social reflection of white suburbanites trying to hide from ?the other,? with unsavory...
Fewer Stonewalls, and other losses of the city ?
Posted on December 07, 2007If you wanted to figure out whether a neighborhood was safely hip back in the 1990s, you might have asked whether it held a Starbucks. And if you wanted to know whether a ?dirty? urban neighborhood was being cleaned up,...
The invasion of college students on a slippery rock ?
Posted on December 06, 2007As I tell my students, no category of prospective neighbors shoots fear into the hearts of property owners as much as the prospect of ? college students! In Slippery Rock, Pa., the township?s decision to approve a planned apartment development...
If you build it, will they walk? ?
Posted on December 05, 2007It was certainly no surprise that the metro areas of Washington, Boston, and San Francisco were at the top of a ranking of the most ?walkable? large areas in the nation, according to a detailed new report of the Brookings...
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