This Hornbook introduces the fundamentals of land use planning and control law. Subjects covered include the planning process, zoning, development permission, subdivision control law, and building and housing codes. Discusses constitutional limitations and the environmental aspects of land use controls. Explores aesthetic regulation, historic preservation, and agricultural land protection.
About the Book: Land use climate bubbles are popping up throughout the nation at an alarming rate, creating an economic crisis that will be more damaging than that of the housing bubble of 2008. The costs to ecosystems and low- and moderate-income households are equally severe. These bubbles, where land and building values are declining, provide extensive, objective evidence that climate change is real and must be dealt with on the ground. And it sidelines the ideological battles over the political response and instead requires us to focus on the practical question: what can we do to respond? Climate action seeks to avoid the harm we can't manage and to manage the harm we can't avoid. Local leaders understand the urgency of the crisis and are highly motivated to learn how to prevent and mitigate its consequences. This book describes how the local land use legal system can leverage state and local assistance to reduce per capita carbon emissions as an important and now recognized component of global efforts to manage climate change. The tools and techniques presented in the book are available to the nation's 40,000 local governments, if led by courageous leaders choosing to succeed in this epic battle. About the Author: John R. Nolon is Distinguished Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University where he teaches property, land use, dispute resolution, and sustainable development law courses and is Counsel to the Law School's Land Use Law Center which he founded in 1993. He served as Adjunct Professor of land use law and policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies from 2001-2016.
When you're dealing with any piece of real estate in Massachusetts, you need to Understand The applicable land use regulations and cases. Bobrowski's Handbook of Massachsetts Land Use and Planning Law provides all the insightful analysis and practical, expert advice you need, with detailed coverage of such important issues as: Affordable housing Special permit and variance decisions Zoning in Boston Nonconforming uses and structures Administrative appeal procedures Enforcement requests Building permits Vested rights Agricultural use exemptions Current tests for exactions SLAPP suit procedures Impact fees Civil rights challenges. Helpful tables facilitate convenient case law review, while forms and extensive cross-references add To The book's usefulness.
Comprehensive Plans and the Planning Process; Land Use Control by Zoning: History, Sources of Power and Purposes; Types of Zones and Uses; Types of Zoning Relief: Obtaining or Resisting Development Permission; Exclusionary Zoning; Subdivision Control Law; Building anti Housing Codes; Growth Management; Constitutional Issues; Environmental Aspects of Land Use Controls; Aesthetic Regulation and Historic Preservation; Agricultural Lands Protection and Preservation; Nuisances; Private Land Use Controls; The Power of Eminent Domain.
"This unique book is organized around eight detailed case studies of private land developers, local governments, and public agencies that have worked across jurisdictional and ecological boundaries to effectively address habitat conservation. The book includes two essays by leading conservation biologists who link planning at scale with sound land use decisions." --Book Jacket.
"Zoning has for a century enabled cities to chart their own course. It is a useful and popular institution, enabling homeowners to protect their main investment and provide safe neighborhoods. As home values have soared in recent years, however, this protection has accelerated to the degree that new housing development has become unreasonably difficult and costly. The widespread Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome is driven by voters’ excessive concern about their home values and creates barriers to growth that reach beyond individual communities. The barriers contribute to suburban sprawl, entrench income and racial segregation, retard regional immigration to the most productive cities, add to national wealth inequality, and slow the growth of the American economy. Some state, federal, and judicial interventions to control local zoning have done more harm than good. More effective approaches would moderate voters’ demand for local-land use regulation—by, for example, curtailing federal tax subsidies to owner-occupied housing"--Publisher's description.
This 2007 book surveys the global experience to date in implementing land-use policies that move us further along the sustainable development continuum. The international community has long recognized the need to ensure ongoing and future development is conducted sustainably. While high-level commitments towards sustainable development such as those included in the Rio and Johannesburg Declarations are politically important, they are irrelevant if they are not translated into reality on the ground. This book includes chapters that discuss the challenges of implementing sustainable land-use policies in different regions of the world, revealing problems that are common to all jurisdictions and highlighting others that are unique to particular regions. It also includes chapters documenting new approaches to sustainable land use, such as reforms to property rights regimes and environmental laws. Other chapters offer comparisons of approaches in different jurisdictions that can present insights which might not be apparent from a single-jurisdiction analysis.
Use this compact reference for a condensed study of the subject matter contained in most leading land use casebooks. Text provides coverage of common-law controls, private law devices, planning processes, land development regulation, zoning, and taxation. The last chapter addresses new influencing considerations in land use, such as energy and space.
