Land Use Prof Blog

The Trick-or-Treat Test

Happy Halloween!  If you're out trick-or-treating tonight, think about what planners call the "trick-or-treat test" for your neighborhood.  The idea is that based on design and form, a great neighborhood for trick-or-treating--kids and families walking around the streets, visiting door to door--is also likely to be a great neighborhood year-round. City Planner Brent Toderian writes about this at the Huffington Post in Does Your Neighbourhood Pass the 'Trick or Treat Test'?:

Great neighbourhoods for trick-or-treating also tend to be great neighborhoods for families everyday:

• Tree-lined streets designed for walkers more than speeding cars.
• Enough density and community completeness, to activate what I call "the power of nearness" - everything you need, nearby.
• Good visual surveillance through doors and stoops, windows (and I don't mean windows in garages), porches and "eyes on the street."
• Connected, legible streets that let you "read" the neighbourhood easily -grids tend to be good for this, but other patterns work too.

All of these are great for trick-or-treating, and equally great for walkable, healthy, economically resilient communities year-round.

It makes a great deal of sense, though I hadn't previously known that the "trick-or-treat test" was a term of art in the planning community.  Thanks to Jenna Munoz for the pointer.  A related item is Richard Florida's 2012 Halloween Index at The Atlantic Cities:

For this year's "Halloween Index," Kevin Stolarick and my Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) colleagues focused on five factors that make for a great Halloween metro area — population density (which makes for efficient trick-or-treating), kids ages five to 14 (as a share of metro population), and median income (a measure of regional affluence), as well as candy stores and costume rental stores per one hundred thousand people.

In the story at the link, you can check out the map which shows the best scoring cities in the categories; Chicago is #1.  Zillow, however, has San Fransisco at #1 with its similar but slightly different methodology for determining the 20 Best Cities to Trick or Treat in 2012:

There is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the Holy Grail for harvesting the most Halloween candy. However, to provide a more holistic approach to trick-or-treating, the Zillow Trick-or-Treat Index was calculated using four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, Walk Score and local crime data from Relocation Essentials. Based on those variables, the Index represents cities that will provide the most candy, with the least walking and safety risks.

Finally, Paul Knight at Treehugger provides a mathematical forumula in More on the Trick or Treat Test: Calcluating the "Candy Density":

Potential Candy Score (Candy Pieces) = Target Neighborhood (Acres) x Houses-Per-Acre x Families-Per-House (accounting for duplexes, etc) x % Candy-Giving-Families x Candy-Pieces-Per-Family

I always say that land use is ultimately about the built environment of the communities in which we live.  If you are out in your community on Halloween night, be safe, and take the opportunity to observe and think about land use!

Matt Festa

Ramseyer on Land Reform in Occupied Japan

J. Mark Ramseyer (Harvard) has posted The Fable of Land Reform: Expropriation and Redistribution in Occupied Japan.  The abstract:

Land reform will not just reduce rural poverty, write development officials. It can raise productivity. It can promote civic engagement. Scholars routinely concur. Land reform may not always raise productivity and civic engagement, but it can - and during 1947-50 in occupied Japan it did.

This account of the Japanese land reform program is a fable, a story officials and scholars tell because they wish it were true. It is not. The program did not hasten productivity growth. Instead, it probably retarded it. The areas with the most land transferred under the program did not experience the fastest rates of productivity growth. They experienced the slowest.

Land reform reduced agricultural growth rates by interfering with the allocation of credit. A tenancy contract is a lease, and a lease is a capital market transaction. By precluding the use of leases, land reform effectively increased the cost of capital, reduced the amount of credit, and reduced the accuracy with which investors could target that credit. Banks provide an obvious alternative source of credit -- and post-land-reform, the areas with the fastest growth rates were those areas with the best access to those banks.

The fable of land reform rests on a fictitious account of pre-war Japan. Scholars assume tenancy rates reflected poverty levels. They did not. Instead, they reflected levels of social capital. Leases were not most common in the poorest communities. Given their character as capital market transactions, they were most common in those communities where investors could turn to social networks to induce farmers to keep their word.

Matt Festa

Burling on the Uses and Abuses of Property Rights in Saving the Environment

James S. Burling (Pacific Legal Foundation) has posted The Uses and Abuses of Property Rights in Saving the Environment, 1 Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal 373 (2012).  The abstract:

While freedom and property may be inseparable, the temptation to sacrifice one or the other to seemingly more critical societal goals is ever present. In the past century, the environmental-related limitations on property have progressed from zoning to advance the social welfare, to utilitarian conservation to preserve the human environment, and more lately to the preservation of the environment for its own sake. With each step, property rights have been impacted further. From the imposition of zoning, to regulatory restrictions on the use of property, and to the mechanism of conservation easements, the control of property by the owners of property has diminished. If freedom and property are truly interrelated, there may be troubling implications on the future of freedom.

Matt Festa

Prum on Property Insurance for the Green Building

Darren Prum (Florida State - Business) has posted The Next Green Issue: Considering Property Insurance for the Green Building.  The abstract:

As government policies across the country try to encourage more environmentally friendly buildings, the next green issue facing the owners of the completed structure is obtaining the proper insurance coverage to protect their investment. A typical property insurance policy covers the costs to reconstruct or replace property damaged as the result of a casualty, so the Insurance Service Organization and other carriers offer specific green building endorsements in an effort to augment the underlying property policy. However, these buildings maintain unique characteristics, which becomes relevant to the owner and policy underwriter as well as other stakeholders like the holder of a mortgage and major tenants. Accordingly, this article seeks to address the issues associated with a property insurance policy and the applicable endorsements that provide coverage for a green building.

Matt Festa

Lehavi on Why Philosophers, Social Scientists, and Lawyers Think Differently About Property Rights

Amnon Lehavi (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliyah - Radzyner School of Law) has posted Why Philosophers, Social Scientists, and Lawyers Think Differently about Property Rights.  The abstract:

Property is a powerful concept. It features prominently in academic and public discourse. But it is also a source of ongoing confusion. While some of this disarray may be attributed to the success of “disintegrative” normative agendas, much of it is the result of a methodological and conceptual disconnect both within and among different fields of study. Aimed at narrowing this gap, this Article analyzes the transformation of property from a moral and social concept into a legal construct. It seeks not to develop a historical or intellectual account of such an evolution, but to analyze the institutional and structural features of property once it is incorporated into the legal realm.

The Article identifies the unique jurisprudential ingredients of a system of rules by which society allocates, governs, and enforces rights and duties among persons in relation to resources. It examines the work of decision-making institutions entrusted with the task of designing property norms over time. Clarifying the institutional and structural attributes of property does not require, however, adhering to a uniform body of substantive norms or to a single set of underlying values. Illuminating the construction of property allows rather for a better informed debate about the socially-desirable content of property rights.

Matt Festa

Rose on Property and Emerging Environmental Issues--Optimists vs. Pessimists

Carol M. Rose (Arizona) has posted Property and Emerging Environmental Issues--The Optimists vs. the Pessimists, 1 William & Mary Brigham-Kenner Property Rights Conference Journal 405 (2012).  The abstract:

Can property rights and markets address environmental issues? Some say yes and some say no. This article tracks the debate through several iterations, beginning with the 1980 bet between by the biologist Paul Ehrlich and the economist Julian Simon. The former bet that the world was exhausting its natural capital and that a particular basket of minerals would therefore increase in price, while the latter bet that human ingenuity would substitute for natural capital and make prices fall. The optimistic Simon won that bet, but another version of the debate was soon to come, with free market environmentalists asserting that property and markets can evolve even for diffuse environmental resources. But more pessimistic commentators point out that success is not assured, and that social and political factors, and even past property rights regimes, can present substantial obstacles. The upshot appears to be that if one is to be optimistic about property and market approaches, one must be optimistic about social and political factors as well.

Matt Festa

Johnson on the Economic Crisis, Homeownership, and Race

Marcia Johnson (Texas Southern) has posted Will the Current Economic Crisis Fuel a Return to Racial Policies that Deny Homeownership Opportunity and Wealth to African Americans?, published in The Modern American, Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2010.  From the introduction:

Perhaps the greatest threat to the continued realization of the American dream is the latest economic crisis rooted in the sub-prime mortgage collapse.12 Some blame the CRA of 1977 for creating a market that they claim provided housing loans to noncreditworthy borrowers – particularly African American families – in the low and moderate income range.13 However, this charge is without direct factual support as the post-CRA period saw a decline in homeownership for African Americans but a mild increase for White homeowners.14 Illegal and fraudulent practices in property appraisals and income reporting directed program benefi ts away from those the program was meant to aid. . . .

This paper is written to examine the potential effect of the market collapse on our nation’s homeownership policies. Part I reviews America’s historical housing and homeownership policies. Part II considers the expansion of homeownership opportunities to historically non-participating communities, particularly the African American community. Part III reviews the culprits of the economic crash of 2008 and explains why sub-prime borrowers often get blamed. Part IV examines solutions to maintain America’s pro-homeownership policy, and Part V concludes that America’s homeownership policy should continue to be vigorously pursued with a goal of including African Americans who have long been excluded by government policies and sanctions from building wealth and thereby stabilizing their communities.

Matt Festa

Hou on Public Spaces

In Places, a former graduate school colleague of mine has a fascinating essay on the use of public spaces. The essay is drawn from a chapter in the forthcoming book Beyond Zuccotti Park: The Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space.

    Jeffrey Hou, Beyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public. Places. Sept. 24, 2012

    Hou provides examples of public transformation of places into sites of action, meaning and     possibility. Challenging us to rethink our notion of “public” in public space. The essay is accompanied     by photos of public appropriation and use of public spaces from across the globe.

For those of you unfamiliar with Places, it is an interdisciplinary journal on architecture, landscape, and urbanism. It has been an online journal since 2009, which is a superior format as it allows images and discussion of the articles. Check it out.

Jessica Owley

Hirokawa on Euclid to Federal Environmental Law in Northern Ohio

Keith Hirokawa (Albany) has posted From Euclid to the Development of Federal Environmental Law: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and the Regulation of Physical Space, forthcoming in Justice and Legal Change on the Shores of Lake Erie: A History of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Paul Finkelman and Roberta Alexander, eds., (2012, Ohio University Press).  The abstract:

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River burned. Although it was not the first time that the River was in need of assistance, it was the 1969 fire that helped to compel a radical transformation in the way that we interact with the environment. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio was not called upon to adjudicate the liabilities resulting from this pivotal event. But in the years preceding the Cuyahoga fire, the district court was asked to navigate conflicting jurisprudential approaches to the use of land, air, and water. This chapter explores a handful of these cases in order to illustrate the nation's struggle over suspicious conceptions of economic advantage and fairness, flexible distinctions of private and public property, and evolving ideas of nature and health. The chapter begins with the 1924 decision in Ambler Realty Corporation v. Village of Euclid, which remains the most famous challenge to the constitutionality of zoning regulations. It then turns to the 1930 decision in Swetland v. Curtiss Airports Corporation, where the district court addressed the inevitable limitations in property rights above land following the advancement of powered human flight. Finally, it considers an opinion released on the eve of the Cuyahoga River fire, when the court was asked to choose between saving a town and protecting railroad operations in Biechelle v. Norfolk Western Railway Company. Although the district court's decisions in these controversies do not bear the indelible character that we often attribute to law, the federal district courts for the Northern District of Ohio contributed to a legal framework in which the fire could occur and, perhaps more significantly, in which the fire could be perceived as an important event.

It's true that Northern Ohio has been at the forefront of the development of modern land use law!  Land use and legal history are more connected than might be apparent.  The entire volume looks worth reading.

Matt Festa

New Jersey Office of Legislative Services Opinion on Fracking and the Dormant Commerce Clause

In a post several weeks ago I noted that New Jersey Governor Christie had vetoed a hydraulic fracturing wastewater ban in the state approved by the New Jersey Legislature on grounds that the ban violated the Dormant Commerce Clause.  I also noted news reports that the non-partisan New Jersey Office of Legislative Services had drafted a memorandum opining on the subject, but obtaining the memorandum proved elusive and I mentioned I would share when I received it.  Today I found a copy at a website, and also directly linked here.  The site is a little fussy.  If you can't download it, feel free to contact me and I'll send you the memorandum. 

Stephen R. Miller

Find out which street corner produces the most CO2.

Resarchers from Arizona State have created a program that maps CO2 in cities. What is fascinating about this project is that they can map it down to the level of individual blocks and buildings. While this program is only currently focused on urban areas, global CO2 maps (and particularly maps of rural areas) could be pivotal in any programs related to carbon emissions. It could enable us to identify the heaviest producers and also perhaps assist in sequestration programs. They even made a cool video showing how it works. What a great tool for local governments.

Here is the citation and abstract:

Kevin R. Gurney, Igor Razlivanov, Yang Song, Yuyu Zhou, Bedrich Benes, & Michel Abdul-Massih, Quantification of Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions on the Building/Street Scale for a Large U.S. City, Envtl Sci. & Tech. (August 15, 2012)

In order to advance the scientific understanding of carbon exchange with the land surface, build an effective carbon monitoring system, and contribute to quantitatively based U.S. climate change policy interests, fine spatial and temporal quantification of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions, the primary greenhouse gas, is essential. Called the “Hestia Project”, this research effort is the first to use bottom-up methods to quantify all fossil fuel CO₂ emissions down to the scale of individual buildings, road segments, and industrial/electricity production facilities on an hourly basis for an entire urban landscape. Here, we describe the methods used to quantify the on-site fossil fuel CO₂ emissions across the city of Indianapolis, IN. This effort combines a series of data sets and simulation tools such as a building energy simulation model, traffic data, power production reporting, and local air pollution reporting. The system is general enough to be applied to any large U.S. city and holds tremendous potential as a key component of a carbon-monitoring system in addition to enabling efficient greenhouse gas mitigation and planning. We compare the natural gas component of our fossil fuel CO₂ emissions estimate to consumption data provided by the local gas utility. At the zip code level, we achieve a bias-adjusted Pearson r correlation value of 0.92 (p < 0.001).

- Jessie Owley

Conservation Easements Again: Golf Courses as Natural Habitat?

Some of the most questionable conservation easements are those covering golf courses. A recent summary judgment ruling from the Tax Court highlights the concerns that arise. RP Golf LLC owns 277 acres in Platte County, Missouri where it has two private golf courses. It placed a conservation easement over the golf courses and claimed a $16,400,000 tax deduction (yep that’s $16.4 million to agree not to subdivide its golf courses).

To qualify for tax deductions, conservation easements must have a qualified “conservation purpose” as defined in § 170(h)(4)(A) of the Internal Revenue Code. RP Golf claims that its conservation easements meet two different purpose requirements: (1) open space and (2) natural habitat.

Deductions are allowed for conservation easements that protect open space where such preservation is pursuant to a clearly delineated Federal, State, or local governmental conservation policy. I.R.C. § 170(h)(4)(A)(iii)(II). Missouri does have a general policy to promote open space, but the policy enables counties and the state park board to acquire property rights to protect open space in counties where the population exceeds 200,000.  Mo. Ann. Stat. § 67.870. As Platte County has fewer than 100,000 residents, the court concluded the golf course conservation easements were not acquired pursuant to a conservation policy.

Deductions are also permissible where conservation easements protect relatively natural habitat of fish, wildlife or plants. Perhaps somewhat audaciously, RP Golf contends that its conservation easements protect “relatively natural habitat.” It is always a challenge to determine what is “natural” these days and the court found that there disputed material facts on this issue (thus making it inappropriate for summary judgment).

This little cases raises a lot of issues regarding what we protect for whom along with what we consider natural in our increasingly developed world.

- Jessie Owley

When Aesthetics ARE Health

In the famous 1954 case of Berman v. Parker, private property owners objected to the District of Columbia condemning their land for an urban renewal project “merely to develop a better balanced, more attractive community.” To which Justice Douglas famously replied:

. . . Miserable and disreputable housing conditions may do more than spread disease and crime and immorality. They may also suffocate the spirit by reducing the people who live there to the status of cattle. They may indeed make living an almost insufferable burden. They may also be an ugly sore, a blight on the community which robs it of charm, which makes it a place from which men turn. The misery of housing may despoil a community as an open sewer may ruin a river.

. . . The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive. The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled. In the present case, the Congress and its authorized agencies have made determinations that take into account a wide variety of values. It is not for us to reappraise them. If those who govern the District of Columbia decide that the Nation's Capital should be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way.

While Douglas’ language opened up great potential for aesthetic-based land use regulations,* not all community officials and judges have rushed to embrace his logic. I am certain we can all recall examples when aesthetic justifications have been met with skepticism.  Beauty can be perceived as subjective and arbitrary; and in many instances it is viewed as a lesser, more tenuous rationale than economic or human health impacts.  Indeed, I advise my own land use students that it is strategically better to couple aesthetic arguments with more traditional arguments based on public health and safety.

It was thus with fascination that I listened last week to an interview with Dr. Esther M. Sternberg, who has written a book that demonstrates, through empirical evidence, how the aesthetic design of public spaces such as schools and hospitals directly affects human health.  The book is called HEALING SPACES: The Science of Place and Well-Being, and is published by Harvard University Press.  In her book, Dr. Sternberg makes the case for architects and designers working hand-in-hand with health care workers to improve the health and healing of people.  One compelling example mentioned in her interview is the rate of recovery of patients with views of natural settings, compared to those with views of brick walls.  The interview with Dr. Sternberg can be found here:  http://www.esthersternberg.com/healingspaces.htm.

Justice Douglas thus appears to have been on the right track when he spoke of the correlates between aesthetics and overall human welfare.  Yet the connection may be stronger than even Justice Douglas suspected.  Dr. Sternberg’s work suggests that rather than two independent bases for land use regulation, aesthetics can in fact be an integral and necessary component of human health.

Michelle Bryan Mudd

* It should be noted that D.C’s urban renewal activities have been highly criticized for their race- and poverty-based impacts.  There has been much written on the urban renewal movement, but one recent, well-researched piece is Amy Lavine’s “Urban Renewal and the Story of Berman v. Parker,” 42 The Urban Lawyer 423 (2010).

The True Value of Conservation Easements

As regular readers know, I am obsessed with fascinated by conservation easements. Lately, I have been particularly intrigued by valuation concerns. Where a landowner donates a conservation easement on her property, she can receive some favorable tax benefits at the local, state, and federal levels. On federal taxes, landowners can deduct the value of the conservation easement from their taxes in the same way they make deductions for other charitable contributions. This, of course, leads to valuation problems. Without an active conservation easement market, it is hard to figure out what their worth should be. Landowners want high appraisals because it increases the tax deductions. The IRS, however, has been increasingly skeptical of these deductions (especially following some 2003 Washington Post exposes about The Nature Conservancy).

This issue seems particularly salient where conservation easements (including historic facade easement) appear simply to replicate existing land use laws. In such cases, there is a strong argument that the value of the conservation easement should be zero and the landowner should not receive a tax break. Indeed, the landowner does not seem to have lost anything in the transaction. She does not change her behavior and property sales may not even be affected. The Tax Court seemed to agree with this reasoning in the recent Foster Case, where the IRS denied a tax deduction for a historic facade easement. The Tax Court upheld the IRS' finding because, inter alia, the restrictions on the property mirrored those already embodied in local law.

It is not uncommon for conservation easements to replicate or even to conflict with local zoning and land use laws. Proponents of conservation easements point out that conservation easements protect against future actions -- futures where land use codes or other laws could change but the restrictions would still remain in place. While I see there point, something still rubs me the wrong way when we pay people to do things they were going to do anyway. How can we figure out the best way to quantify the public benefit here?

- Jessie Owley

 

ABA Professor's Corner on Eminent Domain for Mortgage Modifications

This month's installment of the ABA Section on Real Property's "Professor's Corner"--a free monthly teleconference featuring scholars' takes on important new property cases and issues--will feature a really hot topic, the proposal for municipal governments to take property by eminent domain to combat the mortgage/foreclosure crisis.  The info, via David Reiss (who also recently posted a related public comment):

 FREE Professors’ Corner teleconference, sponsored by the ABA Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section and its Legal Education and Uniform Laws Group.

The program is Wednesday, October 10, at 12:30 pm EDT; 11:30 am CDT; 10:30 am MDT; 9:30 am PDT.

Call-in number: 866-646-6488
Participant Passcode: 5577419753

This month’s topic is Can/Should Municipalities Use Eminent Domain to Take Mortgages to Facilitate Mortgage Modifications? This conference call will be moderated by Professor James Geoffrey Durham, University of Dayton School of Law. Professor Steven J. Eagle, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law, is one of the nation’s leading scholars on eminent domain and regulatory takings. Professor Eagle will discuss whether it is possible for local governments to use eminent domain to acquire notes secured by mortgages in order to resell them to a private party which will then modify them, both under the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and also under state constitution taking clauses as they have been limited by amendments and statutes seeking to define what is a public use. Professor Robert C. Hockett, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, is the scholar who in June proposed that municipalities could use eminent domain to acquire mortgages, in order to facilitate mortgage modifications to benefit underwater homeowners, in his article: It Takes a Village: Municipal Condemnation Proceedings and Public/Private Partnerships for Mortgage Loan Modification, Value Preservation, and Local Economic Recovery (download paper). Professor Hockett will discuss his proposal, which has received widespread attention. Professor Dale A. Whitman, James E. Campbell Missouri Endowed Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Missouri, Columbia, School of Law, is one of the premier experts on American property law and one of the nation’s foremost mortgage law scholars. Professor Whitman will discuss the impact that implementation of Professor Hockett’s proposal might have on the mortgage markets.

Check out the free telecast on this very interesting and current issue.

Matt Festa

Brigham-Kanner 2012

The Ninth Annual Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference is taking place this week at William & Mary law school in Williamsburg, VA.  The conference, named for Toby Prince Brigham and Gideon Kanner, brings together many of the very top property scholars in the country as well as members of the bench and bar.  This year the Brigham-Kanner Prize will be presented to Professor James E. Krier (Michigan).

The conference will take place this Friday, Oct. 12, following a Thursday evening event.  The conference program looks fantastic and features many of the leading property scholars in the nation.  There is still time to register on-line, and I have also been informed that walk-ins are welcome.  If you can be there it looks to be a great event.

Matt Festa

Fennell on Resource Access Costs

Lee Anne Fennell (Chicago) is reconceptualizing transaction costs in property as Resource Access Costs, forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review.  The abstract:

The Coasean insight that transaction costs stand between the world as we know it and an ideal of perfect efficiency has provided generations of law and economics scholars with an analytic north star. But for legal scholars interested in the efficiency implications of property arrangements, transaction costs turn out to constitute an unhelpful category. Transaction costs are related to property rights in unstable and contested ways, and they comprise a heterogeneous set of impediments, not all of which are amenable to cost-effective reduction through law. Treating them as focal confuses the cause of our difficulties in structuring access to resources (positive transaction costs) with the solution to the cost minimization problem presented by a world featuring scarce resources and positive transaction costs. A broader notion of resource access costs, appropriately subdivided, can correct problems of overinclusion, underinclusion, and insufficient specification in the transaction cost concept. The resulting analytic clarity will allow property theorists to contribute more usefully to solving resource problems.

The concept of transaction costs in property theory plays a big role in land use planning and practice, so reconceptualizing it as "resource access costs" can potentially have a big impact on the way we understand the economics of land use.  Check out Fennell's latest must-read piece.

Matt Festa

Reiss on the Use of Eminent Domain to Restructure Mortgages

David J. Reiss (Brooklyn) has posted Comment on the Use of Eminent Domain to Restructure Performing Loans, which was submitted to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (No. 2012–N–11) (2012).  The abstract:

There has been a lot of fear-mongering by financial industry trade groups over the widespread use of eminent domain to restructure residential mortgages. While there may be legitimate business reasons to oppose its use, its inconsistency with Takings jurisprudence should not be one of them. To date, the federal government’s responses to the current crisis in the housing markets have been at cross purposes, half-hearted and self-defeating. So it is not surprising that local governments are attempting to fashion solutions to the problem with the tools at their disposal. Courts should, and likely will, give these democratically-implemented and constitutionally-sound solutions a wide berth as the ship of state tries to right itself after being swamped by a tidal wave of mortgage defaults.

A concise and thoughtful public comment on what is emerging as a hot, hot issue.

Matt Festa

Osofsky on Suburban Climate Change Efforts

Hari M. Osofsky (Minnesota) has posted Suburban Climate Change Efforts: Possibilities for Small and Nimble Cities Participating in State, Regional, National, and International Networks, forthcoming in the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy.  The abstract:

This Article provides a novel analysis of the capacity of suburbs to play a constructive role in addressing climate change. Small suburban cities represent the majority of metropolitan populations and emissions; encouraging their mitigation efforts, in addition to those of large center cities, is critical. In contrast to the conventional critique of suburbs as an undifferentiated group of sprawling emitters, the Article analyzes pathways for different types of small, nimble, suburban governments to learn from other localities and find cost-effective approaches to reducing emissions. It intertwines scholarship on (1) cities, suburbs, and climate change, (2) the complex demography of suburbs, (3) the role of climate change networks in transnational governance, and (4) more inclusive multi-level climate change governance to describe the limits of the current discourse on suburbs and climate change and to propose a new model for encouraging more suburban action. Using the Twin Cities metropolitan region as an initial case example, the Article considers what steps different types of leader suburbs are taking and how they are participating in voluntary multi-level climate change and sustainability networks. It argues that, especially in the absence of top-down mandates requiring cities to mitigate their emissions, these voluntary networks play an important role in fostering local action and connecting that action to international climate change treaties. It proposes that these networks could have a greater impact, however, through strategies that reflect the differences among types of suburban cities and foster more cross-network interaction.

Matt Festa

Ellickson on the Law and Economics of Street Layouts

Robert C. Ellickson (Yale) has posted The Law and Economics of Street Layouts: How a Grid Pattern Benefits a Downtown, forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review from its lecture series on boundaries.  The abstract:

People congregate in cities to improve their prospects for social and economic interactions. As Jane Jacobs recognized, the layout of streets in a city’s central business district can significantly affect individuals’ ability to obtain the agglomeration benefits that they seek. The costs and benefits of alternative street designs are capitalized into the value of abutting lots. A planner of a street layout, as a rule of thumb, should seek to maximize the market value of the private lots within the layout. By this criterion, the street grid characteristic of the downtowns of most U.S. cities is largely successful. Although a grid layout has aesthetic shortcomings, it helps those who frequent a downtown to orient themselves and move about. A grid also is conducive to the creation of rectangular lots, which are ideal for siting structures and minimizing disputes between abutting landowners. Major changes in street layouts, such as those accomplished by Baron Haussmann in Paris and Robert Moses in New York City, are unusual and typically occur in bursts. Surprisingly, the aftermath of a disaster that has destroyed much of a city is not a propitious occasion for the revamping of street locations.

Highly recommended, with lots of interesting planning-type details in addition to the larger importance to land use theories and approaches.

Matt Festa