Land Use Prof Blog

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project, Post 15: Zoning and Lease Mediation as a Way to Retain Critical Small Businesses

Elisabeth Haub Law School of Law
Pace University
Land Use Law Center
Supervisor: John R. Nolon, Distinguished Professor
Blog No. 15 of the Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project
Editor: Brooke Mercaldi
Contributing Author: Jonathon Duffy [*]

Zoning and Lease Mediation as a Way to Retain Critical Small Businesses

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of small businesses throughout the country. These small businesses are the backbone of many of the communities they inhabit and losing them would come with devastating impacts. With a return to “normal” on the horizon, it is important to keep in mind just how much small businesses are still hurting and how much they contribute to walkable urban life, employment, and equity and how to sustain them in normal and troubled times.

According to a study published by the New York Times in August 2020, one-third of small businesses in New York City will never reopen. That number is even more staggering when one considers that, according to the study, those roughly 80,000 businesses that will never reopen account for approximately 520,000 jobs. Six months after the study’s publication, nine million small businesses nationally were still in danger of shutting down without additional government aid. While all small businesses have been affected, minority-owned small businesses have been especially hit hard with eight out of ten minority-owned small business owners saying they are in poor financial condition, even after receiving government aid.

These hardships faced by small businesses show just how vulnerable one of the most important sectors of our economy is. The U.S. Small Business Administration reported that two-thirds of jobs added in 2019 were created by small businesses. The 27 million small businesses represent 44% of economic activity and 50% of the total U.S. GDP. Small businesses play a critical role in the inner city where they provide roughly one-third of inner city jobs, as well as goods and services essential to lively and economic commercial neighborhoods. These small businesses and the jobs they represent, in some sense, are the lifeblood of cities and are keeping people tied to city living.

As cities become more exposed to the vulnerabilities of small businesses and their impacts on the local community and economy, many have turned to zoning and lease mediation to help combat the effects of the pandemic. A popular strategy to accommodate social distancing has been the open streets programs. New York City has used zoning to the advantage of small businesses by allowing businesses to operate in certain streets. Relatedly, Santa Monica approved various zoning changes, including giving small businesses the ability to use their parking lots for outdoor retail and dining. This was done by increasing the change of use parking relief from 3 spaces to 10 and excluding any outdoor dining areas from the parking calculations. In order to remove the pressure of re-opening, Santa Monica also eliminated its one-year abandonment rule for legal, non-conforming uses. Clackamas County, Oregon used variances for areas zoned as commercial, industrial, or institutional to provide more space for social distancing. The County Planning Director of Clackamas County, Jennifer Hughes, stated that these variances could apply to restaurants whose owners wanted to use their parking lots for outdoor dining or to religious groups that wanted to set up a tent outdoors to allow for social distancing during gatherings.

With the lack of revenue coming in due to the various shutdowns, many small businesses are at risk of eviction. Many owners cannot afford to pay their rent, while landlords only have so much flexibility as they have to pay their mortgages and other fixed expenses. The biggest problem tenants face with their lease is that they are simply not educated as to their rights. The Seattle Eviction Prevention Toolkit aims to address just that. Seattle partnered with local community groups and the law firm Perkins Cole to promote effective communication between landlords and tenants. This toolkit included sample lease provisions designed to mitigate the tensions of recovery, a summary of laws that would have an impact on tenants, and a webinar that explained the legal issues that may arise and how to address them.

The impacts that small businesses are facing due to COVID-19 cannot be overstated. Many of these small businesses rely on a daily flow of customers just to break even. Their survival and the survival of the local communities that they inhabit are essential to keeping people in cities and to robust employment. The equity aspect of small businesses has come to light through the pandemic, and it is imperative that all businesses are afforded the same chance to rebound. Cities have looked past the basic financial recovery tools to more practical and innovative tools that allow these businesses to get up and running more quickly. City leaders have learned indelible lessons regarding small business vulnerability. As normalcy returns, they are likely to continue using zoning and eviction prevention to save these small businesses and protect them from the continuing risks of the future.

[*] Jonathon Duffy is a third-year student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Land Use Law Center Volunteer.

Brooke Mercaldi is a second-year student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Research Assistant to Professor Nolon.

The previous blogs in the series are listed here:

To subscribe to the GreenLaw Blog, please go to https://greenlaw.blogs.pace.edu/ and click on the “Subscribe” envelope.

July 22, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project, Post 14: Complete Streets: Protecting Public Health

By Stephen R. Miller

Elisabeth Haub Law School of Law
Pace University
Land Use Law Center
Supervisor: John R. Nolon, Distinguished Professor
Blog No. 14 of the Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project

Editor: Brooke Mercaldi
Contributing Author: Robert O’Connor [*]

Complete Streets: Protecting Public Health

In light of COVID-19’s particular danger to those with underlying medical conditions, many communities are using their capital budgets and zoning requirements to improve public health and resiliency. Communities can improve public health by integrating more physically active options into everyday activities such as travel to and from public spaces, shopping destinations, banks, restaurants, and other areas of recreation. Municipalities can achieve this integration and promote active living by adopting code provisions and techniques that expand multimodal transportation and enhance accessibility and safety of existing pedestrian routes.

Active living can be defined as “a way of life that integrates physical activity into daily routines.” Walking is one of the most common forms of physical activity among adults in the United States. By providing more opportunities for walkability or the use of bicycles, municipalities can decrease dependence on vehicles and increase public health.

Complete Streets policies have been proven to improve public health and safety. Complete Streets involve creating a network of “streets designed and operated to enable safe use and support mobility for all users.” The purpose of a Complete Streets provision is to increase safe travel opportunities for pedestrians, bicyclists, public transportation riders, and motorists, including children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Features of Complete Streets policies include inclusive roadway design, lane striping, bicycle lanes, paved shoulders suitable for bicyclists, pedestrian safety signs, crosswalks, pedestrian control signals, bus pull-outs, curb cuts, raised crosswalks, ramps, and traffic calming measures.

In 2015, Smart Growth America, a non-profit entity dedicated to fostering safe, equitable, and sustainable community growth, researched the outcome of 37 Complete Streets projects nationwide. Smart Growth America found that overall Complete Streets projects measurably improved safety for users and increased biking and walking. In the Town of Hamburg, New York, vehicle collisions decreased by 57 percent after implementing a Complete Streets project. Several municipalities saw an increase in pedestrian activity as more trips were taken by bicycle or by walking. Some municipalities reported an increase in bicycle trips of over 600%.

Complete Streets are chiefly funded by municipal budgets, but increasing zoning ordinances encourage private developers to integrate their streets and sidewalks into the municipal network. The city of Troy, New York adopted code provisions that apply to private development projects in addition to public projects. In 2015, Troy’s program, developed by a coalition of citizen groups and various stakeholders, was named one of the best by the National Complete Streets Coalition.

Troy’s municipal code defines "Complete Streets" as “streets that are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users, in that pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and public transportation users of all ages and abilities are able to safely move through the transportation network.”

Recognizing a need for delegation and enforcement, Troy has appointed a citizen-run Complete Streets Advisory Board to which quarterly reports on upcoming projects and program results are provided. The feature that sets Troy’s policy apart is its application to “all privately constructed streets, parking lots, and connecting pathways.” In addition, project compliance, whether public or private, is determined based on completing and filing a checklist form. This way, the land use review and approval process is capable of building out its safe streets policies as private development occurs.

[*] Robert O’Connor graduated from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law in May 2021 and was a Land Use Law Center Volunteer.
Brooke Mercaldi is a second-year student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Research Assistant to Professor Nolon.

The previous blogs in the series are listed here:

July 21, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project, Post 13: Hazard Mitigation Planning: A Case Study

By Stephen R. Miller

Elisabeth Haub Law School of Law
Pace University
Land Use Law Center
Supervisor: John R. Nolon, Distinguished Professor
Blog No. 13 of the Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project

Editor: Brooke Mercaldi
Contributing Researcher: Jessica Roberts

Hazard Mitigation Planning: A Case Study

Over the past twenty years, hazard mitigation plans have proliferated at the local level. There are currently more than 24,000 local governments that have “FEMA-approved or approvable-pending-adoption” local hazard mitigation plans. Each plan proposes a wealth of strategies for mitigating natural hazards of every stripe. This blog will showcase how these plans can utilize land-use strategies to mitigate a wide range of natural hazards, including those that jeopardize public health. To do so, this blog will illustrate how Louisville Metro, Kentucky, has developed and implemented its hazard mitigation plan.

Louisville Metro, Kentucky

Louisville Metro is a merged city-county government lying along the Ohio River in northern Kentucky. The state’s humid, subtropical climate makes it particularly vulnerable to flooding and extreme heat hazards, both of which pose profound risks to the public’s health. Extreme heat is “the number one weather-related killer in the U.S.,” causing “more fatalities per year than floods, lightning, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined.” Higher temperatures also “contribute to the build-up of harmful air pollutants” linked to respiratory problems. Likewise, flooding jeopardizes public health, as floodwaters can transmit infectious diseases, contaminate food and drinking water, and carry hazardous materials and waste.

In its hazard mitigation plan, Louisville Metro proposes several innovative approaches for mitigating these hazards. For extreme heat, the plan proposes “incentivizing or requiring minimum albedo levels”—that is, levels of solar reflectance for the resurfacing of roofs, streets, and parking lots. The plan also calls for using vegetation management strategies, such as adopting “a comprehensive tree protection ordinance,” since tree canopies are so effective at reducing ambient air temperatures and managing stormwater runoff.

Critically, Louisville Metro developed this plan in conjunction with its comprehensive plan (“Plan 2040”), which allowed Louisville Metro to incorporate the hazard mitigation plan’s objectives into it. Plan 2040 translated these objectives into specific policies, such as to “encourage design elements that address the urban heat island effect.” Such design elements include “the planting and preservation of trees, cool roofs and green infrastructure.” In other policies, Plan 2040 emphasizes the importance of mitigating flood-related hazards. These policies help establish a vision for Louisville Metro’s future, helping to guide future land use decisions in a way that mitigates flooding and extreme heat hazards.

To implement these policies, Louisville Metro used its Land Development Code. In this Code, Louisville Metro requires the planting of street trees in residential zones and for certain developers to meet tree canopy standards. It further incentivizes the use of high albedo and vegetated roof surfaces through a point system that determines residential density bonuses. In order to locate development away from flood-prone areas, the Code requires buffer areas along protected waterways. These requirements, among others, effectively translate Louisville Metro’s hazard mitigation plan into law.

While Louisville Metro is but one jurisdiction among many engaged in hazard mitigation planning, the process that Louisville Metro undertook exemplifies the expansive role that hazard mitigation plans can play. By incorporating the hazard mitigation plan into the comprehensive plan’s policies and implementing these policies in land use regulations, communities can become more disaster-ready and resilient. This, in turn, can help promote and protect the public’s health.

July 20, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, July 19, 2021

Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project, Post 12: The Role of Hazard Mitigation Planning in Promoting Public Health and Resilience

By Stephen R. Miller

Elisabeth Haub Law School of Law
Pace University
Land Use Law Center
Supervisor: John R. Nolon, Distinguished Professor
Blog No. 12 of the Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project
Editor: Brooke Mercaldi
Contributing Researcher: Jessica Roberts

The Role of Hazard Mitigation Planning in Promoting Public Health and Resilience

This past year has been, in a word, disastrous. Wildfires burned a record-number of four million acres across California. Phoenix set a record for extreme heat with more than 144 days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The Midwest experienced the costliest thunderstorm in U.S. history. The east coast experienced so many hurricanes that forecasters ran out of Latin alphabet letters to name them all. And, of course, all these events occurred in the context of an even larger and more deadly disaster: COVID-19.

As we continue to rebuild and recover from these disasters, it is important to remember that they can, and likely will, happen again. As climate change accelerates, the frequency and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes, extreme heat, drought, wildfire, and flooding will likely increase. As temperatures and flooding increase, so too may the transmission of vector-borne diseases, such as the Zika virus and West Nile virus.

In 2000, Congress recognized that mitigating the negative impacts of natural hazards begins with a plan. To encourage pre-disaster planning, Congress enacted the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA). This Act provides funding and technical assistance to state and local governments, often contingent on whether these entities develop a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan (HMP). This requirement has led to a proliferation of local HMPs throughout the country, each addressing the hazards that the locality is most vulnerable to and proposing innovative strategies to reduce such vulnerability.

Every local, FEMA-approved, HMP includes an assessment of the “type, location and extent of all natural hazards that can affect the jurisdiction.” Natural hazards are defined as including any “source of harm or difficulty created by a meteorological, environmental, or geological event.” Such events can include floods, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, landslides, and even pandemics. Since many of these hazards are intricately tied to climate change, some HMPs go a step further by assessing how climate change impacts the community’s resilience and disaster readiness. Local governments then use these assessments to craft innovative strategies that mitigate hazards within the locality.

While these strategies vary widely, many draw on traditional land use planning and regulatory techniques. These include comprehensive planning and zoning, as well as the imposition of site plan, building, and vegetation requirements. To illustrate, HMPs may call for implementing an overlay zone that maps where floods, wildfires, or landslides are most likely to occur. Within this zone, HMPs may call for specific development standards that mitigate the impact of natural disasters, such as impervious surface coverage, vegetation, and site layout requirements. HMPs may also require the local government to incorporate the HMP’s goals, objectives, and strategies into the comprehensive plan so that subsequent zoning is in conformance with it, ensuring that the locality guides future development in a way that promotes resiliency and disaster readiness.

The next blog in this series will explore these strategies more in-depth, showcasing how local governments have utilized HMPs to mitigate natural hazards, prepare for climate change, and promote public health.

July 19, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Can a Fast-Growing City Save Itself?: The Planning Ethic vs. Property Rights in Booming Boise, Idaho

By Stephen R. Miller

Seemingly out of nowhere, Boise, Idaho, has become one of the country's fastest-growing cities and, according to Zillow, the city that saw the most home value appreciation in the last decade. The boom is so profound it warranted a section on NBC's Today show.

Having lived in Boise for the last decade, I have seen this growth up close. As someone who studies growth, I also know that many of the pains Boise is enduring now are similar to other fast-growth western cities. The question in my mind has been: can Boise learn the lessons of other fast-growth cities before all the obvious problems of poorly-managed development start to stack up. And so, I wrote an article trying to think through what Boise should learn from other cities' experience, and also trying to think through the most likely path: that Boise fails to heed the warnings of these other places that have boomed before us. For anyone interested in fast-growth cities--or anyone who is interested in some local color about the last major western town to boom--you might check out my draft article, "Can America’s Fastest-Growing City Save Itself?: Property Rights and the Planning Ethic in Boise, Idaho."

Here is the clip from the Today Show:

And here is the teaser intro from my article:

In 1974, an article in Harper’s Magazine declared that “[i]f things go on as they are, Boise [Idaho] stands an excellent chance of becoming the first American city to have deliberately eradicated itself.” At the time, Boise had decided to try its hand at urban renewal, just as many other cities were abandoning the federally-funded decimation of American downtowns. In Boise, the map of “blighted” properties to be torn down approximated half of each of the 50 blocks of the city’s downtown. That is, to say, the city was in the process of eradicating itself with the only plan for what would come next being a mall. Disinvestment in the urban core followed the plan’s release leaving a hollowed-out core and a bleak future for the city. The Harper’s article, written by a Boise-born author turned Brooklynite, described the scene: “[O]n a recent warm, bright Tuesday morning—perfect shopper’s weather—a cannonball, if fired the length of the sidewalk” along the “principal canyon of trade along Idaho Street,” “would have struck exactly nineteen people.”

            How times have changed. In 2017, the U.S. Census declared Boise the fastest-growing city in America. In 2020, Meridian and Nampa, two of Boise’s suburban communities, were named among the ten fastest-growing cities in the United States. In 2021, Zillow announced that Idaho was the state with the highest home price appreciation in the decade between 2010 and 2020. Almost all of that appreciation came in the Boise metropolitan region, which Zillow noted saw a jaw-dropping appreciation of “over three times” in that decade.

            In many ways, Boise’s growth shouldn’t be a surprise. It has been on numerous “best of” lists for decades. It has a four-season climate without the extremes of other parts of the country and has been named one of the cities with environments expected to adjust to climate change best. There is plenty to do outdoors, and there is a generally congenial “let’s work together” attitude about most things.

            There also are not that many more places to develop in the Intermountain West. The Intermountain West region’s lands are dominated by federal land management agencies, which own and control sixty to eighty percent of land within state boundaries and are thus are off-limits for private development. Despite the limited space for development, the Intermountain West has been one of the fastest growing regions in the country for several decades. The result is that Boise is the last of the major Mountain West communities to experience exponential growth. The city, and increasingly the broader regions known as the Treasure Valley, faces increasingly rapid urbanization but without a history of land use planning tools to assist it or, it must also be noted, the planning spirit. Planning almost always requires tools afforded only to government, and Idaho—both on the right and left—tends to eschew government for private governance. The result has been a hodge-podge of development islands in the Treasure Valley that have led to the predictable problems: traffic, housing affordability problems, concerns over quality of life, crowded schools, strained infrastructure, and the usual fast-growth city complaints about the newcomers. Despite that, Boise’s growth is almost certainly still at the beginning of its hyperbolic rise. The growth problems are relative to the city’s not-so-distant past when it nearly took a wrecking ball to the whole city. There is time to get growth right, but is there the will, and can the region—not just the city—find a way?

            While the changes growth has brought feel new to those who have lived in the city for a long time and sometimes created tension, the Boise region’s moment isn’t that different from mid-sized cities around the country and around the world that are finding themselves suddenly facing growth issues that had previously affected only a few of the world’s largest cities. As a result, Boise presents a tremendous case study to evaluate the tools available for growing cities in Idaho and other Western states. It is also a useful case study to evaluate how other similarly-situated mid-sized cities around the country, and perhaps even the world, can plan for sustainable development. If a developed economy with a functioning rule of law cannot plan for growth in a place like Boise, how can we expect developing countries to face a crush of urbanization into cities that hardly existed just decades ago?

What can Boise and these twenty-first century new cities learn from planning mistakes of twentieth century? Land use controls first arose, in their modern context, to address the dual rise of urbanization and industrialization. But planning and land use controls were largely useless in containing the sprawl and congestion of the automobile-dominated city, and arguably complicit in it. Land use controls also struggled to keep up with changing relationships to government, taxation, and personal autonomy. What policies were pursued created lop-sided results, whether it was poorly-maintained federal public housing, racially-segregated communities, or a mid-century embrace of community participation that devolved, all too often, into the “not in my back yard” (“NIMBY”) and “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything” (BANANA”) camps.

The twenty-first century will almost certainly bring unanticipated challenges to fast-growth cities in addition to those already inherited. Chief among them will be climate change, as growth almost always reaches into areas of environmental sensitivity and disaster, such as flood and wildfire, that will only increase as the planet warms. At the same time, development patterns play a key role in addressing climate change because they dramatically affect energy consumption through building efficiency, transit options, and more.

Put simply, if a place like Boise can address growth effectively, there is great hope not just for this particular region’s future as an exciting place to live and work, but for the hundreds—if not thousands—of twenty-first century new cities around the world facing rapid growth. But will Boise be able to change its approach to growth and governance fast enough?

July 14, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project, Post 16: Segregation by Law and the Racial Inequity Pandemic

By Stephen R. Miller

Elisabeth Haub Law School of Law
Pace University
Land Use Law Center
Supervisor: John R. Nolon, Distinguished Professor
Blog No. 16 of the Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project
Editor: Brooke Mercaldi
Contributing Author: William West [*]

Segregation by Law and the Racial Inequity Pandemic

This post is an introduction to the role of land use and government finance in creating racially segregated neighborhoods. These practices greatly exacerbated the state of racial inequity in America, one of the four pandemics that the Land Use Law Center is addressing in its Land Use, Human Health, and Equity Project. We define racial inequity as a pandemic because of its nation-wide presence and its significant negative effects on public health. Because of its magnitude and pervasiveness, racial inequity cannot be solved by any one approach. However, land use is a particularly appropriate strategy for reversing racial inequity because land use practices played an active role in segregating America.

In 1910, the first racial zoning ordinance was enacted in Baltimore, Maryland. The ordinance prohibited African Americans from buying homes in neighborhoods that were majority white. The mayor at the time stated, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.” Many other cities followed this example.

Seven years later, in 1917, the United States Supreme Court held that a similar Louisville, Kentucky racial zoning ordinance was unconstitutional in Buchanan v. Warley. This holding, however, did not address the equal protection rights of minorities. Rather, the Court found that the ordinance violated the Due Process clause because it restricted white property owners’ right to sell their homes.

Nonetheless, urban planners continued to pursue race-based planning strategies that avoided the Buchanan decision. After Robert Whitten explicitly included racial zoning in his 1922 Atlanta zoning plan, the City Planning Commission defended the plan, stating, “race zoning is essential in the interest of the public peace, order and security and will promote the welfare and prosperity of both the white and colored race.” This attempted denial of Buchanan was no surprise as President Hoover’s 1921 Zoning Advisory Committee included Alfred Bettman and Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., who were known segregationists. The model zoning law that the committee created reflected their sentiment that racial divisions were “necessary to maintain the nation and the race.”

Exclusionary and expulsive zoning practices included zoning exclusively for single-family homes restricted by racially restrictive covenants. The restrictive covenants that made these segregated neighborhoods possible prohibited occupancy by races for which the zones were not intended and were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1926 in Corrigan v. Buckley. Single-family zoning districts also prevented future construction of multi-family buildings, financially excluding black families who could afford multifamily rents but not single-family homes. The same year restrictive covenants were upheld, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge against the separation of uses by zoning regulations in Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. writing, “Very often the apartment house is a mere parasite.”

In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance eligibility standards favored these single-family zoned properties with racial deed restrictions, implicating local land use practices in national financial assistance. The FHA Underwriting Manual from 1938 states that restrictive covenants should include “prohibition[s] of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended.” In 1948, the Supreme Court overturned Corrigan v. Buckley holding that restrictive covenants may not be enforced by state court order under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Shelley v. Kramer. The Court did not hold that restrictive covenants violated any rights; only the enforcement of the covenants by state courts was unconstitutional. They continued to exist, casting a pall over the sale of the restricted parcels to minorities and continuing the segregation of the single-family zoned neighborhoods.

Segregated suburbanization was an explicit federal government policy that created generational wealth gaps between races. This support for segregation "is largely responsible for the fact that while the median family income of African Americans is now about 60 percent of whites’ income, the median household wealth of African Americans is only about 5 percent of whites’ wealth.”

At the same time as exclusionary suburbanization, newly developed urban housing further segregated America. In many places, the New Deal’s Public Works Administration segregated public housing in places that it previously did not exist. Urban renewal, implemented by municipal agencies and funded by federal dollars, permitted the demolition of buildings in neighborhoods that were “blighted” without adequate plans to accommodate displaced peoples.

Any short history of racist land use policy in America will inevitably be incomplete, as it is here. This history, however, indicates why a response at the local level is warranted. What was done by local zoning in the name of segregation can logically be undone by the reform of local zoning. Today’s increased sensitivity to the adverse consequences of racial inequity is fostering many local land use efforts to mitigate discriminatory zoning’s effects and prevent its continuation. Blogs and case studies prepared by the Land Use Law Center will describe a number of such initiatives in the hope of encouraging more localities to undo land use law’s negative effects – to mitigate the segregation it helped to cause. See, for example, these blogs on urban heat islands.

For additional resources, the Gaining Ground Information Database is a free resource featuring best practice models used by governments to control the use of land in the public interest. Please direct your search toward the Healthy Communities topic.

[*] William West is a second-year student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Student Associate at the Land Use Law Center.

Brooke Mercaldi is a second-year student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Research Assistant to Professor Nolon.

The previous blogs in the series are listed here:

To subscribe to the GreenLaw Blog, please go to https://greenlaw.blogs.pace.edu/ and click on the “Subscribe” envelope.

July 13, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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