Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
Pandemic illnesses from Ebola and HIV to COVID-19, the hastening consequences for land and the environment of climate change, and global protests over racial and social inequity in the wake of brutal police killings in the United States, all demand that we re-examine and rethink some land use basics. Therefore, in what follows, I will briefly highlight five areas of land use orthodoxy that I suggest the current historical moment demands we revisit. I will, furthermore, try to do so in the spirit of Julian Juergensmeyer and his work, pushing and questioning, seeking for new alternatives.
My five-part list for change in some of our land use basics is as follows: 1) replace zoning; 2) reject exclusion under any circumstances and enshrine inclusion as a central land use law principle; 3) promote density as a fundamental goal; and 4) advocate a robust use of the land use "police power" and rethink limits on eminent domain powers; and 5) revisit and advance the need for federally directed land use regulation. These five suggestions, of course, are only a beginning and require much further elaboration than is possible here. They are offered more as a starting point for conversation and consideration than as a programmatic catalogue of reforms.
Recommended Citation
4 JCULP 28 (2020).