NEW DIRECTIONS IN AMERICAN PLANNING AND LAND USE REGULATION

Abstract

While American planning had antecedents in Germany and Britain, it acquired its own unique characteristics, rooted in an individualism, that attempted to avoid stifling initiative unless necessary for health and safety reasons, and, at the same time, a nannyish proclivity to mold the human environment to “improve” society. American planning and land use regulation were a product of both the progressive political movement and Social Darwinism. It is not surprising, then, that the template for state planning laws (there is no national planning law in the United States) was one of complete delegation of the power to plan and regulate land to the local government, without any oversight, and with no effective form of judicial review. This template emerged in the 1920s, when Herbert Hoover, the “Great Engineer” and, later, an American President, appointed a committee to recommend enabling legislation that was widely enacted. Under this template, most states did not require planning as a prerequisite to what most people really desired: land use regulation to protect property values.

Beginning in the 1970s, states began to break away from this initial model. This presentation will trace some of the new directions that these states—specifically Oregon—have taken, which include:

• Requiring adherence of land use regulations to a plan;
• Active and ongoing state legislative participation in land use policymaking in terms of funding, policy development, directions to state agencies, and financial assistance;
• Providing a means by which state policies may be implemented “on the ground” in local plans and regulations;
• Holding local agencies accountable for that implementation through administrative and judicial sanctions and the withholding of state revenues;
• Providing a uniform, speedy, and efficient means of reviewing local plans, regulations, and decisions for consistency with state policy; and
• Differentiating policy directions for rural resource and urban growth areas, based on a compact, but adjustable, urban growth boundary.

The presentation will contrast these new methods of planning and land use regulation with those that prevailed in the United States for a century or more and suggest that they have provided a more inclusive process that meets the need for social change and a healthier environment, and that they are the most likely path for state planning programs in the future.