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Real Estate & Property Law

Land Use Prof Blog

By Paul Boudreaux

Post Frequency: 9.8/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:17:06

A donkey in the wrong place ...

Posted on February 28, 2008
The most remarkable thing about nuisance law is its flexibility -? conduct that might be perfectly reasonable in a rural area isn?t acceptable when the area becomes more crowded. NPR ran a story today about ? no, not a pig...

No new mobile homes, please ?

Posted on February 26, 2008
What?s less popular with suburban neighbors than a small mobile home? Why, a large mobile home, of course! In an interesting decision handed down today, a Connecticut court held that old mobile homes in a nonconforming mobile home park could...

The ascent of single-family suburban slums?

Posted on February 22, 2008
I often write skeptically about the long-predicted demise of the suburbs and the return of urban living. But some interesting counter-arguments are made by Christopher B. Leinberger, of Brookings and the University of Michigan, in the March issue of the...

Preserving culture on the Sea Islands?

Posted on February 20, 2008
Can land use law succeed in preserving a local culture, in the face of changing economics? We often hear about fears of ?gentrification? in urban neighborhoods, but one of the most interesting stores comes from the rural coast of South...

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It?s not a car, it?s not a pedestrian, it?s a ?

Posted on February 15, 2008
One striking modern American invention is our reliance on the automobile for tasks undreamt of even a generation ago. In much of America, including outer St. Petersburg, Florida, where I travelled today, there is now a mini rush-hour from noon...

Looking for the future ?

Posted on February 13, 2008
Once upon a time, innovations in land use came from the United States?the skyscraper, the shopping mall, zoning, the drive-through burger joint. But as United States land use law has discouraged innovation, other countries have taken up the challenge...

Parking, transit, and a public purpose ?

Posted on February 11, 2008
The flurry of post-Kelo state legislation designed to limit eminent domain caused some observers to predict that local governments would be hampered in their ability to engage in useful public projects. Just such an example arguably is playing out in...

Sprawl: the ogre that wouldn't die ?

Posted on February 08, 2008
Sprawl is slowing down, right? This has been the prediction for quite some time. But here is a Census-derived map that appears to paint a different tale. The map of county population growth over the first six years of the...

Affordable housing ?- from direct set-asides to indirect ?

Posted on February 07, 2008
Land use law is unique because land is unique. Because location is so important, real estate can?t always be easily replaced by trying to buy it in the market. This is a reason that ?set-asides? are such a powerful tool...

The plateau of decisions ?

Posted on February 06, 2008
How should land use law balance environmental concerns with essential economic needs? I remember the argument, back in the 1970s, that we should replace much of our unreliable foreign sources of oil with good ol? American coal. Today, we?d reject...

The right to live as one desires?

Posted on February 05, 2008
How far can or should government go in regulating the details of residential land use? When does a regulation infringe on a resident?s ?rights?? I saw on TV this weekend a segment about the ongoing battle in Coral Gables, Fla.,...

An ?impact fee? for foreclosures?

Posted on January 31, 2008
Communities across the nation are wincing at the boom in foreclosures. In my state of Florida, about two percent of all households encountered some form of foreclosure last year. The problem hits hardest in low-income areas, of course, where many...

A suburb forges ahead with its housing ban plan ?

Posted on January 29, 2008
Competition encourages localities to use land use laws to foster social goals and to push away undesirable uses ? and people. In the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, the city is persistent in efforts to make it both illegal and...

Unchain my dog?

Posted on January 28, 2008
If you walk around a suburban neighborhood or pass through a public park on a lovely Saturday afternoon, you recognize that Americans have become a nation of people who eschew being outside simply for the pleasure of it. Unless we...

Panhandlers and a struggling downtown ?

Posted on January 22, 2008
I noticed yesterday on the window of a downtown restaurant at an MLK Day parade in St. Petersburg, Fla., a reprint of a flyer from the Nashville Downtown Partnership, encouraging people to say ?no? to panhandlers. Is this simply being...

The lending nuisance?

Posted on January 17, 2008
So, foreclosed homes are a blight upon your city, encouraging crime and arson, battering your already stressed community, and causing a further drop in limited tax revenues. What?s a poor city to do? In the case of Cleveland, the city...

When there?s no home in Seattle ?

Posted on January 16, 2008
The dilemma of homeless people living in public spaces is one of the most gut-wrenching in all of land use law. On one hand, the argument, ?Where are the homeless supposed to live, if not in public parks?? has no...

Democracy and the making of land use law ?

Posted on January 11, 2008
If the presidential election season doesn?t completely make one cynical about the workings of democratic elections, one can consider the significant role of ?democracy? in the making of land use law. For the most part, courts have applauded laws that...

The new power of religion over land use ?

Posted on January 08, 2008
Most of land use law is determined by local authorities, of course. But the federal government, which has taken over large areas of environmental and employment law (which used to be reserved mostly to the states), is playing a more...

The past and future in New York ?

Posted on January 07, 2008
Before I get to a more serious land use comment, please indulge a little architectural criticism from a complete amateur, just back from New York. As styles of commercial buildings continue to change radically from one generation to the next,...

Remembering a founder of urbanism ...

Posted on January 03, 2008
New York's Urban Center (at Madison and 51st), run by the Municipal Arts League, is showing an exhibit about the late critic and activist Jane Jacobs. Although some of her strong opinions have since been questioned by urbanists, the current...

The future of the great metropolis ?

Posted on January 02, 2008
The New Year's celebration inevitably brings to mind New York City, where I'm heading this week. So I'll finish the week with some thoughts about America's largest city. Today the Times published some thoughts by New Yorkers about what city...

What fast-food breakfasts tell us about land use law ?

Posted on December 27, 2007
[New Suburbia: One of a series about new aspects of the suburban realm.] Critics of the suburbs like to excoriate fast-food joints as the quintessence of soulless, auto-bound, conformist, fattening suburbia. But it is interesting to relate the fate of...

Housing Law as Potter ?

Posted on December 26, 2007
Over the Christmas weekend I watched again "It's a Wonderful Life," the great 1947 film about housing and credit (and other things, I suppose). This year, I was struck by a scene early in the film in which the evil...

Dimmer red lights in Amsterdam ?

Posted on December 19, 2007
Here's another striking example of land use law being employed as a surrogate for other social values. In Amsterdam, the famous and infamous red light district has long been one of the city's most popular "attractions." In 2000, the Dutch...

Requiring a walk before a drink ?

Posted on December 17, 2007
Other nations may now be as automobile-crazy as America has been for decades, but I doubt that any nation can touch the United States for the amount of things that one can do in one's car. Although Americans have largely...

Requiring buildings to take the LEED in being ?cool? ?

Posted on December 13, 2007
Because of their voracious gobbling of energy for heating and air conditioning, buildings directly or indirectly account for a large share (estimates range from 30 to 50 percent) of the United States? emission of greenhouse gases. As the American legal...

Planning for a more diverse future with a diversity of housing ?

Posted on December 11, 2007
[?New Suburbia?: This is one of a series on the changing aspects of suburbia.] While most reports have emphasized the demand aspects of the home mortgage crisis -? homebuyers of meager means were given the ability by lenders to buy...

Gated communities -- neither boon nor doom?

Posted on December 10, 2007
[?New Suburbia?: This is one of a series on the changing aspects of suburbia.] Left-leaning social critics have long disparaged the phenomenon of ?gated communities? as an anti-social reflection of white suburbanites trying to hide from ?the other,? with unsavory...

Fewer Stonewalls, and other losses of the city ?

Posted on December 07, 2007
If you wanted to figure out whether a neighborhood was safely hip back in the 1990s, you might have asked whether it held a Starbucks. And if you wanted to know whether a ?dirty? urban neighborhood was being cleaned up,...

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