Local Control of Land Use: Profile of a Problem

Abstract

Mounting resource scarcities have stirred anew the controversy of local control over land use [Whyte 1969; Wengert 1972]. Yet lawmakers at the state and federal levels have found the present to be an inauspicious time for comprehensive land-use legislation.1 Regulatory efforts are met with grassroots resistance. Most often, the American penchant for home rule is explained politically. According to this view-the patrimony of Jefferson, Jackson and the populists-democracy pivots on the dispersed ownership of private property.2 Closely related is the legal interpretation of local control which harkens to the Fourteenth Amendment and Article V of the Constitution and is summarized in the taking issue [Bosselman and Callies 1973]. Still another account of the local control phenomenon is premised on the economic view of human nature, contained in collective action theory [c.f. Olson 1965; Warner and Havens 1967; Buchanan 1971]. Here rational self-interest preempts the public interest (e.g., centralized, comprehensive land-use planning) because the costs to the individual (forfeiture of certain property rights) exceed benefits derived from the collective action. Juxtaposed to the formidable legalpolitical traditions governing the ownership and control of property is a contemporary counterclaim. This is jointly derived from liberal political ideology

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