Abstract
The suggestion that local land use control powers are not working well—that they may not be susceptible to modest but useful reforms or modifications and thus ought to be more drastically altered or abandoned altogether—is not new. Beginning nearly twenty years ago with Richard Babcock's publication of The Zoning Game, the literature and case law in the field is rife with express and implied suggestions that too much land use control power has been given to local governments. More recently Professor Jan Krasnowiecki suggested we abolish zoning, and the New Jersey court in its latest Mount Laurel decision underscored the almost overwhelming difficulty of addressing what are really state and regional land use issues on a municipality by municipality basis. Local land use control powers are being abused at worst and too restrictively utilized at best, leaving area-wide problems unresolved. Alternative mechanisms, the private market and private control measures, coupled with state-level or regional land use control measures and harm avoiding performance standards seem better calculated to meet our needs. It is ironic that as courts, commentators, and land use experts become more dissatisfied with both the underlying theory and the actual implementation of local land use control prerogatives, the popular perception of many citizens and locally elected officials of an almost inherent right to exercise land use control powers at the local governmental level grows unabated. Local land use control powers are an almost unassailable article of faith embodied in such catch phrases as "home rule," "local control," and "participatory or grass roots democracy."
First Page
261
Recommended Citation
Orlando E. Delogu,
Local Land Use Controls: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed,
36
Me. L. Rev.
261
(1984).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr/vol36/iss2/7