Planning and Law: Shaping the Legal Environment of Land Development and Preservation

14 Pages Posted: 18 May 2010

See all articles by Charles M. Haar

Charles M. Haar

Harvard Law School

Michael Allan Wolf

University of Florida Levin College of Law

Abstract

It has been more than a century since the City Beautiful movement captured the imagination and attention of public officials throughout America. Today, many states and localities continue to wrestle with the need for, and legal and social significance of, comprehensive planning. In most of the country, zoning preceded planning, a fact that is often evident when one studies current land use patterns. In the last few decades, planning law has reached a new level of sophistication, as courts, commentators, and public officials have explored the ways in which environmental protection and land use controls intersect, at times in a complementary fashion and at other times in conflict. To be successful in this new legal milieu, the modern land use attorney needs to have a healthy respect for planners and planning theory, keeping in mind the needs and desires of their clients and the ways in which poor planning and zoning decisions and the footprint of the modern public-private partnership often have a lasting, negative effect on the unbuilt environment within and beyond our artificial political boundaries. This Article is excerpted from Charles M. Haar & Michael Allan Wolf, Land Use Planning and the Environment: A Casebook (Envtl. L. Inst. 2010).

Keywords: planning, land use, zoning, environmental protection

JEL Classification: K11

Suggested Citation

Haar, Charles M. and Wolf, Michael Allan, Planning and Law: Shaping the Legal Environment of Land Development and Preservation. Environmental Law Reporter, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 10419-10431, 2010, University of Florida Levin College of Law Research Paper No. 2010-16, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1609982

Charles M. Haar

Harvard Law School ( email )

1575 Massachusetts
Hauser 406
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Michael Allan Wolf (Contact Author)

University of Florida Levin College of Law ( email )

P.O. Box 117625
Gainesville, FL 32611-7625
United States
352-273-0934 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.law.ufl.edu/faculty/wolf/

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
200
Abstract Views
1,176
Rank
273,586
PlumX Metrics