State Mandates, Housing Elements, and Low-income Housing Production

In order to create low-income housing opportunities and mitigate exclusionary zoning, in 1968 Congress mandated that municipalities receiving comprehensive planning funds must create a housing element. In tandem, many states mandated that municipal housing elements must accommodate low-income housing needs. After examining empirical research for California, Florida, Illinois, and Minnesota, this review found aspirational success because those states rewarded the municipal planning process. In order to increase low-income housing, this review argues for state housing policy reform. Under US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s revised fair housing rule, which requires an assessment of local data, states can no longer ignore the exclusionary behavior of municipalities

Determinants of historic and cultural landmark designation: why we preserve what we preserve

Heritage preservation policy, Landmark designation, Z1, R52, D78,

The Costs of Sprawl--Revisited

This report will be of interest to individuals involved in ongoing discussions and debates about urban sprawl and its effects. Section I provides a working definition of sprawl and its associated costs, then provides historical discussion, dating back to the early 1920s when zoning acts were initially developed, and to the 1950s when the term sprawl entered the planning literature. Section II contains a Literature Synthesis. This section systematically presents the literature on sprawl in chapters that focus on the following major areas of impact: public/private capital and operating costs; transportation and travel costs; land/natural habitat preservation; quality of life; and social issues. Section III of the report presents annotations of studies, organized in chapters that focus on the same five major impact areas as Section II. While this report will not resolve the debate on the benefits and costs of urban sprawl, it provides an important repository of information for the debaters. An Index is provided