The Political Economy of Downzoning

“Substantial downzoning†is defined as the exercise of police power to significantly reduce the legally permitted density on undeveloped land in a community. This contentious practice is typically challenged by those who perceive the action to limit their market opportunities (e.g., farmers and developers), their sympathizers, and others who prefer the status quo. Supporters tend to be those who perceive positive benefits (e.g., environmentalists, conservationists, and homeowners) and those who see it as a supplement to other preservation techniques, based on concerns over such things as growing public costs of land acquisition, limited effectiveness of existing alternatives, or the perceived urgency to act to manage growth. Given the complexity of the issue and the lack of previous research, this paper develops a conceptual model of the public choice to “substantially downzone†and presents specific hypotheses to be empirically tested, using New Jersey as a case study. The probability of implementing substantial downzoning is found to increase with (i) the amount of open space that remains to be protected, (ii) declining farm population, (iii) recent growth in non-farm population, (iv) recent growth in land values, and (v) the presence of alternative growth management tools. Results also suggest its use as a substitute for other preservation tools when the financial and/or political ability of communities to afford other approaches is limited. Hence, the likelihood of substantial downzoning may increase over time if alternatives become more difficult to implement.substantial downzoning, takings, land use, growth management, open space, political economy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Political Economy,

The Political Economy of Downzoning

Increasingly, in response to concerns about urban sprawl and environmental protection, local governments are exercising their police power to reduce the legal permitted density on undeveloped land. This controversial practice, known in many parts of the country as "downzoning", is generally opposed by farmers, developers and others whose market opportunities are limited by such action. This paper constructs a theoretical model of the impact of larger minimum lot sizes on the current land prices of farmers and homeowners within the same community. The theoretical model suggests that net losses for farmers and net gains for homeowners from downzoning are a reasonable, if not inevitable, expectation. Following Pelzman, Hahn, and Campos, the paper then develops a model to explain the public choice decision-making process that leads to downzoning by local public officials. This model is tested using data on 214 New Jersey municipalities. The probability of downzoning is found to increase when there is a lot of open space to protect, but only when farmers constitute a small proportion of all voters. The probability of downzoning also increases when a community has experienced rapid population growth and increased land values. It is more likely to be found in municipalities that have enacted right-to-farm ordinances, suggesting an overall preservation focus on the part of the community along with some sensitivity to farmers' concerns.Land Economics/Use,

Effects of Chemical Potential on Hadron Masses in the Phase Transition Region

We study the response of hadron masses with respect to chemical potential at $\mu=0$. Our preliminary results of the pion channel show that $\partial m/\partial \mu$ in the confinement phase is significantly larger than that in the deconfinement phase, which is consistent with the chiral restoration.Comment: LATTICE99 (finite temperature and density), 3 pages, 3 figure

Responses of hadrons to chemical potential at finite temperature

We present a framework to compute the responses of hadron masses to the chemical potential in lattice QCD simulations. As a first trial, the screening mass of the pseudoscalar meson and its first and second responses are evaluated. We present results on a $16\times 8^2\times 4$ lattice with two flavors of staggered quarks below and above $T_c$. The responses to both the isoscalar and isovector chemical potentials are obtained. They show different behavior in the low and the high temperature phases, which may be explained as a consequence of chiral symmetry breaking and restoration, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

On the nature of the residual meson-meson interaction from simulations with a QED2+1{}_{2+1} model

A potential between mesons is extracted from 4-point functions within lattice gauge theory taking 2+1 dimensional QED as an example. This theory possesses confinement and dynamical fermions. The resulting meson-meson potential has a short-ranged hard repulsive core and the expected dipole-dipole forces lead to attraction at intermediate distances. Sea quarks lead to a softer form of the total potential.Comment: 4 pages, uuencoded tar-compressed postscript file, contribution to Lattice'9

Where is the chiral critical point in 3-flavor QCD?

We determine the location of the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transition in 3-flavor QCD at vanishing chemical potential. Using Ferrenberg-Swendsen reweighting for two values of the quark mass we determine the dependence of the transition line on the chemical potential and locate the chiral critical point. For both quantities we find a significant quark mass dependence.Comment: 3 pages, Lattice2003(nonzero), one reference exchange

Framingham Heart Study genome-wide association: results for pulmonary function measures

© 2007 Wilk et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

More evidence of localization in the low-lying Dirac spectrum

We have extended our computation of the inverse participation ratio of low-lying (asqtad) Dirac eigenvectors in quenched SU(3). The scaling dimension of the confining manifold is clearer and very near 3. We have also computed the 2-point correlator which further characterizes the localization.Comment: presented at Lattice2005(Topology and Confinement), Dublin, July 25-30, 2005, 6 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Proceedings of Scienc