Land Use Regulation

When white people first arrived in the Americas, they returned to Europe and reported that America was a vast empty slate, ready to feel the improvements brought by the farmer's plow and the lumberjack's axe. A land of limitless opportunity. An Eden.

There were a couple of problems inherent in this thinking. First of all, there were people here. The Europeans were very surprised when the native Americans objected to the loss of their traditional lands and resources. There were problems with how the land was to be distributed, how the land was to be worked, and how cities were to be involved with all of this. People were pretty much free to do as they wanted, provided they didn't interfere with other's enjoying their property (more on this below). This kind of thinking persists. The other problem is that land is a finite resource. There is simply not enough land for everyone to spread out and have enough space to do whatever they want.

These problems persisted until the early part of the 1900's, when a series of legal decisions helped define what could be done to help address some of these problems. Consistently, the courts have found that land regulation is a necessary exercise of the police power of a governing body. Land utilized in certain ways are more likely to be disruptive of incompatible, adjacent uses. This is the whole smokestack in your back yard deal. If you were there first, why should you put up with a steel plant in your neighborhood? You shouldn't. And cities should not allow it.

But wait! This is America. Don't we have the right to do whatever we want? Well, yes, but only to an extent. One of the most important rights that we enjoy as Americans is the "Right to Chill" as my law professor put it. We have a right to quiet use and enjoyment of our property. What does that mean? It means that if I am noisy or noxious or obnoxious, I may be censured by the government for interfering with others in their desire not to be annoyed or poisoned or kept from their economic investment's payoffs. The awareness that people have about the environment and industry's impact on the quality of the environement has heightened the importance of this kind of regulation. Further impact comes from noise and air pollution levels near freeways, manufacturing facilities, and petro-chemical industrial storage (of note here in Mont Belvieu).

This is where a planner comes in. In a carefully planned community, people are able to build houses in areas that they can know are free from intrusions of this sort. Likewise, people in industry can know that they can be noisy when required without having to worry about offending neighbors. And everybody's happy, right?

Well, not really. People have to work in factories or whatever, but not many people want to live in the factory. So they go home. Traditional suburban models puts people driving on congested highways to destinations far removed from their place of employment in search of the bucolic ideal. In the early part of the century it was "40 acres and a mule" - now it's a quarter acre and a three-car garage.

So what's the answer? We'll see. All we know for sure is that what we have now is not working very well in terms of sustainablility.