Urban Land Policy

Current urban land use policy is inadequate to achieve an efficient, livable, attractive environment for urban citizens; it is inequitable as among various groups in our society because it erects difficult barriers to persons of lower income or minority racial status.

Each of the papers prepared for this Forum offered specific suggestions for achieving greater fairness in our land use laws and regulations, and for creating a more open society. While there were some inevitable differences in opinion among the Forum speakers and among those responding from the invited audience, the agreement that existed on several key principles and proposals was remarkable.

The Forum began and ended on the theme of public ownership of land—land to be developed for various private purposes, as well as land to remain permanently in public ownership. The primary purpose of such public ownership is to shape a city more efficient, more balanced in racial and income terms, more attractive, and more in harmony with Nature than the cities that have typically grown up. The view was expressed that without such public ownership of land the form and functioning of future additions to cities would be no better than past additions. While public land purchase would require capital outlays, perhaps substantial ones, it should in the long run be financially remunerative to the units of government undertaking it. Carefully designed policies for the use and disposal of public land are as essential as are policies for its acquisition.

If the really poor people are ever to be adequately housed, the construction of housing must be subsidized (by what Robert C. Weaver called production subsidies) in addition to subsidies for the rent outlays of poor individuals and families.

Although most net additions to urban population will occur in the suburbs, for humane and social as well as economic reasons the nation must undertake the reconstruction of its central cities. This may require substantial resources and raise difficult issues of equity as between old and new property owners, among old and new residents, and as between property owners and tenants.

If property taxes were levied by state rather than by local governments, the problems encountered by many units of local government providing necessary public services out of local tax assessments might be reduced or removed. Parochial local interests with the capacity to exclude, de facto, population groups they consider to be less desirable than others have used the dependency upon local real estate taxes as justification for their exclusionary actions. Property taxes raised by states, along with other state and local revenues, could be used to reduce, if not eliminate, differences in public services such as education: Also, if property taxes were levied more heavily on land than on buildings it would encourage replacement of buildings before they completely rundown; it would also remove some of the profits from holding land idle and out of development. (Some of the Fortolle participants, in fact, would have the property tax imposed exclusively on land.)

Exclusionary land zoning is already under assault in the courts and in legislatures from various interest groups, and may well be put under even greater pressure until it is removed. A number of recent actions, including the school cases in California and Virginia, may be the forerunner to major changes in the legal powers of local units of government to enact zoning, levy taxes, and provide public services that greatly favor some economic and racial groups at the expense of others.

A major means for dampening excessive localism in land use zoning and related land use controls would be review at higher governmental levels (i.e., regional and state reviews). Coupled with more liberalized power for class action or citizen suits, this would open the review process to all affected persons.

Land use planning and other land use controls could require the provision of low-income and moderate-income housing within each metropolitan region. The requirement to provide such housing might be made coextensive with the area to which an appeal from a local action could be taken; that is, low-income housing might not be required on the immediate local scale if it were adequately available on a metropolitan scale. The power to appeal local actions to this metropolitan level would be an effective force toward regional adequacy.

Social objectives of adequate housing, reasonably located with respect to job opportunities, must be balanced against ecological objectives, such as preservation of ecologically valuable sites. High-income and low-income populations both have an interest and concern in ecological and social objectives.

If the development and redevelopment of urban areas is to become more efficient and more concerned with the rights of economically and racially disadvantaged people, then both procedural and substantive improvements in urban land policy are needed. Land use and other plans must be developed more in accord with established governmental procedures, must be more carefully directed toward stated goals, and made more open to review and appeal by all affected parties. Likewise, land development must be carefully correlated with location and timing of public improvements. An orchestration of public and private actions is needed if a more open society is to be achieved.