The State—Local Regulatory Nexus in US Growth Management: Claims of Property and Participation in the Localist Resistance

Abstract

Influenced possibly more by volume than substance, some scholars have concluded that significant progress is being realized in state-level land-use regulation in the United States. In truth, more time must pass before a definitive evaluation of the more comprehensive efforts can be made. In this critical paper I examine the statewide growth-management legislation of the four states having tripartite (local—regional—state) administrative hierarchies: Florida, Vermont, Maine, and Georgia. There and elsewhere, numerous structural compromises have won adoption. Bold declarations of regulatory intent are found here often to be wrapped around ambiguous and easily subverted administrative mechanisms and standards. With prima facie evidence of significant structural shortcomings in hand, I then restore focus on the founding debates in search of a synthesis that might be more supportive of regional growth management.

Using the theory of local autonomy as a starting point, I disentangle the normative foundations of the Liberal ethic of local participation and ‘control’, and of private rights in property. The centralization of growth management is seen by its proponents as a means to regionalize the ‘public interest’ in land use, positing a new and more expansive norm defining the public's interest in private property. Opponents, on the other hand, resist the public encumbrance of private land, and find in centralization a regionalized ‘public’ desirous of greater control and less amenable to private influence. In these opposing views, however, lies the possibility of less conflicted, more efficacious regional growth-management enactments. Centralization, I conclude, can actually deepen the capacity for ‘local’ participation yet at the same time extend its domain to matters of regional concern. The result can improve the capability of the local state to manage spillovers, achieve more sustainable patterns of growth, and facilitate more satisfactory templates of private investment and equity accumulation.