Chapter 13: Community power, land use and the environment

Land use

The way land is used within local government boundaries, affecting housing, jobs, businesses, public facilities, transportation, the environment, local finances, and community politics.

Land

use decisions

Public policies affected by land use

Housing, planning, zoning, permitting, economic development, redevelopment, transportation, environmental policy, public housing, parks, roads, water systems, sewer systems, convention centers, stadiums, and public facilities.

Community power

The study of who actually influences major local decisions, especially decisions involving land use, economic development, housing, planning, zoning, and redevelopment.

Elite model of community power

In community politics, the theory that power is concentrated in the hands of relatively few people, usually top business and financial leaders.

Pluralist model of community power

In community politics, the theory that power is widely dispersed among different leaders in different issue areas who respond to interest groups and voters.

Monolithic power structure

A community power system where one small leadership group dominates decisions across many issue areas.

Polycentric power structure

A community power system where different leaders influence different issues, creating competition, bargaining, and shared power.

Elite model versus pluralist model

The elite model argues that a small group controls community decisions, while the pluralist model argues that power is divided among multiple groups, elected officials, and organized interests.

Direct citizen participation

The ideal that ordinary citizens directly participate in community decision making, though the chapter explains this is more ideal than reality.

Gaetano Mosca

Italian political theorist who argued that all societies have two classes: a ruling class and a ruled class.

The Ruling Class

Gaetano Mosca’s work arguing that organization naturally leads to concentrated power in the hands of a few.

Robert Michels

European sociologist known for the idea that organization leads to oligarchy.

“He who says organization, says oligarchy”

Robert Michels’s idea that organized groups inevitably develop leaders who gain concentrated power.

Oligarchy

Rule by a small group of people, often emerging because organizations require leaders.

Middletown study

Robert and Helen Lynd’s study of Muncie, Indiana, which found a community power structure dominated by the local business class.

Robert and Helen Lynd

Sociologists who studied Muncie, Indiana, and found a monolithic local power structure centered on business elites.

Muncie, Indiana

The city studied as “Middletown,” where local economic power was controlled by wealthy manufacturers, bankers, corporate managers, and lawyers.

X family

The powerful family in the Middletown study whose economic control helped dominate local community power.

Floyd Hunter

Sociologist who studied Atlanta and argued that business leaders dominated the top tier of community power.

Community Power Structure

Floyd Hunter’s study of Atlanta, Georgia, which supported the elite model by showing informal business influence over government and organizations.

Regional City

Floyd Hunter’s name for Atlanta in his community power study.

Robert A. Dahl

Political scientist who studied New Haven, Connecticut, and found support for the pluralist model of community power.

Who Governs?

Robert Dahl’s study of New Haven, Connecticut, which found that power was dispersed among different groups depending on the issue.

New Haven study

Robert Dahl’s study showing that community power could be polycentric, with different leaders involved in redevelopment, education, and elections.

Business elites

Wealthy business and financial leaders who often influence community development, land use, and economic growth.

Economic elites

Local leaders whose power comes from control over economic resources, especially land, real estate, banking, development, utilities, and business.

Political elites

Professional politicians who increasingly replaced older economic elites as major local power holders in many communities.

Shift from economic elites to political elites

The change in local power caused by local businesses, banks, newspapers, and factories being absorbed by national corporations, weakening local business leadership and allowing professional politicians to gain influence.

Local control of land use

The ability of communities to regulate land, one of the few major economic resources still controlled locally rather than by national institutions.

Growth machine

The idea that community economic elites share a strong interest in promoting growth because development increases land values, profits, jobs, business activity, and tax revenues.

Growth as shared elite value

The belief among economic elites that community growth benefits them all by increasing investment, employment, disposable income, housing development, retail activity, and local revenues.

Economic growth

Expansion of capital investment, jobs, business activity, housing, and land values within a community.

Export industries

Industries that bring wealth into a community from outside, creating a multiplier effect that can benefit the local economy.

Multiplier effect

The idea that export industries create additional local economic benefits beyond their direct activity by increasing jobs, income, spending, and tax revenue.

Growth as good politics

The idea that local politicians often support economic growth because it increases government revenue, public employment, services, campaign support, and voter approval.

Community responsibility

Paul Peterson’s idea that local politicians often support growth because a declining local economy hurts businesses, workers, cultural life, land values, and political careers.

Paul E. Peterson

Scholar who argued that policies are in a city’s interest when they improve the city’s economic position, prestige, or political power.

National corporations

Large companies that often replace locally owned businesses, weakening local business loyalty and changing community power structures.

Weakening of community loyalties

The decline in local business commitment caused when local stores, factories, banks, and newspapers are absorbed by national corporations.

Professional politicians

Full

No

growth advocates

No

growth movements

Upper

middle

Minority and low

income opposition to redevelopment

NIMBY

An acronym for “not in my backyard,” referring to residents who oppose nearby public or private projects or developments.

NIMBY syndrome

The tendency of people to support development in general but oppose projects located near their own homes or neighborhoods.

NIMBY opponents

Homeowners and voters directly affected by a project who organize, petition, demonstrate, and seek media attention to stop it.

Projects likely to face NIMBY opposition

Waste disposal sites, incinerators, highways, prisons, halfway houses, mental health facilities, low

Restricted growthers

People who support only the “right kind of growth,” often using growth management or smart growth policies.

Smart growth

Promotion of higher

Growth management

Policies designed to restrict, direct, or shape development through zoning, subdivision controls, utility rules, building permits, environmental regulations, and land purchases.

Unintended consequences of growth restrictions

Growth restrictions can raise housing prices, reduce affordable housing, exclude minorities and poorer residents, limit jobs, and shift population pressures to other communities.

Affordable housing problem

A shortage of reasonably priced housing caused partly by restrictive land

Metropolitan distribution issue

The idea that when one suburb restricts growth, excluded residents do not disappear; they move elsewhere in the metropolitan area, often increasing costs for other cities.

Planning

Local government activity that shapes public facilities, land use, community goals, development, transportation, housing, and environmental protection.

City planning

The original term for local government’s role in determining the location of streets and other public facilities.

Master plan

A city map showing the location of present and future streets and public facilities.

Gridiron plan

A street layout based on straight intersecting streets and squares, used in many early American cities.

William Penn’s plan for Philadelphia

A 1682 example of early American city planning using a gridiron street pattern.

Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, DC

A 1791 city plan using radial streets cutting through a grid pattern.

Comprehensive planning

Local government involvement in determining community goals not only in land use and physical development, but also in population growth, health and safety, transportation, the environment, and other areas.

Community goals

Planning priorities involving land use, population growth, health, safety, housing, welfare, education, transportation, economic development, culture, lifestyle, beautification, historic preservation, and environmental protection.

American Institute of Planners (AIP)

Professional organization for planners that publishes a journal and grants professional credentials.

Professional planners

University graduates in city planning who help prepare comprehensive plans and influence community development policy.

Planning commission

A citizen body appointed by local officials to help prepare comprehensive plans, hold hearings, gather citizen input, and support planning decisions.

Citizen input in planning

Public participation through planning commissions and hearings used to build support for comprehensive plans.

Advisory role of planners

Planners and planning commissions usually recommend policies, but city councils must enact plans for them to become law.

Influence of planners

Planners can shape community policy by initiating discussions, creating plans, setting agendas, projecting a future image of the city, and recommending development goals.

Opposition to planning

The argument that government planning limits property rights, increases bureaucracy, raises housing costs, delays development, restricts jobs, and interferes with market decisions.

Marketplace approach to land use

The view that individual property owners and market prices allocate land better than centralized government planning.

Zoning

Local government ordinances that divide communities into residential, commercial, and industrial zones and require landowners to use land according to the rules of each zone.

Zoning ordinance

A law dividing land into districts and regulating how land and buildings may be used and developed.

Residential zones

Areas designated for housing, such as single

Commercial zones

Areas designated for business activity such as stores, offices, restaurants, hotels, or retail development.

Industrial zones

Areas designated for manufacturing or industrial activity, sometimes divided into light industrial and heavy industrial uses.

Purpose of zoning

To separate incompatible land uses, protect residential property values, guide development, and implement the comprehensive plan.

Nonconforming use

A land use that existed before a zoning ordinance and is allowed to continue even though it no longer fits the new zoning rules.

Rezoning

Changing the zoning classification of a property, often requested by owners to increase property value or allow different development.

Public hearing

A meeting where citizens, planners, property owners, and officials discuss proposed plans, zoning changes, or development issues before decisions are made.

Zoning variance

An exception to the zoning ordinance applied to a particular piece of property.

Spot zoning

Granting special zoning treatment to a specific property in a way that may undermine the broader zoning plan.

Subdivision control

Regulations governing the dividing of land areas into lots.

Subdivision regulations

Rules governing how land is divided into smaller lots and prepared for development, including lot size, streets, sewers, water mains, parks, playgrounds, and sidewalks.

Plats

Plans for subdividing land and for improvements that must be submitted to a planning commission for approval before deeds can be recorded.

Official map

Shows proposed and existing streets, water mains, public utilities, and other public facilities; must be approved by city council.

Building codes

Local government regulations requiring building permits and inspections of new construction to ensure compliance with detailed specifications.

Building permit

Official permission required before construction begins, showing that the project must meet building code standards.

Building inspectors

Officials who inspect construction sites to make sure work follows building codes.

Housing codes

Rules requiring existing housing structures to meet minimum standards for fire safety, ventilation, plumbing, sanitation, and building condition.

Capital improvement program (CIP)

The planned schedule of new public projects by a local government.

Capital improvements

Long

Environmental regulations

Government rules used to control development and protect natural resources, air, water, land, historic sites, scenic areas, wildlife habitats, and public health.

Areas of critical concern

Land on which governments wish to halt construction.

Environmental impact statements

Assessments of the environmental consequences of proposed construction or land

Environmental departments

Separate local or state agencies that often enforce environmental rules, requiring developers to work with both planning and environmental bureaucracies.

Innovative planning practices

More flexible land

Planned urban development (PUD)

Special ordinances, usually negotiated among developers and city officials, that approve a mixed

Mixed

use development

Exaction

A fee that pays local government’s costs in connection with new development; it can be money or land given to local government in exchange for approval of land