State control of land use

Overview

In US context, "State" means state-level government, as opposed to Federal (National) or local. 

However, many of the issues and arguments applicable to [US] state-level control may be applied to 'State' as in national control elsewhere. In other words, it means non-local. 

 

California

see SB35 for 2017-18 legislative proposal to increase state's ability to encourage and enforce housing goals in places where there is deemed to be insufficient housing production. 

The office of the sponsoring official, Senator Scott Wiener, has this statement on local control: [citation needed]

"every community has a civic responsibility to build housing. Local control should be used to determine HOW you build enough housing within your community, not whether you have to."

 

Massachusetts Chapter 40B, "Anti-Snob Law"

In 1969 Massachusetts enacted the Massachusetts Comprehensive Permit Act: Chapter 40B, originally referred to as the anti-snob zoning law. Under this statute, in municipalities with less than 10% affordable housing, a developer of affordable housing may seek waiver of local zoning and other requirements from the local zoning board of appeals, with review available from the state Housing Appeals Committee if the waiver is denied. Similar laws are in place in other parts of the United States (e.g., Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Illinois), although their effectiveness is disputed.

 

References

• Fischel, William A. Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation. (2015). 
   
• Fulton, William, and Paul Shigley. Guide to California Planning. (4th edition, 2012). 
   
• Galante, Carol, and Carolina Reid. "Expanding Housing Supply in California: A New Framework for State Land Use Regulation." Journal of Case Study Research: A Publication of the Center for California Real Estate, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Summer 2016).  http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/CCRE_Journal_-_Expanding_Housing_Supply_in_California_-_A_New_Framework_for_State_Land_Use_Regulation.pdf.
   
• Hirt, Sonia. Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation. (Cornell University Press, 2014).
   
• Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Enrico Moretti. "Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation." Working paper, May 18, 2017. http://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/growth.pdf.
  [earlier version: 
  Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Enrico Moretti. 
  "Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth." NBER Working Paper 21154, 2015. http://www.nber.org/papers/w21154.
  Preprint: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=housing_law_and_policy]. 
   
• Reid, Carolina K., Carol Galante, and Ashley F. Weinstein-Carnes. "Addressing California's Housing Shortage: Lessons from Massachusetts Chapter 40B." ournal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, Volume 25, Number 2 (2017),
  http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/AH_25-2_15Reid.pdf.
   
• Toll, Seymour. Zoned American. (1969). Outstanding legal/cultural study of the origins and development of US zoning practices.
  [his book is long out of print and somewhat hard to find, but YIMBYwiki editor User:Tmccormick has copy if you want to borrow].