Edward J. Kaiser

Twentieth Century Land Use Planning: A Stalwart Family Tree

Abstract The twentieth century land use plan has evolved from simple roots in civic design and zoning into an intricate combination of design, policy, and management. Its family tree illustrates how new branches growing from different disciplinary roots have been integrated into contemporary hybrid plans. A source of the vitality of traditional land use planning has been its ability to respond to and incorporate new approaches, including verbal policy plans, growth management plans, and land classification plans. Despite predictions of its demise, land use planning is still a mainstay of efforts to manage community change, while becoming more participatory and electronically based, and concerned with increasingly complex issues.

Urban Violence and Residential Mobility

Abstract Data from a recently completed national longitudinal survey suggest, contrary to popular expectations, that individual perceptions of local violence have at best only a very moderate influence on significant changes in residential location, that concern with crime problems does not seem to result in a major exodus to the suburbs, and that what little effect urban crime has on mobility is stronger for the poor and black than for high and middle income whites. The findings are interpreted to indicate that those groups who are most affected by crime and violence, the poor and the black, are precisely those groups least able to escape the problem through residential relocation.

Public Policy and The Residential Development Process

Abstract The land use pattern emerging on the edges of U.S. urban areas is the result of a complex, interdependent, private-public process in which the private realm appears to take most of the initiative. This article focuses on the chainlike nature of the single-family residential development process, with a view toward implications for local planning policy. In order to guide the development process, a mix of policies must affect every decision link in the chain, from the predevelopment landowners decision to hold or sell his land to the households decision to move and its selection of a new residence.

Costs and benefits of urban erosion and sediment control: The North Carolina experience

The EPA’s new nonpoint source pollution control requirements will soon institutionalize urban erosion and sediment pollution control practices nationwide. The public and private sector costs and social benefits associated with North Carolina’s program (one of the strongest programs in the country in terms of implementation authority, staffing levels, and comprehensiveness of coverage) are examined to provide general policy guidance on questions relating to the likely burden the new best management practices will have on the development industry, the likely costs and benefits of such a program, and the feasibility of running a program on a cost recovery basis. We found that urban erosion and sediment control requirements were not particularly burdensome to the development industry (adding about 4% on average to development costs). Public-sector program costs ranged between

Evaluating the effects of local floodplain management policies on property owner behavior

2.4 and

Predicting the Behavior of Predevelopment Landowners on the Urban Fringe

4.8 million in fiscal year 1989. Our contingent valuation survey suggests that urban households in North Carolina are willing to pay somewhere between

Prediction of Residential Movement and Spatial Allocation

7.1 and

Financial Performance Guarantees: The State of Practice

14.2 million a year to maintain current levels of sediment pollution control. Our benefit-cost analysis suggests that the overall ratio is likely to be positive, although a definitive figure is elusive. Lastly, we found that several North Carolina localities have cost recovery fee systems that are at least partially self-financing.

Private Profit and Public Safety as Outcomes of Local Land-Use Regulation

Floodplain management programs have been adopted by more than 85% of local governments in the nation with designated flood hazard areas. Yet, there has been little evaluation of the influence of floodplain policies on private sector decisions. This article examines the degree to which riverine floodplain management affects purchase and mitigation decisions made by owners of developed floodplain property in ten selected cities in the United States. We find that the stringency of such policies does not lessen floodplain property buying because of the overriding importance of site amenity factors. Indeed, flood protection measures incorporated into development projects appear to add to the attractiveness of floodplain location by increasing the perceived safety from the hazard. Property owner responses to the flood hazard after occupancy involve political action more often than individual on-site mitigation. Floodplain programs only minimally encourage on-site mitigation by the owner because most owners have not experienced a flood and many are unaware of the flood threat. It is suggested that floodplain programs will be more effective in meeting their objectives if they are directed at intervention points earlier in the land conversion process.

Unleashing the power of planning to create Disaster-Resistant communities

Abstract If the planner had a simple predictive technique to assess the likelihood that a parcel in nonurban use on the urban fringe would be sold during the next few years, he would be in a better position to anticipate the location of new urban fringe development. Such a model was developed from tests in two North Carolina cities, utilizing landowner and property information generally available in public records or in the planners files. Utilizing data on how long the land had been held prior to the start of the study period, whether or not the owner lived on the land, whether or not the owner was retired, whether the ownership was single or joint, the assessed value of the land, and the amount of urban development surrounding the parcel, the model was able to classify from 60 to 80 percent of the sample parcels correctly as being “sold” or “held” over the 10-year test period.