Richard K. Norton

More and Better Local Planning: State-Mandated Local Planning in Coastal North Carolina

Abstract Academics, public officials, and citizens increasingly advocate more and better local planning as a central component of regional growth management. They assume that local plans will provide meaningful policy guidance to local officials when making land use-related policy decisions, and that local officials will implement their plans. This article presents findings from an evaluation of state-mandated local planning in coastal North Carolina during the mid 1990s. All 20 coastal counties and 72 municipalities were preparing plans consistent with the states procedural requirements during this time, and many were using those plans to at least some extent when making land use-related policy decisions. Taken altogether, however, the plans were weak analytically and substantively, providing limited guidance for growth management, especially in terms of coastal area resource protection. The promise of state-mandated local planning for managing growth at the regional level is discussed in light of North Carolinas experiences.

Local Commitment to State-Mandated Planning in Coastal North Carolina

A consistent finding from recent work on the evaluation of planning outcomes has been that local commitment to planning plays a vital role in explaining those outcomes, especially when planning is promoted as a way to address regional development management concerns. While the importance of local commitment is not surprising, many questions remain, such as what “local commitment” means, what motivates it, and how it operates to affect local planning efforts and outcomes. This article presents results from a study of state-mandated local planning in coastal North Carolina during the mid-1990s, focusing on the factors that appear to motivate local elected officials’ commitment to planning and the influence of their commitment on planning outcomes. Taken altogether, coastal localities generally failed to address coastal resource protection through their local planning beyond complying with minimum state resource protection rules. This was largely because of resistance to the imposition of state-level policies through local planning requirements. State mandates appeared to foster local commitment to planning but not the state’s development management goals. Within that context, local elected officials’ commitment to planning played an important role in enhancing both plan quality and plan implementation.

Planning for School Facilities School Board Decision Making and Local Coordination in Michigan

A prominent part of current debates on sprawl involves the relationship between schools and communities. Two key questions on this issue are to what extent considerations about community growth and development influence school boards as they decide, first, whether to renovate an existing school or build new and second, if building new, whether to site the new school in an urban or exurban location. Research on these questions to date has relied largely on case study or anecdotal analysis and has yielded a variety of recommended policy reforms. This paper presents the results of a systematic statewide study of local school board decision making in Michigan. Based primarily on a survey of school district superintendents and a parallel survey of local government officials, along with review of demographic data and selected local plans, the study was designed to test a number of assertions commonly made in the literature about factors influencing school board decision making. The findings suggest that school boards, in general, are influenced most by a sense of competition with neighboring districts and by shifting demographics. Moreover, little meaningful coordination is occurring between school districts and local governments, largely because of the institutional arrangements that shape the school board decision-making process.

Planning Consultants’ Influence on Local Comprehensive Plans

Many planners work at private consulting firms, and many local governments use their services, but we have little idea of how consultant involvement affects plans. Analyzing data from a survey of local officials who engage planning consultants, we find that while engaging consultants does not appear to nudge local officials in a policy direction different from their preferences, it does appear to yield plans with a policy focus more oriented toward smart growth. This raises questions about the kind and degree of consultants’ impact on the legitimacy of the planning process.

Planning Consultants and Local Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planning consultants are a vital part of the local government planning process. We explore who hires consultants, the types of tasks that they typically perform, and differences in the values of planning consultants and their clients. We conduct parallel surveys of planning consultants and local government officials, and find that the use of consultants is widespread: They are hired primarily to reduce the costs of maintaining in-house planning staff and to provide as-needed technical expertise. Both planning officials and consultants agree on the priority given to well–accepted planning principles, even though each group thinks they hold planning principles in higher esteem than the other. Yet, we find that the actual differences between the self-professed values of the two groups are negligible. Takeaway for practice: This study suggests that both consultants and their clients believe that the advantages of hiring consultants, including supplementing in-house staff, providing workforce flexibility, and offering technical expertise, outweigh the disadvantages of possibly higher costs and lack of local knowledge. The study provides reasons for optimism that outsourcing planning work does not change the underlying planning values of the agencies employing the consultants, or the goals and objectives of the planning work. Research support: Wayne State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Drawing Lines in Law Books and on Sandy Beaches: Marking Ordinary High Water on Michigan's Great Lakes Shorelines under the Public Trust Doctrine

In 1968 the Michigan Legislature adopted an elevation-based approach for discerning the ordinary high water mark (OHWM) along the states Great Lakes shorelines pursuant to the public trust doctrine. In 2005 the Michigan Supreme Court reaffirmed that Michigans public trust interest extends up to the OHWM, but it articulated a different standard for discerning that OHWM, noting in passing that the states statutory standard relates only to certain regulatory authorities. The court left unresolved the questions of exactly how these two methods of marking ordinary high water relate to one another and precisely how far up the shore the states authorities to regulate private shoreline development extends. We first describe how the Great Lakes states, including Michigan, have adapted the public trust doctrine to their Great Lakes shorelines, particularly in terms of demarcating boundaries. We then discuss attributes of the Great Lakes that make those efforts problematic and present original data on changing water levels and shoreline profiles along Lake Michigan over time. Based on that analysis, we conclude that while use of an OHWM on Great Lakes shorelines makes sense, the states statutory elevation-based OHWM standard makes little sense given Great Lakes shoreline dynamics. We identify further legal and policy issues the state will likely confront as it attempts to mark OHW in the foreseeable future given both the state of the law and the nature of the Great Lakes.

Planning, Law, and Property Rights: A US–European Cross-national Contemplation

Abstract Globalization today encompasses multinational dialogues on the appropriate role for planning in mediating relationships between individual and community, state and citizen, government and market, and people and property. Yet confusion persists as speakers from one country attempt to convey concepts different from what listeners from another country hear. This paper provides a cross-national contemplation on the sources of that confusion, comparing the USA to Western Continental Europe, primarily Germany. Americans and Europeans engage fundamentally different worldviews in promoting progress while reconciling harms, stemming from different philosophical traditions that can be broadly characterized as a Millian versus a Hegelian liberalism, respectively.

Lessons from Michigan’s perfect storm: Term-limited legislature restores Mining’s exemption from local zoning

From hydrofracking regulation to pipeline and renewable energy facility siting, resource‐related land use controls—and protections—are increasingly promulgated as inflexible statewide policies by state legislatures, sometimes in response to local exclusionary zoning practices. As recent events in Michigan illustrate, even a poster child for good local planning—recently vindicated in the stateʼns highest court for its careful balancing of resource needs against local industrial impacts—remains vulnerable to industry influence within a state legislature whose long‐term vision and institutional memory have been shrunken by term limits.—Ed.

Land and water governance on the shores of the Laurentian Great Lakes

The Laurentian Great Lakes Basin is large and complex, as is its institutional setting. Given these characteristics, Great Lakes boundaries are both horizontal and fluid, and governance at the Great Lakes water/land interface implicates at least four different frontiers of planning and management. While substantial multinational and sub-national policy regimes have formed over the last century to improve Great Lakes water quantity and water quality management, parallel arrangements have not formed to manage better shoreland boundaries and frontiers.