The Role of the Federal Government in Urban Land Use Planning

Fordham Law Review Volume 29 Issue 4 Article 3 1961 The Role of the Federal Government in Urban Land Use Planning John T. Howard Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation John T. Howard, The Role of the Federal Government in Urban Land Use Planning, 29 Fordham L. Rev. 657 (1961). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol29/iss4/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Role of the Federal Government in Urban Land Use Planning Cover Page Footnote Head of Department City and Regional Planning, MassachusettsInstitute of Technology This article is available in Fordham Law Review: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol29/iss4/3 THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNIENT IN URBAN LAND USE PLANNING JOHN T. HOWARD* RBAN land use planning, as the phrase is used in this paper, refers U to the planning of the entire urban physical environment in terms of the location (pattern, arrangement, interrelationships) and the quality (density, bulk, design) of all the land uses that comprise a "city." Such planning is comprehensive in coverage: all of a metropolitan area, or at least all of a single city or county's area of jurisdiction. Undertaken not only for, but also in behalf of, an entire urban community, it is almost by definition a governmental activity, since only a governmental unit is formally designated ("with the consent of the governed") to represent the totality of interests within its jurisdiction.' Urban land use planning is only one phase of the process through which our cities grow and change their shape and form. The role of the federal government can be effectively considered only against the back- ground of the process as a whole. The end of the process is, of course, the act of development (or re- development) of land for any of the many component urban land uses- residence, industry, stores, offices, schools, churches, playgrounds, and so forth. This act of development is preceded by a decision to develop-for the "private" uses of land, by a private person or enterprise; for the "public" uses, by some agency of government. In the case of the governmental decision, it may or may not be influenced by urban land use planning, as performed by that or some other unit of government. In the case of the private decision, it is almost surely influenced, either positively or negatively, by some one or more prior governmental policies, programs, or regulations-zoning, tax assessment methods, water line extensions, FHA mortgage terms. And again, each of these governmental determinations may or may not have been influenced by or related to formal urban land use planning. Thus the tie through from the planning phase to its final objective, the actual development, is a tenuous one, varying in strength from place to place, from time to time, and from one kind or size of land use to another. But the planning itself is meaningless without that tie. Its effec- * Head of Department of City and Regional Planning, AMassachusetts Institute of Tcch- nology. 1. The fact that "land use planning" is sometimes properly undertaken by such civic associations as the New York Regional Plan Association, Inc., is irrelevant. When such nongovernmental bodies plan, they do so to plug a gap in governmental structure or func- tions in order to "educate" the public or public officials. 657 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29 tiveness in actually influencing urban growth and change may be helped or hindered, on purpose or accidentally, by interventions at any point along the line between the planner's drafting board or computer, and the first shovelful of earth. This article, then, will seek to appraise the role of the federal government, not merely in the making of urban land use plans, but also in the other governmental and private processes by which the plans are carried out, or distorted, or perverted. THE FEDERAL ROLE IN THE NATIONAL URBAN PATTERN Behind every local urban plan lies an appraisal of the growth and development prospects of the locality. Although perhaps peripheral to this article, the influence of federal decisions on the national pattern of dis- tribution of urban population and economic activity is too significant to ignore. It is the more significant because it is officially ignored as a matter of understandable political realism. In the early years of the Nation, federal policies were explicitly framed in terms of their intended effect on regional growth and development-the Homestead Act,2 to name but a single example. In more recent years, as it has seemed that federal action to develop one region could only be taken at the expense of another, the idea of explicit national regional development policies has been soft-pedaled. The federal action itself, however, has continued. Major national public works do influence the relative potential for growth and prosperity of different regions, and therefore of different cities. Power dams, flood control dams, irrigation projects, canals, seaways-these are obvious examples. They are approved or rejected through political pulling and hauling of affected special interests or areas. The antagonists fully recog- nize the developmental significance to the region, but their debate is wholly untouched and unilluminated by any attempt to frame a national policy, in terms of the aggregate of all national interests, as to the "best" disposition of our human and economic resources across the national landscape. The same can be said of federal action in control of rail and water freight rates: the impact upon regional development patterns is clear, but a national policy is absent. There is another form of federal action, more openly aimed at influencing the location of economic activity, exemplified by a formally adopted policy which might have drastically affected the pattern of urban growth (but didn't). This, shortly after the invention of atomic weapons, was a tax concession in the form of accelerated amortization offered to defense 2. Act of May 20, 1862, ch. 75, 12 Stat. 392 (now codified in scattered sections of 43 U.S.C.). 1961] FEDERAL ROLE plants if they would locate in "safe" areas.3 Rigorously applied, it would have resulted in a substantial part of the new post-war industrial plant that has been built in our biggest metropolitan areas (and helped their "population explosion") being built instead in isolated smaller cities, which would then have had more of the total population growth. The policy was abandoned in the face of the apparent economic reality of the efficiency of the very big city. This may or may not have been wise. In any case, this was an explicit policy of potentially far-reaching effect upon our national urban pattern, which however was first adopted and then abandoned without any apparent consideration of this aspect of its impact. Currently the federal government is once again about to formally in- tervene in regional economic development, pursuant to "depressed areas" legislation 1 Even here, this is a "crisis" approach, not backed up by long-range national planning policy studies. It may, of course, be wise to continue to leave federal decisions which have impact upon differential regional development to the present one- at-a-time methods of ad hoc competitive struggle. There is, however, a case to be made for setting up some machinery to keep track of what we are doing and to evaluate the consequences of alternative decisions in the light of their impact on regional and city growth and prosperity. This is the sort of mechanism for policy study that the National Re- sources Planning Board was developing into before it was killed in the early 1940's. If it had continued, some of our federal decisions might have been different; at least they would have been more knowledgeable. 3. See U.S. National Security Resources Board, Is Your Plant a Target? (1951). The Chairman of the NSRB was designated the "certifying authority" for accelerated tan amortization by Exec. Order 10172, 15 Fed. Reg. 6929 (1950), to administer Int. Rev. Code of 1939, § 124A, added by ch. 994, 64 Stat. 939 (1950) (now Int. Rev. Code of 1954, § 163). 4. Pub. L. No. 27, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. (Aay 1, 1961). 5. The Board originated as the National Planning Board, a part of the Public Worlks Administration. It took its final name in 1939, when it was moved into the Executive Office of the President, and died in 1943 when Congress refused to vote appropriations for it. It was basically a reporting agency, concentrating first on national problems requiring lon,- range planning, including public works, power and transportation, land and water u,2, housing, the structure of the national economy, the developmcnt of the national ressurce, and urbanism. As the war approached it shifted its view to war purposes. But the -hort- range necessities of war production were a diversion from the Board's original long-range concepts, and the dominance of the War Production Board and the military service reduced the Board's role to a minor one. When it again became interested in long-range planning, looking forward to demobilization while the war was still on, Congress regarded it as v onary and abandoned it. For a full discussion of the Board by one of its members sca Merriam, The National Resources Planning Board, 33 Am.

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