Legal Implementation of a Satellite City Plan: the Planned Disposition of Public Land Jerome Pratter
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Urban Law Annual ; Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law Volume 1969 January 1969 Legal Implementation of a Satellite City Plan: The Planned Disposition of Public Land Jerome Pratter Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_urbanlaw Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Jerome Pratter, Legal Implementation of a Satellite City Plan: The Planned Disposition of Public Land, 1969 Urb. L. Ann. 1 (1969) Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_urbanlaw/vol1969/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Urban Law Annual ; Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LEGAL IMPLEMENTATION OF A SATELLITE CITY PLAN: THE PLANNED DISPOSITION OF PUBLIC LAND* JEROME PRATTERt At no time in our history have the problems of urban living received so much attention. Present deficiencies in our cities and the projected increase in the urban population are forcing metropolitan areas to undertake the massive, simultaneous tasks of redeveloping their exist- ing physical environment and planning for their expansion. The starting point for this effort is a widespread attitude about urban growth as it has occurred in this country: Our cities grow by accident, by whim of the private developer and public agencies.... By this irrational process, non-communi- ties are born-formless places, without order, beauty or reason, with no visible respect for people or the land.... The vast, form- less spread of housing, pierced by the unrelated spotting of schools, churches, stores, creates areas so huge and irrational that they are out of scale with people-beyond their grasp and compre- hension-too big for people to feel a part of, responsible for, im- portant in .... 1 As a response to these conditions, many metropolitan areas are pre- paring master plans to guide their future development. Such a plan 2 *This study is one of several studies of the Memphis, Tennessee, metropolitan area which were carried out during the 1967-68 academic year by students in the LL.M. program in Urban Studies at Washington University, School of Law. tGeneral Counsel to Team Four Inc., Clayton, Missouri; B.A. Harvard, 1963; J.D., University of Michigan, 1967; LL.M. in Urban Studies, Washington Uni- versity, 1968. 1. Hearings on New Communities Section, Title II of the 1966 Housing Bill, 90th Cong. (1966) (statement of James W. Rouse) quoted in Hoppenfield, A Sketch of the Planning-BuildingProcess for Columbia, Maryland, 33 J. Am. Insti- tute of Planners 398, 399 (1967). 2. MEMPHIS-SHELBY COUNTY PLANNING COMM'N, MEMPHIS METROPOLITAN MASTER PLAN (1966). Washington University Open Scholarship URBAN LAW ANNUAL has been prepared for the metropolitan area of Memphis, Tennessee, by the professional staff serving the combined Memphis and Shelby County Planning Commissions. Like most plans, the Memphis plan contains maps and text depicting future land uses, growth patterns, and population distribution. Like most plans, the Memphis plan does not discuss the legal problems of effectively implementing its goals.3 Also like many other plans, including the now-famous plan for the year 2000 for Washington, D. C.,4 the Memphis plan projects a pat- tern of regional growth along radial corridors which contemplates the development of a series of metropolitan subcenters. This paper will explore some of the legal difficulties associated with the implementa- tion of plans for one of these subcenters-the development of a satel- lite city on 5000 acres of presently undeveloped public land. I. BACKGROUND A. The Site and Past Planning The City of Memphis is located on the Mississippi River, in the extreme southwestern corner of the State of Tennessee. To the west, across the river, is Arkansas and to the south, Mississippi. The site discussed in this paper lies approximately ten miles directly east of the heart of the City's central business district, and is presently used as the Shelby County Penal Farm. It is located in Shelby County, on the edge of the Memphis city limits. (See map.) Originally acquired by Shelby County in 1928 with the purchase of 1600 acres, the farm expanded to its maximum size of approximately 5017 acres by 1942. Today, the Penal Farm area is slightly smaller as a result of minor dispositions and road dedications. An area this size in the very heart of a metropolitan region obvi- ously presents very attractive possibilities for development. Attention was first directed to the farm in 1955, when the University of Tennes- see School of Agriculture made an analysis of its operation. This study concluded that the total acreage needed for farming could be reduced substantially without sacrificing the County's investment or the Farm's 3. The plan for Germantown, Maryland states: Implementation ... must now be considered as a continuing process, wherein full use is made of all available codes, regulations, procedures and policies that will carry out the intent of the Plan. NATIONAL CAPITAL PARK AND PLANNING COMM'N, MASTER PLAN FOR GERMAN- TOWN, MARYLAND, at 35 (1966). 4. NATIONAL CAPITAL PARK AND PLANNING COMM'N, A PoLIciEs PLAN FOR THE YEAR 2000 (1961). https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_urbanlaw/vol1969/iss1/2 SATELLITE CITY PLAN CITY OF MEMPHIS AND SHELBY COUNTY PENAL FARM Washington University Open Scholarship URBAN LAW ANNUAL utility.5 The Agriculture School report did not specifically recommend a future use for the property, but the County, hoping to sell some of the property and to increase its tax base, responded in 1960 by rezon- ing for industrial use 400 acres in the western, and 2000 acres in the eastern sections of the farm. However, only one 10-acre site on the west was sold and developed. In 1962, this disposition policy was re- versed and no land has been sold since that time.6 To develop some guidelines for the future use of the penal farm property, the County Quarterly Court in August of 1964 officially re- quested that the joint city-county planning commission determine "the most economical and best uses" for the Penal Farm property.' This request was received with relief by many members of the Mem- phis-Shelby County Planning Commission. The Commission and its staff, then involved with revising the metropolitan area's comprehen- sive plan and forecasting future development requirements, had feared that the County Quarterly Court would ignore the long range poten- tial for the site and dispose of the property in a haphazard piecemeal fashion in order to meet its increasing fiscal obligations. The city's incorporated suburban fringe had already reached the western edge of the farm and was beginning to fill in. Memphis planners estimated that the sale of the Penal Farm land would produce about $5000 per acre on the average, as some of the land was presently below the flood line and was not readily marketable. The general aim of the Planning Commission study was to explore the relationship between the Penal Farm and the overall metropolitan plan which had recently been updated, revised, and extended. The Memphis metro-plan had noted the extent to which the Memphis metropolitan area had developed as low-density suburban scatter.8 Re- jecting the continuation of the existing Memphis growth pattern, the planners stated that: 5. MEMPHIS-SHELBY COUNTY PLANNING COMM'N, PENAL FARM STUDY, at 2-3 (1966) [hereinafter cited as PENAL FARM STUDY]. 6. Id. 7. Id. at 1. 8. Much like the Washington, D.C. and the Denver, Colorado plans, the Mem- phis plan reflects five planner biases. First, the present pattern of scattered devel- opment is inherently bad. Second, open space must be preserved so as to provide garden cities. Third, present density patterns and the central business district must be preserved. Fourth, the distance from home to work must be reduced. Fifth, a wider range of housing types and locations must be provided. See, Wheaton, Operations Research for Metropolitan Planning, 29 J. AMs. INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS 250, 254-55 (1963). https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_urbanlaw/vol1969/iss1/2 SATELLITE CITY PLAN Continuation of present trends would extend existing policies and characteristics of development: low densities and dispersed development, greater travel times, and service costs increasing at a greater level than population increases. 9 A multiple centers pattern was recommended by the Planning Com- mission as the general form of development. In a study of the Penal Farm, the Planning Commission summarized the goals of this pattern as follows: Each center would serve a community and would include a complex of residential, commercial, office, and service activities. Open space, where practicable would surround and give defini- tion to communities. Within each community a number of neigh- borhoods would provide individual identity with a variety of dwelling unit types and densities. Each neighborhood and com- munity would provide conveniences consistent with present stan- dards of shopping and public facilities.10 The Penal Farm was suggested as the nucleus of one such subcity. B. The Development Opportunity The Penal Farm site offers Memphis a unique opportunity. The planning and development of a complete community, starting with raw land, affords many of the same advantages as the British new town sites. The new community can become an important component in the implementation of the overall metropolitan regional plan. By careful selection of development policies the new satellite community can also serve to alleviate some of the city's pressing urban problems, such as improving housing quality and creating new jobs. However, possibly the greatest potential lies in the very scale of planning avail- able when an entire community is developed.