Would States Make Better Land Use Decisions Than Local Governements? | Feb 12th at 2:51pm
In order to increase the density of our communities, Ed Glaeser suggested taking away land use decisions from local governments and instead leaving these decisions up to state governments. The thinking is that NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard, the term given to those that oppose developments and projects that may benefit the city or region as a whole) is a major barrier to increasing the density of neighborhoods.
I’m just not very certain that statehouses will make the proper land use decisions. State governments tend to have a more suburban or rural framework than municipal governments.
John Petro is an urban policy analyst at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy where he heads up the Progressive Urban Model Policies (PUMP) Project. The goal of PUMP is to facilitate progressive change in cities by helping local activists, organizers, and elected officials replicate and expand model policies in a number of key issue areas in urban policy.
