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THE AVALANCHE OF LAND USE LITERATURE
Recent years have seen a great outpouring of documents on land use in the United States - research reports; theoretical models which range from the mathematically elegant to the extremely simplified subjective description; polemics on specific propositions ranging from preservation or restoration of a local site to general policies toward changing the amount of land used for a particular purpose across the entire nation; careful reviews of current policies; and thoughtful proposals for change.1
The outpouring is not always a coherent body of material. The models are seldom used to resolve specific issues. Both the research reports and the polemic documents frequently depend upon terms which are either ill-defined or lacking in comparability from one case to the next. Even the terms "land use" and "problem" turn out to vary significantly in specificity, scope, and concept from one document to another.
CALLS FOR STATE LAND USE PLANS
At the same time, there have been repeated calls for state - and national - land use plans.2 Controversies over the location of specific large developments for industry, commerce, transportation, waste disposal, or homes almost invariably lead to assertions that the basic cause of the issue is the lack of an "over-all plan". The general problem has been described by a subcommittee of the former Citizens Advisory Committee to the Governor's Environmental Quality Council in 1972:3
No comprehensive inventories are available of ... the kinds of lands protected. Critical land resources are being committed with no appreciation of the total needs or the alternatives. As long as this information is unavailable ... the public cannot knowledgeably express its preference, and misallocations will continue. Until statewide land use planning is undertaken there will be no way to discover emerging conflicts among various levels of government and private interests and no basis for the rational resolution of conflicts.
Current statements urging statewide and regional land use plans are not the first to state or imply the need for a comprehensive land resource information system as an integral part of such planning. The same need was expressed in earlier studies and in the legislation that created the Minnesota
1 Especially useful periodical bibliographies and reviews, covering the full spectrum of publications dealing with land use, appear in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners, published bimonthly by the American Institute of Planners; Urban Land, published monthly by the Urban Land Institute; Planning, published monthly except March-April by the American Society of Planning Officials; and Land Use Planning Reports, published weekly by Plus Publications, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
2 For recent comprehensive, national views and perspectives on land use issues, see the following books.
Donald M. McAllister, Environment: a New Focus for Land Use
Planning, Washington: National Science Foundation, 1973. William K. Reilly (ed.),
The Use of the Land: A Citizens Policy Guide to Urban Growth, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, 1973.
Report of a Task Force on Land Use and Urban Growth supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Ronald G. Ridker (ed.), Population, Resources, and the Environment, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, 1972. Volume III of Commission Reports.
Land Use and the Environment: An Anthology of Readings, Washing-ton: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1973, especially the
sections on "The Relationship between Land Use and Environmental Quality" and "National Land Use Policy", pp. 69-130.
3 Environmental Quality, Policies, and Decision-Making in Minnesota, 1972. Report prepared by the State Environmental Policy Subcommittee, Citizens Advisory Committee, Governor's Environmental Quality Council, December, 1972. Quotation from pg. 55.
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Resources Commission, the State Planning Agency, and the authority for the Regional Development Commissions.4
Comprehensive plans generally exist for counties in Minnesota; but many problems and issues transcend county boundaries, and some call for statewide perspective.
A state land use plan would be essentially the state public's judgment - expressed through its government - of the most desirable use of each type of site and location within its jurisdiction.5 Its purpose would be to guide the allocation of land to different inter-related uses. It would be a set of policies concerning land allocation.
But those policies apply to the particular land within the state, and they apply in specific ways to specific locations and resources. Hence it must be possible to show on a map the potential patterns of land allocation and resource use which the policies actually produce. Otherwise the policies are empty rhetoric with uncertain implications at best, and circumvention of major problems at worst.
This means that a state plan must include a recommended broad pattern of land use zoning. Large, regional "zones" already exist de facto in many parts of the state (see Figure 1). They have evolved in the market place as a result of the localization of particular resources, accessibility, or ideas.6 Most issues have arisen where those zones have been ignored, or around the edges of the zones, where the situation is fuzzy, the zone has not been clearly identified or understood, and there are no performance criteria. Examples are residential developments that have strayed into prime crop land, or large-scale ore-processing operations that strayed away from the de facto mineral industry zone on the Iron Ranges into the North Shore coastal zone of prime scenic, high-relief terrain.
The plan must assume 1) that there will be a continuing demand for land to be developed or preserved; 2) that the demand will continue to fall within stable, broad classes of development or preservation - for example, cultivation, commercial forestry, non-farm residential, commercial-light industrial-institutional, heavy industry, recreational open space, or natural open space; 3) that as the need for more land arises, there will always be a question of priority - which location to develop or preserve next for any given use.
Within that framework of demand, the state land use plan indicates the suitability and the priority, for development or preservation, of each type of site in each type of location (See page 14). It attempts to answer certain basic questions. What is the suitability of a given type of site in a given location for a given class of development? For a given class of preservation? And, what is its priority for development among all the suitable sites and locations? In other words, what is the most sensible development, in what chronological order, and where? The plan is based on the best available data and analysis of sites and locations.
The first use of the plan should be to guide the location and development of public facilities built by the government that made the plan. But the great bulk of development is private. So most use of the plan would be to evaluate proposals from private developers or industries.
The plan will not be used as a rigid blue print. Rather, it will provide the basis for regional commissions and state agencies to guide and review all local and special agency plans and proposals - public and private - within the limits of powers delegated to them by the legislature. Without a state plan there is no base against which to evaluate many local or regional plans, development proposals, preservation proposals, complaints, or environmental impact statements. The plan is subject to modification with changes in the general public understanding of the situation. But it is the only specific evidence of coherent public concern about the environment.
4 John R. Borchert, George W. Orning, Les Maki, and Joseph Stinchfield, Minnesota's Lakeshore, Part I (Resources, Development, Policy Needs) and Part II (Statistical Summary), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, 1970; the Omnibus Natural Resources Act of 1963 (Minnesota Laws Ch. 790); see also references in footnote 9.
5 Widely publicized initial moves in this direction are the State of Hawaii Land Use Districts and Regulations Review, Honolulu: State of Hawaii Land Use Commission, 1969; and the California Tomorrow Plan (Alfred Heller, ed.), Los Altos, California: William Kaufman, Inc., 1971. Both illustrate, at different scales, the enormous amount of technical work and public discussion which lies ahead. This is also illustrated by the recent wide-ranging and scholarly report, A Land Use Program for Colorado, Denver: The Colorado Land Use Commission 1974.
6 John R. Borchert and Donald D. Carroll, Minnesota Land Use and Settlement 1985, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs for Minnesota State Planning Agency, 1970.
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THE PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS
Four principal questions arise out of the call for state land use planning coupled with the confusion about what constitutes land use problems.
Like any other group concerned with the study of land use, the staff of the Minnesota Land Management Information Study has had to confront these questions. We have felt the need to explore them in order to place the present work program and past products of the study in perspective. This paper is an effort to provide that perspective in brief form.
Two basic themes emerge from the analysis. 1) Regardless of how the planning and regulation of land use are structured, it is absolutely essential that there be a statewide, continuing inventory of land resources, use, value, and ownership, with periodic summaries, analyses, and projections. 2) Although significant efforts are now under way as a result of recent legislation, a very large amount of unavoidable technical work remains to be done. Much of the work involves new patterns of record-keeping and cooperation among many different agencies and levels of government.
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