Growth management: A renewed agenda for states

Excerpt

NATURAL resource managers have long been active in formulating and administering government policies for environmental conservation. Federal law in this area has been explored exhaustively in other papers. In recent years, state and local governments have become more aggressive in regulating activities in the woods, fields, and water bodies for preservation of these natural resource values. Typically, states regulate activities through such authorities as forest practice, wetlands preservation, and groundwater management acts. Local governments traditionally have used their police powers, such as zoning, to regulate land use. Now, a new approach being formulated by some states and regional authorities may involve a much more extensive and comprehensive means of managing resources than hitherto exercised by the states. Growth management and comprehensive planning acts are being enacted that may change not only the nature of land use but also the decision-making processes that affect our social and economic geography.

Two “waves”

States are beginning to reassert their hegemony in land use policy, and this time the “quiet revolution” (3) promises to have a more sustained impact on the landscape. John DeGrove (4) described state land use policies as two separate “waves” of activist …