URBAN SPRAWL AND LEGAL REFORM. IN SPRAWL CITY. RACE, POLITICS, AND PLANNING IN ATLANTA

This paper examines the legal frameworks within which sprawl-related decisions occur and suggests reforms that may deter sprawl, or at least address its associated harms. Well-established legal presumptions and traditional roles of federal, state, and local government make difficult any significant new attempts to alleviate and prevent harms associated with urban sprawl's cross-jurisdictional effects and roots. Sprawl and current legal frameworks are mismatched. Local governments traditionally make land use choices, yet sprawl arises out of dynamics, causes and effects that tend, at a minimum, to be regional. Any shift away from state and local governments' primacy in regulating land use, however, would be a major change in allocations of governmental responsibilities. Nevertheless, an increased federal role is constitutionally permissible, politically likely, and desirable. If federal reforms to deter sprawl or address its ills are enacted, monetary incentives in the form of conditional federal spending are preferable to regulatory coercion or substantial federal invention in land use decision-making.