LAW551

Letter Grading

GPA LECTURE COURSES

This course introduces students to land use law -the law that regulates how individuals and communities use and develop land in the United States. The course will cover the basics of zoning, planning designations, aesthetic controls, and local land use administrative proceedings. The reading will cover the constitutional constraints on how local governments regulate land use found primarily in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Because politics, economics, and social norms also shape the use and development of land, the readings discuss the relationship between formal and informal land use controls that govern land use patterns. Students will explore the role of land use law (broadly defined) within important public policy debates that impact communities nationwide, including debates on how land use law might generate, perpetuate, or ameliorate inequitable outcomes-such as racial and economic residential segregation-or facilitate or obstruct climate policy or local and regional economic development strategies.