Land use Regulatory Tools in Chicago Metropolitan Areas to Control Urban Sprawl

My MSc. International Planning Thesis- Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, 2009

original title: Land use Regulatory Tools in Chicago Metropolitan Areas: Planning Officials’ Perceptions to Control Urban Sprawl

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275716950_Land_use_Regulatory_Tools_

ABSTRACT

Urban sprawl, fuelled by powerful growth, is unlikely to be controlled by macro-scale regional plans or by comprehensive reforms of the local government map. Land use regulations are the effective tools that have the power to implement growth management agendas and channel Metropolitan growth into more compact developments. Much attention has focused on state level adoption of growth management and planning mandates, but far less on local policies. Several important questions have not been addressed including planning officials’ perceptions to the factors that shape land use decisions, and intergovernmental collaborative efforts to reduce uncertainty in land regulation processes, the choices of policy instruments, and the role of political institutions.

This research investigates how local government regulation has responded to this trend. Land use regulation is empirically examined by interviewing planning officials’ and analysing their perception to the efficacy of local land use regulation in reducing urban sprawl and how much “smart growth” policies are implemented at the local level. The research shows that land use regulation at the local level in Chicago Metropolitan Area is not well focused on the implementation of smart growth principles. There is some indication that the land use decision process is highly fragmented with hundreds of governmental units, each focused on their own boundaries. The lack of guidance or a framework at the state level and lack of coordination among jurisdictions can also affect the growth management which is a key to reducing urban sprawl. Cities and counties in the state have chosen to rely on annexation and impact fees, two of the most prevalent devices found in the regulations analysed. This gives an indication that the initial approach to implementing smart growth in the state is probably by way of open-land and agricultural preservation. Still, the prevalence of even these approaches is relatively low.