Introduction

Abstract

Land use policy has once again emerged as a major national issue in the United States. It was a focal concern of national policy more than a century ago when the vast public lands were being settled, and again fifty or sixty years ago when local governments instituted zoning, and powerful interests debated how the public domain should be managed. Then in the late 1960s and the 1970s the disappointments of urban renewal, an aggressive environmental movement, and seemingly imminent energy shortages helped split apart a powerful though largely tacit consensus on the goals and methods of land use policy, which dated from the mid-1920s.