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MODULE-4 Land Use Planning
- Introduction
- Land Use Plans
- Conventional Regulatory Techniques
- Non-Regulatory Techniques
- Regional Coordination
Regional Coordination
Three communities sharing a common aquifer may find that methods of protecting groundwater from contamination vary from community to community. Town 1 may have enacted stringent land use controls within the watershed. Town 2, however, facing an economic decline, may be encouraging commercial growth in the watershed, particularly as the locus has easy access to the interstate highway.
The solution to the problem lies at the State level because local governments do not possess inherent sovereign power--their jurisdiction rests almost exclusively with state constitutional provisions, charters, statutes, ordinances, and regulations. State-mandated regional planning would provide an ideal mechanism to ensure that resource protection issues, are addressed on a regional, as opposed to a piece-meal, basis. While local governments may become concerned that their "home rule" authority is being compromised, history has proven that critical natural resources spanning regional boundaries cannot be adequately protected at the local government level alone.