"Zoning has for a century enabled cities to chart their own course. It is a useful and popular institution, enabling homeowners to protect their main investment and provide safe neighborhoods. As home values have soared in recent years, however, this protection has accelerated to the degree that new housing development has become unreasonably difficult and costly. The widespread Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome is driven by voters’ excessive concern about their home values and creates barriers to growth that reach beyond individual communities. The barriers contribute to suburban sprawl, entrench income and racial segregation, retard regional immigration to the most productive cities, add to national wealth inequality, and slow the growth of the American economy. Some state, federal, and judicial interventions to control local zoning have done more harm than good. More effective approaches would moderate voters’ demand for local-land use regulation—by, for example, curtailing federal tax subsidies to owner-occupied housing"--Publisher's description.

"In this intriguing study, Patricia Burgess examines how both public and private land use controls affected urban growth and development in Columbus, Ohio. Burgess considers how real estate developers applied restrictive deed covenants in order to shape contemporary metropolitan areas, and she examines the simultaneous application of zoning to determine the role of the public sector. She also outlines the planning theory of zoning and measures the actual zoning against the goals of its earliest and strongest proponents, the reformist planners and lawyers of the early twentieth century." "Using Columbus and seven of its suburbs as a case study, Burgess relies on extensive research in public records - recorded plats, deeds, planning reports, and minutes and records of city and suburban planning commissions and zoning boards - to paint a picture of a changing metropolitan area, subdivision by subdivision, lot by lot. Both the private and public controls applied to these subdivisions and lots do much to explain why people live where they live and how our American cities came to be the way they are." "Planning for the Private Interest has implications for the individual landowner because most urban Americans live in zoned communities but have little understanding of how zoning works until their plans for their own property come into conflict with local ordinances. Moreover, studies of this nature indicate the subtle but formidable forces that influence both class and race relations in metropolitan areas and reveal solutions as well as impediments to resolving potential conflicts. Readable and engaging, Burgess's work will be of great interest to scholars and students of regional history, urban growth and development, city planning, and urban sociology."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved