The New Politics of Land Use

土地使用的新政治

• 批准号: 0001866
• 负责人: Elisabeth Gerber
• 金额: $ 21.13万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-08-01 至 2002-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0001866&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: New; Politics; Land; Use

Land use politics dominates modern American local governments. Scholarship suggests that the traditional process of zoning property cultivates a "growth machine" coalition of developers, businesses, and elected representatives. In recent years, citizens, environmentalists, and other interests have increasingly turned to the institutions of direct democracy, especially voter initiatives, to counter pro-growth interests. Initiatives are laws or ordinances that are proposed and decided directly by citizens. They are institutional alternatives to traditional zoning practices, and are intended to shift the balance of political power over a community's land use decisions. Given the prevalence of land use issues in the day-to-day business of American local governments, and the economic importance of their decisions, political scientists have paid surprisingly little attention to the politics of land use. We know very little about the consequences of the institutional choices made by participants in the land use process. This research advances our understanding of the new politics of land use by constructing and analyzing several new datasets on the dynamics of local land use initiatives and their consequences for development policy. Land use politics also provides a valuable lens through which to better understand a number of other important political science problems. At the heart of land use politics is a conflict over what interests in a community (e.g., landowners, community organizations, current residents, elected representatives) have the right to make decisions about the usage of private property. Understanding how these various interests interact, the effects of political institutions such as ballot initiatives on their interactions and influence, and the ultimate decisions communities make about land use and property rights are key motivations for this study.The research has two major components. The first component is a study of the political dynamics of recent land use initiatives. The methodology involves first constructing a comprehensive list of land use initiatives in medium and large sized US cities since 1990. From this list, a sample of recent initiatives are analyzed to test hypotheses about what types of groups can use initiatives to promote their political interests, and what factors lead to their success. The research also involves several case studies to further explore the contours of the process by which private interest groups negotiate public land use policy. Together, these analyses will allow for the extension and refinement of existing theories of interest group influence. The second component considers the consequences of political institutions on land use policies and outcomes. Building upon a two-stage model of land use policy formation, this component estimates, first, the factors that lead proponents to use land use initiatives, and second, the policy consequences of those initiatives. The analyses compares land use policy and outcomes on a number of dimensions in two sets of communities: those that are likely to regulate property usage primarily through traditional zoning ordinances, and those that are likely to use initiatives. This two-stage analysis assesses both whether policies differ when they are made under each institutional regime, conditional upon a community using the initiative process, and the representational consequences of these differences (i.e., what types of interests do they favor). Together, these two components provide a clearer understanding of when and how interest groups influence public policy outcomes, and the representational consequences of political institutions such as voter initiatives, in the important area of land use policy. This dataset will be of significant value to others interested in this important topic.

土地使用政治主导着现代美国地方政府。学术研究表明，传统的房地产分区程序培养了一个由开发商、企业和民选代表组成的“增长机器”联盟。近年来，公民、环保主义者和其他利益集团越来越多地转向直接民主制度，特别是选民倡议，以对抗支持增长的利益集团。创议是由公民直接提出和决定的法律或条例。它们是传统分区实践的制度性替代方案，旨在改变社区土地使用决策的政治权力平衡。鉴于土地使用问题在美国地方政府日常事务中的普遍存在，以及他们决策的经济重要性，令人惊讶的是，政治科学家很少关注土地使用的政治。我们对土地使用过程中参与者所做的制度选择的后果知之甚少。本研究通过构建和分析几个关于地方土地利用动态及其对发展政策影响的新数据集，促进了我们对土地利用新政治的理解。土地利用政治也提供了一个有价值的镜头，通过它可以更好地理解许多其他重要的政治科学问题。土地使用政治的核心是关于社区中哪些利益（例如，土地所有者、社区组织、当前居民、当选代表）有权决定私有财产的使用。了解这些不同的利益是如何相互作用的，政治制度（如投票倡议）对其相互作用和影响的影响，以及社区对土地使用和产权的最终决定是本研究的关键动机。这项研究有两个主要组成部分。第一部分是对最近土地利用倡议的政治动态的研究。该方法首先涉及构建一份1990年以来美国大中型城市土地利用计划的综合清单。从这个列表中，分析了最近的倡议样本，以测试关于哪些类型的团体可以利用倡议来促进他们的政治利益，以及导致他们成功的因素的假设。该研究还涉及几个案例研究，以进一步探索私人利益集团谈判公共土地使用政策的过程轮廓。总之，这些分析将允许扩展和完善现有的利益集团影响理论。第二个部分考虑了政治制度对土地使用政策和结果的影响。在土地利用政策形成的两阶段模型的基础上，该部分首先估计导致支持者使用土地利用倡议的因素，其次估计这些倡议的政策后果。分析比较了两组社区的土地使用政策和结果：一组社区可能主要通过传统的分区条例来规范财产使用，另一组社区可能采用主动措施。这个两阶段的分析既评估了在每个制度制度下制定政策时是否不同，也评估了使用主动性过程的社区是否有条件，以及这些差异的代表性后果（即，他们倾向于哪种类型的利益）。这两个组成部分共同使我们更清楚地了解利益集团何时以及如何影响公共政策结果，以及选民倡议等政治机构在土地使用政策这一重要领域的代表性后果。该数据集对于对这一重要主题感兴趣的其他人将具有重要价值。