Available from American Law Institute, 4025 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, order number 5080.
Notes:
Adopted by the American Law Institute at Washington, DC, May 21, 1975. CP
Descriptors:
Models. Land use planning. Land use controls. Laws and regulations. Conservation related laws. Land development. Historic preservation. Land conservation.
Abstract:
This volume presents the complete text and accompanying explanations of the model land development code developed and adopted by the American Law Institute. Development is defined as an activity resulting from a decision by the owner to do something with land under the owner's control. The model code is intended as source material for the rethinking and improvement of prevailing norms. It is written to permit partial adoption by jurisdictions for which the entire code may be unsuitable or unacceptable. It also maintains the tradition of local control under a State enabling statute, but this control is qualified by the moderate authority for State intervention in areas of critical State concern or State or regional significance. Nevertheless, even in these cases reliance is placed as much as possible on local agencies as organs of administration. Instead of requiring a local land development plan prior to limiting land development, the code focuses on the required content, procedure for adoption, and methods of administration of ordinances regulating development and specifies new safeguards in these areas to promote fairness and rationality. However, the adoption of a local land development plan is made a precondition of the authority to grant special permits for planned unit development or to permit the designation of specially planned areas. The code also authorizes the public acquisition and disposition of interests in land to aid development or conservation or to achieve such planning objectives as the discontinuance of an existing use and the use of improved recordation to enhance the accessibility of information about governmental action. The code's individual articles cover local land development regulation and planning, the discontinuance of existing land use, land banking, State land development regulation and planning, judicial review, enforcement, public records of development regulations, and the financing and coordination of governmental development. An index, a table of cases and statutes, and rules are provided.
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