Liz Clark Rinehart (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law) has posted Zoned for Injustice: Moving Beyond Zoning and Market-Based Land Preservation to Address Rural Poverty on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper exams the role market-based land conservation tools play in exacerbating rural poverty by stymieing needed development. After surveying the ways in which governments have used zoning to inflict environmental injustice on disenfranchised groups, the paper concludes that market-based land conservation tools, as an extension of traditional zoning, present the same potential for environmental injustice by forcing rural communities to bear more than their share of the burden for land preservation. The state of Maryland's current land conservation program is presented as an example of a successful preservation program that does not consider environmental justice risks to rural populations. To maintain a conservation goal without creating obstacles to rural development, the paper proposes a micro-mixed use form of zoning instead of large-parcel conservation.
