IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v41y2004i2p377-388.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heresthetics and Happenstance: Intentional and Unintentional Exclusionary Impacts of the Zoning Decision-making Process

Author

Listed:
  • James C. Clingermayer

    (Department of Government, Law, and International Affairs, Murray State University, Murray, KY 42071, USA, james.clingermayer@murraystate.edu)

Abstract

This paper examines political and legal justifications for zoning and other land-use regulations that have exclusionary impacts. The paper argues that much exclusionary regulation is justified (and rationalised) by arguments that divert attention from the undesired incidence upon the poor and minorities by referring to other values (such as environmental protection, controlling urban sprawl, relieving traffic congestion, historical preservation and other 'good planning principles'). Sometimes this manipulation is deliberate and may be thought of as an example of the art of 'heresthetics'. At other times, this form of argument may be more coincidental (i.e. a 'happenstance'). Rationales for exclusionary zoning may be offered in good faith by policy-makers who are acting out of personal convictions or in response to the pressure from various political interests. Jurisdictions with homogeneous and small constituencies are conjectured to be more exclusionary in intent and will resort to heresthetics to justify zoning that redistributes wealth away from developers and low-income families and towards current property-owners. Jurisdictions with diverse and large populations are suggested to be less exclusionary in general, but may become more exclusionary and may resort to multiple, complicated rationales when their political environments are complex. Not only may the rationales become complex, but the decision-making process may become complicated as well, with multiple criteria under consideration at different levels of governmental organisation. This complexity may increase regulatory delay and offer greater numbers of opportunities for intervention by development opponents in administrative, legislative and judicial arenas. The likelihood of manipulation of any regulatory regime suggests that exclusion may never be achieved through a reform of zoning. Instead, more demand-oriented efforts to increase housing opportunities are recommended.

Suggested Citation

  • James C. Clingermayer, 2004. "Heresthetics and Happenstance: Intentional and Unintentional Exclusionary Impacts of the Zoning Decision-making Process," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(2), pages 377-388, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:2:p:377-388
    DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000165307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098032000165307
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0042098032000165307?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bawn, Kathleen, 1995. "Political Control Versus Expertise: Congressional Choices about Administrative Procedures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(1), pages 62-73, March.
    2. McCubbins, Mathew D & Noll, Roger G & Weingast, Barry R, 1987. "Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 243-277, Fall.
    3. Mashaw, Jerry L, 1990. "Explaining Administrative Process: Normative, Positive, and Critical Stories of Legal Development," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(0), pages 267-298.
    4. Balla, Steven J., 1998. "Administrative Procedures and Political Control of the Bureaucracy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(3), pages 663-673, September.
    5. Clingermayer, James, 1993. "Distributive Politics, Ward Representation, and the Spread of Zoning," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(4), pages 725-738, December.
    6. Hammond, Thomas H & Knott, Jack H, 1996. "Who Controls the Bureaucracy?: Presidential Power, Congressional Dominance, Legal Constraints, and Bureaucratic Autonomy in a Model of Multi-institutional Policy-Making," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 119-166, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guillaume POUYANNE & Laëtitia GUILHOT & André MEUNIÉ, 2018. "L'usage de l'automobile et la structure spatiale en Chine : le modèle de ville compacte en question," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 48, pages 105-120.
    2. Elizabeth Jean Taylor, 2016. "Urban Growth Boundaries and Betterment: Rent-Seeking by Landowners on Melbourne's Expanding Urban Fringe," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 259-275, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Min-Seok Pang, 2017. "Politics and Information Technology Investments in the U.S. Federal Government in 2003–2016," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 33-45, March.
    2. John M. de Figueiredo & Edward H. Stiglitz, 2015. "Democratic Rulemaking," NBER Working Papers 21765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Sean Gailmard, 2009. "Multiple Principals and Oversight of Bureaucratic Policy-Making," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 161-186, April.
    4. Kwan Nok Chan & Shiwei Fan, 2021. "Friction and bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 1406-1418, October.
    5. Jordan Carr Peterson, 2018. "All Their Eggs in One Basket? Ideological Congruence in Congress and the Bicameral Origins of Concentrated Delegation to the Bureaucracy," Laws, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Michael Makowsky & Thomas Stratmann, 2014. "Politics, unemployment, and the enforcement of immigration law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 131-153, July.
    7. Thomas Braendle & Alois Stutzer, 2013. "Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 45-76, February.
    8. Cyril Benoît, 2021. "Politicians, regulators, and regulatory governance: The neglected sides of the story," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(S1), pages 8-22, November.
    9. Turner, Ian R, 2021. "Policy Durability, Agency Capacity, and Executive Unilateralism," SocArXiv stnzf, Center for Open Science.
    10. John Brehm & Scott Gates, 1994. "When Supervision Fails to Induce Compliance," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 323-343, July.
    11. Ian R Turner, 2017. "Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, January.
    12. Abbott, Kenneth W. & Genschel, Philipp & Snidal, Duncan & Zangl, Bernhard, 2018. "The governor's dilemma: Competence versus control in indirect governance," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2018-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. Kenneth W. Abbott & Philipp Genschel & Duncan Snidal & Bernhard Zangl, 2020. "Competence versus control: The governor's dilemma," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(4), pages 619-636, October.
    14. Dorothy M. Daley & Megan Mullin & Meghan E. Rubado, 2014. "State Agency Discretion in a Delegated Federal Program: Evidence from Drinking Water Investment," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 44(4), pages 564-586.
    15. Neal D. Woods, 2018. "Regulatory Analysis Procedures and Political Influence on Bureaucratic Policymaking," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), pages 299-313, June.
    16. Wibbenmeyer, Matthew & Anderson, Sarah & Plantinga, Andrew J., 2020. "Inequality in Agency Responsiveness: Evidence from Salient Wildfire Events," RFF Working Paper Series 20-22, Resources for the Future.
    17. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2013. "Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 331-368.
    18. Mattia Guidi, 2011. "Does Independence Affect Regulatory Performance? The case of national competition authorities in the European Union," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 64, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    19. Peter Bils & Robert J. Carroll & Lawrence S. Rothenberg, 2024. "Strategic avoidance and rulemaking procedures," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 36(2), pages 156-185, April.
    20. Axel Dreher & Nathan Jensen, 2003. "Independent Actor or Agent? An Empirical Analysis of the impact of US interests on IMF Conditions," International Finance 0310004, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Jan 2004.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:2:p:377-388. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.