How To Teach About Sprawl And The Law

Rather than focusing solely on policy issues relating to sprawl, the seminar was a course on the interrelationship of sprawl and the law.

The course discussed a wide variety of legal issues related to sprawl, such as the constitutionality of policies that encourage sprawling urban development (such as single-use zoning and minimum lot sizes) and the constitutionality of policies that seek to mitigate the effects of sprawl (such as Oregon's growth boundary system).

In addition to discussing land use issues, the course also discussed the effects of transportation, housing, and education policies upon suburban growth, and legal issues relating to such policies.

From the article:

"Although only a few law schools have offered courses on sprawl, sprawl is as law-related and as important as race relations or bioethics. As noted above, sprawl affects traffic congestion, air pollution, and neighborhood decay in older areas. In addition, sprawl is intertwined with race relations, because African-Americans are less likely to own cars than whites(and thus more likely to suffer from auto-oriented development) and because the Supreme Court’s school desegregation case law has arguably encouraged sprawl by forcing cities to racially integrate their schools without imposing similar obligations on suburbs. And some possible solutions to sprawl would require reforms of land use law as well as of transportation, education and housing policy."

Thanks to Michael Lewyn