A columnist raises a warning that a joint APA-HUD 'growth blueprint' is an effort to centralize land use control by the federal government. (Link corrected.)
When Secretary Mel Martinez took over the reins as the newly installed head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), he had little reason to suspect that in addition to heading up the nation's housing policies, he would also be handed the dubious distinction of being asked to unleash a 2,000 page blueprint for controlling every aspect of local land use across America from a "Directorate" located in Washington, D.C. Unless Secretary Martinez acts to stop it, in the next few days, what is benignly dubbed the "Legislative Guidebook" will be jointly issued by HUD and the American Planning Association (APA). The Guidebook is a comprehensive blueprint of model statutes and planning guidelines whose goal is nothing less than a centralization of land planning for state and local governments and elimination of the need for messy and "inefficient" local land use control.
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