The Role of Economics in the Teaching of Land-Use Law

Abstract

A land-use law course carries a title that explicitly invites application of economic theory. The title identifies a scarce resource-land-and asserts that the principal question to be studied is how that resource is to be allocated. Because the allocation of scarce resources is the core concern of economics, it is hardly surprising that land-use scholars are increasingly turning to the Dismal Science. Of course, disciplines other than economics might also prove to be powerful lenses for revealing what is at stake in land-use controversies. Urban planning, for example, is an endeavor that focuses primarily on this precise subject matter. However, planning theory has had little impact on legal scholars because it often invokes concepts which don't seem operational (e.g., "orderly, balanced growth"), and because planners, unlike economists, have yet to agree on vocabularies and analytic engines for attacking the puzzles they confront.