Category: Land use

A Christmas present for Paradise Park: Part 4, the burden of proof

2 January, 2009 (13:24) | Land use, Legal, Local issues, Mobile homes, Paradise Park, Tenure, US News, Zoning and land use | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 3 and the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]
 

You think that’ll impress me?
 
So far, in examining the ruling (available here in .pdf) that remanded back to district court a series of actual questions about whether the Paradise Park residents were entitled to the New Jersey Mobile Home Protection Act, we’ve seen that [...]

Buying the farm

30 June, 2008 (08:19) | Eminent domain, Land use, Local issues, US News | No comments

Every now and then, somebody does it right. 
 
In the bold action of a man confident of his politics and his policy, Florida governor Charlie Crist has pulled the trigger on what looks like a long-term masterstroke.  As reported in The Washington Post:
 

In the stillness is the act …
 
In an ambitious maneuver to help restore [...]

DeSoto, meet Heinlein: Part 3, colonizing distance

18 June, 2008 (08:51) | Land use, Legal, Speculation, Theory | No comments

[Continued from the previous Part 2 and Part 1.]
 
The idea is as old as the Roman army, as American as the Homestead Act, and as timely as formalizing slums in the global south via urban homesteading.
 
Now for a little more fun: could you use it to stimulate private colonization of the Moon? 
 

See any [...]

DeSoto, meet Heinlein: Part 2, buying the future

17 June, 2008 (08:42) | Land use, Legal, Speculation, Theory | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s interplanetary riff about potentially sell land rights on the Moon, stimulated by a provocative Drake Bennett article in The Boston Globe, suggested that pre-selling future rights would stimulate not only investment but also exploration with a view to investment.  Hernando De Soto and numerous others (including me) believe that ownership [...]

DeSoto, meet Heinlein: Part 1, selling the future

16 June, 2008 (08:49) | Land use, Legal, Speculation, Theory | No comments

If land ownership spurs investment, as Hernando De Soto and numerous others (including me) believe, can we use the promise of a future rights grant to spur investment?  That’s the premise behind an entertaining and provocative little concept story in The Boston Globe about how we can revive human space exploration:
 
If we really want to [...]