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This chapter examines the evolution of disaster management systems and its impact on land use controls that consider hazard mitigation, relying on examples from Japan, Indonesia, and the US, where various types of natural disasters have played a large role in articulating mitigation-reflected planning systems. Slovakian and German cases provide additional understanding. Analysis showed that mitigation-considered land use systems are likely to be enhanced after major disasters, and that efforts over the past decade – such as hazard mapping – have progressed in an effort to mitigate future disaster impacts. However, land use systems and disaster management systems are often implemented in parallel instead of being integrated, and hazard-reflected land use decisions often remain unrealized. Yet, involving local residents in the process provides some promising examples of mitigation-reflected land use. A process that values local participation is thus critical to advance spatial control for disaster impact mitigation.

This chapter discusses the implementation of policy for protected areas in the UK. It considers the different categories of statutory protected area that can be designated for protection in the UK. It gives a detailed account of the law governing the designation and protection of Sites of Special Scientific Interest, national and local nature reserves, National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It also considers the impact of designation on property rights; the implications of designation for human rights; the relevant case law under the Human Rights Act 1998; and the case law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and other conservation legislation.

This chapter looks at Hawaiʻi’s comprehensive statewide land use controls. The State Land Use Commission (LUC) manages a system of land district classification distinct from but overlaying the county zoning schemes. Actions by state agencies—which are required for the approval of the multitude of permits required for virtually any large land use project—must also theoretically meet the requirements of the statutory state comprehensive plan. Land in Hawaiʻi is divided into four use districts: urban, rural, agricultural, and conservation. The LUC is responsible for grouping contiguous parcels of land into these districts according to the present and foreseeable use and character of the land. The chapter also studies the creation of the Hawaiʻi State Plan, along with its various areas of concentration.

This chapter explores how the subdivision approval process represents one of the most relevant of land use control techniques. It is exercised at the county level, enabled through legislation at the state level, and is a prerequisite for almost all single-family residential development, as well as a significant portion of new multifamily, commercial, and industrial development whenever a landowner-developer divides land into more parcels. It is at this stage in the land development process that county government often requires a series of land development conditions precedent to permission to develop. The chapter discusses development agreements as negotiated by a county and a landowner, as well as the applicability of the concept of vested rights—given that the vesting of rights is what often attracts a landowner-developer to the development agreement process.

This chapter maintains that local zoning never really declined except in the perception of commentators on the land use scene. The “ancien régime” of land use controls is not only alive but increasingly robust even after decades of neglect. Cities—where the vast majority of people live and work, and thus where land use decisions most directly affect the public’s way of life—never abandoned zoning. While states and federal agencies may have promoted regional and statewide land use management and control systems as an added layer of control upon local governments, these were in addition to rather than a substitute for local zoning. In a sense, then, the ancien régime was not overthrown but circumscribed with the exception of Hawaiʻi, which chose to zone the entire state in 1961 through its Land Use Law.

This chapter discusses how the federal government injected itself into environmental law in a series of statutes passed in the 1970s. These new environmental laws with their significant land use implications were dubbed as “The Federalization of land use controls.” From a land use perspective, the most important of these laws are the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. In some instances, Hawaiʻi’s state environmental laws go even further. For example, as interpreted in a series of Hawaiʻi Supreme Court decisions, the Hawaiʻi Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) law has been so broadly construed that any land use project that so much as touches state land triggers a time-consuming, expensive EIS review.

Amidst a worldwide globalization of markets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, England became dependent on overseas sources for grains and for timber. These trends gradually reduced English agriculture to providing dairy products. During the interwar years, English farming declined still further when real estate developers, with the stimulus provided by the spread of automobiles, began to convert fields alongside roads into lots for new homes. The shock of World War II and the German submarine campaign to starve the British into submission focused the public and policymakers’ attention on food security. To assure their access to food in the event of another war, the English established green belts reserved for agricultural land uses around major English cities during the 1950s and 1960s. These regulations made cities more compact and reduced energy consumption among urban residents.