Zoning and Land Use
Local Land Use Regulation of Commercial Cannabis Cultivation
As a full-time member of an interdisciplinary research team at the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development, I contributed to a novel study funded by the California Department of Cannabis Control investigating local land use and environmental regulatory systems for commercial cannabis cultivation in selected California counties.
Pot Zoning: Planning for Cannabis Cultivation as a Land Use in California’s Emerald Triangle
Despite ongoing federal prohibition, American states continue to legalize the cultivation, processing, distribution, and possession of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes. State-level frameworks for legalization vary greatly across the nation, including whether counties and municipalities are authorized to use their zoning and other police powers to regulate cannabis-related uses within their jurisdictions. In California—where medical marijuana has been legal since 1996 and recreational cannabis since 2016—localities are granted such authority, placing planners on the frontlines for devising land use schemes for a once prohibited activity and doing so with little guidance from higher levels of government. Cannabis cultivation has a storied history in California’s Humboldt County, where it is a multibillion-dollar industry with well-documented environmental impacts. This study deploys a qualitative, multiple-case study research design to better understand how Humboldt County and three of its incorporated cities have used their zoning and land use authority under state law to regulate cannabis cultivation not only for neighborhood impacts or environmental concerns but also for other components of public health, safety, and welfare. The study reveals the innovative planning interventions these jurisdiction have deployed, which not only reflect local goals pertaining to the ever-evolving cannabis industry but also local considerations of equitable economic development.
Click here to view the full thesis.
Commercial Hotel Development in Long Island City
In 2018, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) initiated a citywide zoning text amendment to require special permits for future hotel development in light manufacturing districts (M1) and Industrial Business Zones (IBZs). Created at the request of the City Planning Commission, this report systematically documents hotel development in Long Island City, Queens over the past two decades to identify trends in such development as well as solutions to addressing this type of speculative and controversial activity.
Click here to view the full report.