The following are brief excerpts from articles that appear on the Pace Law School Land Use Law Center web site. You can click on the link at the end of each excerpt to see the whole article.
Comprehensive Planning
SERIES I: Basic Tools and Techniques, Issue Number 1
The New York State Court of Appeals noted in Udell v. Haas that "the comprehensive plan is the essence of zoning. Without it, there can be no rational allocation of land use." Indeed, the statutes require that all land use regulations must be made "in accordance with a comprehensive plan." Therefore, planning should precede any adoption or amendment of a land use regulation.
New York statutes define a comprehensive plan as the "materials, written and/or graphic, including but not limited to maps, charts, studies, resolutions, reports and other descriptive material that identify the goals, objectives, principles, guidelines, policies, standards, devices and instruments for the immediate and long range protection, enhancement, growth and development of the [locality]."
The statutes require localities to set forth in the comprehensive plan "the maximum intervals at which the adopted plan shall be reviewed."
Although adoption of a comprehensive plan is not mandatory, the statutes require that "all land use regulations must be in accordance with a comprehensive plan." Land use regulations are defined to include "zoning, subdivision, special use permit or site plan regulation or other regulation which prescribes the appropriate use of property or the scale, location and intensity of development." If the validity of a local land use regulation is challenged, a written, up-to-date comprehensive plan provides the court with the necessary information upon which to base its decision.
Land use regulations are often challenged as "not in accordance with a comprehensive plan." When there is a written, up-to-date plan, the court is best able to discern whether the regulation is a permissible exercise of local authority. These plans are given great weight and courts are hesitant to invalidate a regulation adopted to implement such a plan. There is little doubt that a regulation that accomplishes an express objective of the comprehensive plan "substantially advances a legitimate public objective," the judicial standard by which challenged regulations are measured.
click for whole article on Pace website http://www.law.pace.edu/landuse/comppl.html
Comprehensive Land Use Planning - Learning How and Where to Grow
John R Nolon
Recent New York cases, analyzed in this article, make it clear that land use regulations will not be sustained if they are ad hoc, arbitrary, capricious, unjust, unfair or irrational - characteristics they risk assuming if not demonstrably in conformance with a discrete and well considered plan.
Judicial decisions have provided the following guidelines:
Zoning can be legal even in the absence of a written plan.
The statutes are satisfied if, implicit in the zoning ordinance itself, there is evidence of rational planning.
Once a plan is adopted, it does not have to be kept current. In such cases, courts will not require "slavish servitude to any particular comprehensive plan," but look rather for "comprehensiveness of planning."
In the absence of any plan or the presence of an out-dated one, courts will "examine[e] all relevant evidence" of comprehensive planning found in previous land use decisions of the locality, including the zoning ordinance itself.
The circular and confusing nature of these judicial definitions is obvious. They stand for the general proposition that zoning must serve the public interest and that some expression of that interest, independent of the zoning enactment itself, is desirable, but not always necessary.
When regulations are adopted without reference to planning objectives or, worse, are contrary to such objectives, they are vulnerable to attack. If planning is not done, if it is not specific, or if it is not up to date, and if regulations are not buoyed by the plan, the base on which land use regulations rest is infirm.
In the litigious climate created by the clash in society between property rights advocates and land regulators, regulating in a planning void is inadvisable. This is particularly so in light of personal liability suits brought against regulators and their agencies. In the next part, this article examines how the failure to honor the "in accordance with" provision of the land law can subject regulations to a variety of attacks by aggrieved property owners.
click for whole article on Pace website http://www.law.pace.edu/landuse/nolona.html
Land Use Law Report:Learning How and Where to Grow
Series 1, Number 1, July 1993
COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING IN THE YEAR 2000
John R. Nolon
The practical lesson learned from a review of New York case law on land use planning is straightforward: judges will seldom overturn land use regulations when it is obvious, in the structure of the regulatory program, that considerable and comprehensive planning is involved. When judges sustain land use regulations, they routinely find in the regulatory scheme a valid local planning objective that saves the regulation from falling under a property owner's attack. The bases for this judicial reasoning are the statutory requirement that zoning provisions must be adopted "in accordance with" a "comprehensive plan" and the constitutional requirement that land use regulations substantially advance a legitimate public purpose.
(I found this is on the Pace site somewhere - but when I went back to build the link I could not find it again. Let me know if someone runs across it.)