Materials

Course Description - Plan 753 (3 credit hours)

This course is a comprehensive examination of the evolution and current application of American and international land development law for the practicing planner. Case law and statutory provisions are used to illustrate best practices in the application of zoning, land development, street mapping, and growth management for local and regional planners. Central to this course is an understanding of the nature of property rights and the limits of local regulation.

The class is based on a lecture/case recitation format requiring a progressively responsible understanding of how our legal system interacts with planning practice. Students are required to obtain, read, brief, and recite case law in order to apply practical solutions to everyday problems in planning regulation. In addition to case recitation, the core requirements are a mid-term and final exam; the submission of three assignments exploring everyday legal problems encountered in planning practice; and, meaningful participation in case discussions.

A userid and password are required to access the case database and readings list. The Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format Reader [PDF] is required to view nearly all the material on this site (version 4.0 -5.0 only). All cases in the database are in the public domain and were obtained from public servers - you may download the case and print it for your own use. All readings are copyrighted and are the intellectual property of their authors. Student work posted on this server is the intellectual property of each student and must be properly attributed for fair use. This site is designed and enhanced for Explorer 5.0 - 5.5 at a screen resolution of 600 X 800; any other browser will yield dramatically different results - sorry - but this is the reality of cyberspace.

Since this is a course built entirely on the Web, there are certain rules and considerations for class members. The main rule is to use a good, up-to-date virus protection program to check all files before sending them to me. Every year I have received file attachments that are infected with virii. Most of these are isolated by our server or my local machine. However, a few (especially macro virii seem to get through. In 1999 a student who did not check an attachment brought down my website for 1 and 1/2 weeks. When you send me an e-mail with an attachment you must note in the body of the message that the attachment has been scanned for a virus. My e-mail reader is set to scan for these words - if they are not in the message body they are routed to the "block sender" file and I will never see them.

When you are working on-line to access class material your should realized that bandwidth is at a premium from about 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and then again from about 5:45 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. The best time to work is before 9:00 a.m.! If you are using a 28.2 bps modem at home you should upgrade to a 56k v.90 modem. If you are using anything less than a Pentium II - 400 MHz machine consider upgrading your processor so you can render the .pdf files in a reasonable time.

This course meets in Seaton Hall in Room 252. The course meets on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 2:30 - 4:30 P.M. We will not meet on September 6, 11 and 13, 2001.

The main navigation system of this website is located on the upper left hand corner of this page. The Introduction section should be read before the other pages as it contains basic information on the course and the nature of a web - based outline system. The course Syllabus contains the complete outline of the Planning Law Course. The case  database is the third entry but most cases are linked to the assignments on the Syllabus Page. Finally, there is an individual Readings page intended to reinforce the concepts contained in the legal cases. 

please report any broken links to me at jwkplan@ksu.edu

Last revised 08/27/02