A Study On American Land Use Cases

In the U.S., most of the land is privately owned and the constitution of U.S. requires protecting the private property from illegal invasion. Under this circumstance, controlling of land becomes a very difficult problem. Meanwhile, the ordinances or statutes used for controlling land are laws. If a conflict arises in the land use control progress, the party (the concerned land owners or local governments, etc) will always appeal to the court for help. This paper is based on studies on American land use cases (precedents). A case (precedent) is a judicial document that includes the fact of the conflict, the reason for solving the problem and the appendix. Through studying these cases, we can see why these conflicts would happen, what the society's and the court's attitude towards these conflicts are, how the problems get solved, and what the key factors in land use control progress are, etc. This is the first Chinese paper that studies these cases from the position of city planning and is very useful way to understand American land use.This paper first gives a brief introduction of the concerned background, and then discusses the juristic problems in American land use controlling progress. After these, there are studies for different land uses. Now the Chinese government has amended its constitution and enacted its new property law, which shows an approach towards the global (or western) tendency. In a word, learning about American land use cases can give deep insight to our own development.