Enhancing Plan Quality: Evaluating the Role of State Planning Mandates for Natural Hazard Mitigation

Traditionally, responsibility for land planning in the United States lies with local governments. However, a growing number of states over the past several decades have attempted to exert more influence on how local governments plan for development. This paper uses empirical data from natural hazard elements of 139 community plans in five states to assess whether such state mandates actually result in better local plans. We find that a state mandate not only achieves plans from communities that otherwise would not make a plan, but in addition those plans are of higher quality than plans made voluntarily in communities not under a mandate to plan. W e find that a state mandate substitutes for the absence of any positive political forces for planning and overcomes local political, economic and physical obstacles to planning. Further, the form of the mandate and the state level implementation effort makes a difference, so that some states' mandates achieve local plans of higher quality than those created in other mandating states. Because the data on which these conclusions are based are limited to natural hazards elements of general plans, we feel most confident about their generalization to all elements of local plans.