Booked on Planning

Choosing to Succeed

• Booked on Planning • Season 4 • Episode 23

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Climate action isn’t only written in federal legislation or international agreements. It’s shaped block by block through local land use law—where homes are built, how streets connect, what landscapes we preserve, and which energy systems we permit. In this episode, we chatted with Professor John Nolan to unpack the “land use wedge,” a practical way cities can influence up to 75 percent of CO2 emissions through buildings, transportation, sequestration, distributed energy, and renewables. Along the way, we trace how zoning leapfrogged planning a century ago, why that history still shapes our neighborhoods, and how a course correction can deliver compact, walkable, climate resilient places.

Professor Nolan shares case studies, court-tested approaches, and leadership insights from training thousands of local officials. We talk specific tools—clustering and infill, adaptive reuse, green roofs and tree canopies, solar-ready codes, and transit-supportive density—that reduce emissions and protect public health. We close with a look at a student-led workshop and a model framework for climate resilient development designed to help planners, attorneys, and elected leaders move from plan to ordinance to impact.

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Stephanie Rouse:

You're listening to the Booked On Planning Podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation, and everything in between. Join us as we get booked on planning. Welcome back, Bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode, we talk with author John Nolan on his book, Choosing to Succeed: Land Use Law and Climate Change. John is a professor of law at Pace Law School. And Jennifer, you have kind of an interesting connection on how you know John.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Yeah, I do. In my last year of law school, I really wasn't entirely sure what direction I wanted to take my career. And then one of my law professors connected me with Professor Nolan, and we had an excellent conversation about planning and then land use and how those two play really well together. And so I would say that Professor Nolan is somewhat responsible for me ending up in local government and I guess ultimately the host of this podcast. So it's a really great connection. Lucky for us.

Stephanie Rouse:

Otherwise, we wouldn't have such a great co-host and co-worker, too.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Yeah. I don't think that our listeners do realize we are just right down the hall from each other sometimes. Yeah.

Stephanie Rouse:

Makes it really easy to work together.

Jennifer Hiatt:

It does. So I thought that this was a really interesting idea bringing forth Professor Nolan's idea about a climate wedge for economic success and a really good overview of how land use and land use law can be used to combat the climate change if communities choose to, which is the whole point of the title.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think planners really understand the power we really wield at the local level to be able to implement a lot of changes in how we do planning and land use in order to reduce our impact on climate change and to help reverse some of the negative impacts. We tend to think it's all top-down federal government, but there's so much authority through land use law that the federal government has given cities via states that help us really implement a lot of these things. And it I think that's especially important in the current climate where we feel like the federal government is not leading on climate change anymore. And it's really up to cities to do something about that.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Yeah, I know that land use and law policy probably were not most planners' favorite classes when they were going through their planning programs. But I would recommend everyone pick up this book and dust off their ideas about land use law and control and how planners can wield that. Because it's a really strong, like you said, it's a really strong tool that often gets overlooked, I think. It's not just zoning, guys.

Stephanie Rouse:

Can't say it was my favorite glass in planning school. But before we jump into our conversation, we wanted to pitch an idea that we've had to our listeners and get your feedback on where we should go with this crazy idea. So one of our listeners pitched an idea to host a book summit. And we love the idea and are looking at ways to make this happen. We need to hear from you, though, to help shape this event, which we're thinking would take place sometime late next year. Would you travel for a two-day book summit with authors, publishers, and others to hear directly from them on housing transportation issues, learn about the writing process and how to publish a book and everything that goes into publishing a book? Or would you join us online for this? You wouldn't travel, but you might do it online. Send us an email at bookdumbplanning at gmail.com or comment on any of our social media channels. We have LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Jennifer Hiatt:

We are really excited about this idea and we are very grateful to our listener who pitched it to us. But you know, Stephanie and I could build out a whole thing, but it we want to make sure that it is useful to all of our listeners and people interested in publishing books and books on land use. So let us know. And then on that note, let's get into our conversation with author John Nolan on his book, Choosing to Succeed: Land Use Law and Climate Change.

Stephanie Rouse:

John, thank you for joining us on Bookdone Planning to talk about your book, Choosing to Succeed: Land Use Law and Climate Change. Can you start out by laying the foundations of how we arrived at the state that our current land use tools are in, which affect about 70% of carbon emissions?

John Nolan:

First, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate working with you guys. I'm a Diehard Husker fan. And let me tell you where this started for us. We did in 2019, we did a project that we called low carbon land use. And we were trying to see how we could involve local governments in adopting strategies to combat climate change. And we finally figured out that there are 40,000 local governments in our country, and most of them have been given legal authority to regulate land use and to determine the shape of settlements, urban settlements. So following World War II, I think most of your listeners know that the preferred design of land development was low density, spread-out regions that were very car dependent. Residential development emphasized energy inefficient single-family homes that consume open space and its ecological benefits, which include carbon sequestration. So this pattern of development is responsible for significant CO2 emissions that cause climate change, but it's also within the reach of local governments in many ways. The CO2 constitutes about 80% of our country's greenhouse gas, and local land use authority can be effective in mitigating land use patterns that are responsible for up to 75% of those CO2 emissions. The movement of personal vehicles through the build environment contributes more than 20% of CO2 nationally. EPA estimates that heating and cooling residential and commercial buildings is responsible for 35% of domestic CO2 emissions, and sprawling development consumes vegetative resources, which, if preserved, would sequest for about 20% of annual CO2 emissions. And the total of that CO2 math is 75%.

Jennifer Hiatt:

How different do you think cities would look if we had put forth and promoted the Standard City Planning Enabling Act before we put forth the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act? So if we had said, hey, let's plan before we said, hey, let's zone?

John Nolan:

That's a really interesting question. I had to think about it a lot. And I have a I have an answer, but I'm sure based upon some of the folks that are listening to this podcast, having been to planning school and heard from their professors, they'll have different points of view. But they will probably know that the Standard Zoning Enabling Act was promulgated by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1922, and that it stated that land use regulations, quote, shall be made in accordance with a comprehensive plan. Your listeners probably are also know that the Standard City Planning Act was issued in 1928 after several hundred cities and towns had already adopted their zoning ordinance. So the original idea, I think, and this is where there's some debate, I'm sure, among your planning professors, but the original idea, I believe, was that the zoning ordinance itself embodied a plan that was comprehensive and contained sufficient details to guide future zoning amendments. We have to imagine that the planning thought leaders of the day changed course and decided the matter differently, so that by 1928 they had coalesced around the notion that the plan should be a separate document adopted by a municipal planning commission, largely immune from local political forces, and sufficiently detailed to guide future zoning provisions adopted by the elected city council or town board. I do think that cities would look different, be different if the Model Acts had been turned around, and if they had urged state legislatures to enable local governments to adopt comprehensive plans by a separate local commission first. This change would have engaged local citizen planners rather than elected officials in formulating the plan. Stakeholders whose knowledge and policies would have influenced the location and use of buildings, the density of development, and plans for waterfronts and wetlands, for example, this decision-making process might have charted a path that would have been more responsive to widespread local needs and sensitivities. Planning theorists refer to path dependency, postulating that past decisions constrain and influence future choices, making it difficult to change course even if the current path is suboptimal. If the plan were adopted by a municipal commission composed of lay leaders rather than politically elected legislators, the municipality's path forward might have been different and more representative.

Stephanie Rouse:

And in your book, you talk a lot about the role of federal, state, and local governments with a heavier emphasis on local actions, as they're the closest to the real impacts of climate change and can have the biggest impact. What do you see as the roles of each of these levels of government in fighting climate change?

John Nolan:

There's another planning theory called subsidiarity, which holds that the responsibility for dealing with the problem should be delegated to the most decentralized institution capable of handling the problem. In land use law, that is clearly cities and towns, where the devastating effects of climate change are felt first and most substantially. It is at the local level that flooding, storm surges, heat island effects, wildfires, mudslides, and the other impacts are experienced, where first responders operate and leaders are most motivated to plan and to recover. The book, Choosing to Succeed, is about land use law and how that power is delegated primarily to local governments. So municipal governments are closest to the problem, first to respond, fully aware of the details, and empowered to enact efficient solutions. They must be intricately involved, but they need help. They need help from state and federal agencies, including money, technical assistance, and information about regional and statewide interests, the database, so to speak. In the book, we call this collaborative subsidiarity, which recognizes the imperative to involve local governments in strategic planning at the grassroots level, aided by responsive regional, state, and federal funding, technical assistance, data, and guidance. This is of particular importance regarding climate change management.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Can you explain to our listeners what you mean when you talk about the land use wedge in the context of mitigating climate change?

John Nolan:

In 2004, a Princeton professor named Robert Sokolo provided a framework for mitigating climate change through dozens of what he called stabilization wedges. Each one, there were many of them, and each one was capable of preventing at least a billion metric tons of carbon emissions annually using existing technology. Referring to my book's title, Socolo's message was that we can choose to succeed if we use creatively the technical strategy that we already have. When we looked at his many wedges, we borrowed from a few of them and created the land use stabilization wedge, which combines five Socolo strategies into a single wedge. These local strategies demonstrate how human settlements can be shaped in ways that affect that 75% of CO2 emissions or the means of recapturing CO2 emissions. The five components of the land use wedge are buildings, transportation, sequestration, distributed energy, and renewable energy. Local land use law in most states empowers municipalities to implement CO2 mitigation strategies with respect to all of these components. And I'd like to provide a little illustration. Let's take a look at the biological sequestration component of the wedge. We find that many localities are enhancing their vegetated environment and adopting infill development and adaptive reuse plans to center development on existing developed neighborhoods and move it away from undeveloped open spaces. In these open spaces, ecological services on which life and prosperity are preserved. And one of these services is sequestration of CO2. Recall that up to 20% of CO2 emissions are sequestered by the natural environment. So as sprawling development consumed increasing amounts of open space after World War II, local land use law responded, and its toolbox is now full of sequestration enhancing implementation strategies, clustering development, planned unit development, neighborhood tree canopy enhancement. Sustainable neighborhood design standards include green roofs, rain gardens, vegetated soils, staruscape lawns, biologically rich site design, and connected green landscapes. All of these land use laws protect and enhance the biological sequestering environment and reduce the climate-changing emissions from all sources. Again, to follow Silkalo's lead, the technology is there if we choose, if we want to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Stephanie Rouse:

I think that's the hardest part as a planner for me is that comment, the technology is there if we choose to use it. All of these tools are there. It's often hard to convince the leadership at a city level. Maybe if some communities were fortunate, our mayor is very on board with climate action and we have a climate action plan, but other communities aren't so fortunate, and the decision makers may not be as inclined to adopt some of these land use policies that will really help impact climate adaptation.

John Nolan:

Yeah, I think there's a big difference of views about that. I haven't talked about this too much, but we train local leaders. The APA gave us an award in 2009 for our leadership training programs. And we've trained leaders from all over the country, but particularly in the Hudson Valley, we've trained over 2,500 leaders. And we take our advice from them. We use their experience to inform us. And what we found is that they're not tied up with ideology. They're there doing work, they're there solving problems. So the more that climate change rears its ugly head and kicks its hooves, they're going to be more interested in solving the problem. They may even not call it climate change. But they're going to want to know from you guys what's causing this problem, and then they're going to know to look for solutions. And we do our training, it's hard for me to say this as a law professor. But the legal part of this is simple. We've got lots of answers in terms of how you use land use law to solve particular problems. But how you go home and get people to agree to engage with those solutions is another skill altogether. And we've learned a lot about community-based decision making, and we try to train local leaders in how to go home and get them to recognize where their problems are coming from and where the solutions lie. And that doesn't always work. But it's a good strategy.

Stephanie Rouse:

So Lucas vs. South Carolina Coastal Council is a key case that all planners learn about. I remember this being a key case when I was in uh the planning school in my land use law class, but not necessarily the true impacts for communities that are trying to regulate against climate change impacts. What are the ways communities can regulate to avoid a Lucas-style case without compromising their climate goals?

John Nolan:

Well, let me lay out a little bit about what the Lucas case did. It was 1992. It was the South Carolina Coastal Council that imposed a no-build zone basically on two lots at Lucas Own, and he couldn't do anything with his lots. The Isle of Palms was a municipality that had given Lucas and his neighbors authority to develop those lots as single-family housing. And he had to get side plan approval from the village. But what he didn't realize at the time is that he had to get a permit from the South Carolina Coastal Council. And they basically said, no, you can't develop there because we're enforcing the Coastal Zone Management Act and we have to protect that particular area. So he had no economically viable use of his property. And he claimed that under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution that was a per se regulatory taking. The true impact of Lucas is plain. It is unconstitutional to protect life and property by adopting a no-bill zone. And that's beginning to be a bigger and bigger hurdle for planters throughout the country, particularly in coastal areas, but even now in wildfire prone areas. You can't just say you can't build there, you have to do something different. And where a local land use regulation destroys all economic use of the property, it is a per se taken with very modest exceptions. This holding is a huge barrier to full-on prevention of development on vulnerable beaches, floodplains, and forested wetlands, and lands prone to wildfires. Such strategies do not belong in the planner's toolbox unless the city or town is willing to pay just compensation. The Supreme Court has held that regulations that leave some value, as little as 10%, are not total takings under LUCAS. So be sure that your regulations do that, that they leave some value. Planners who advise local land use boards can use the information contained in the sea level rise component or wildfire prevention component of the comprehensive plan to revise the application requirements that govern development projects. They can require, for example, that the developer submit site drawings that identify any portion of the parcel likely to be inundated by sea level during the use of life of the building. They can further require that the developer place any buildings and infrastructure in a location that best protects the safety of occupants and the stability of the building. Applicants can be provided with sea level rise masks issued from a variety of sources, including state agencies, legislative committees, governors' task forces, university institutes or other respected sources. In addition, the developer can be required to document the sources of financing secured for the project, including equity investors and construction and permanent lenders. Investors and lenders will likely be on notice of them and will only be willing to invest if they believe the project is feasible. If investors conclude that the project is not economically feasible, then it will sink under its own weight and fail to proceed any further in the local review and approval process. Any claim that the local process resulted in the taking of value of the proposed project can be countered by showing that the investors and lenders made their decision based on knowledge they gained about the long-term viability of the proposed investment through the exercise of due diligence. Under the Lucas doctrine, it's not the regulation that prevents the development in this instance, but rather private market risks.

Jennifer Hiatt:

So I don't think you can have a good conversation about land use law if you don't talk about Dillon's rule versus home rule. So, what impacts do those two regulations have on a community's ability to implement effective and long-term land use changes and policies to address climate change?

John Nolan:

It always amazes me that Dillon's rule is a conversation that people want to have because Dillon is dead. And I had a bunch of students who worked with me over a two-year period. And we found the death of Dillon's rule in constitutions and legislation and court decisions in 40 states. And that's not because there are 10 that still follow Dillon's rule. It's just that we couldn't find those particular mechanisms in those ten states and we're s we're still looking. But let me explain why that's a problem, because I certainly, at my age, have lived through a number of years where Dylan's rule was a substantial barrier to progress. But as climate change has become more serious, the legal system has changed profoundly by giving governments at the local level more and more power to respond. For municipal governments to promote sustainable and green development, create safe densities and open spaces, protect lives and property in areas vulnerable to natural disasters, and manage climate change, they must be able to influence the development and preservation of privately owned land. To legalize emerging renewable energy technologies, they must have the authority to make them permitted uses in their zoning ordinances, and to innovate by creating solar ready homes and subdivisions and provide for solar easements among many other initiatives. And to all of these, Dillon's rule, which was handed down in 1868, has been an obstacle, a persistent obstacle. The rule holds that municipalities are not sovereign entities, but merely instrumentalities of states, and that the legal powers delegated to them by the state legislatures, such as the Sonyan Enabling Act, are to be very narrowly construed. Slowly over the past 150 years it has been repealed or eroded in the vast majority of states, as I just mentioned, through court decisions that broadly interpret delegated land use authority, amendments to state constitutions or acts of state legislatures. So one of the purposes for zoning in the original Standard Zoning Enabling Act was to provide for the most appropriate use of the land. That was in the Standard Zoning Enabling Act and was shown up in almost all of the enabling acts in the 50 states to accomplish the most appropriate use of land. So if interpreted broadly and applied to existing technologies such as renewable energy or emerging exigencies such as climate change or pandemics, the local government can be effective, but if narrowly construed, local governments can only enact these laws if the state legislatures try to provide them with specific enabling legislation on each aspect of zoning. Now, home rule provisions further empower local governments to adopt laws that pertain to their property affairs and government. I'm going to just use one of the 50 states to illustrate that. The importance of the adoption of home rule provisions is evident in Tennessee. The Tennessee Constitution was amended in 1953 to permit municipal governments to operate under Home Rule Authority. A court said about that that an exception to Dillon's rule necessarily arises when the issue concerns the authority of home rule municipalities. And as stated by the Supreme Court of Tennessee, the whole purpose of the whole rule amendment was to best control of local affairs in local governments. Home rule in effect reverses Dylan's rule, because a local unit of government may exercise wide-ranging powers under home rule despite a lack of specific statutory authority.

Stephanie Rouse:

So I'm not the lawyer in this group. That's Jennifer and yourself. So when you discussed reflexive law in the book, that was a new topic for me. And if I'm understanding correctly, it encourages self-critical reflection among actors about their performance. So how does reflexive law theory work at the local level?

John Nolan:

When we sorted our training of local leaders back in 1993, we found two defects in the structure of their local land use procedures and operations. First, there was a proliferation of land use boards in many municipalities that did not know what the others did, making it awkward for individual projects to work their way through the system. Delays were inevitable and costly. Second, there was very little interconnectivity among communities that shared common problems. For example, in Nebraska you'd have common problems with watersheds and flooding for sure. And the second problem that we were dealing with was that there were very few ways that the local normalist would get together or could get together and work together on those common problems. These defects frustrate connectivity, that is, communication between local boards intramunicipally and solving common problems intermunicipally. These are failures that hinder the operation of what legal scholars call reflexive law. Reflexive law draws its name from the basic notion that a law can encourage self-critical reflection among actors about their performance. This theory promotes the design of legal procedures such as creating a watershed intermunicipal council or an agreement among local boards locally to create linked schedules for project review. These and similar legal procedures recognize the importance of communicating, sharing data, and local knowledge both vertically, that would be the watershed council, and horizontally the coordinated process for project review. These legal procedures cause stakeholders to share information, interact, and reflect on what they propose to do.

Jennifer Hiatt:

What is one aspect of the relationship between land use law and climate change that you now view differently since you have written the book?

John Nolan:

Well, in researching choosing to succeed in our low-carbon land use project, we found over 250 case studies of local governments furthering all the components of climate-resilient development. The work we had done on the land use wedge and low-carbon land use demonstrates how local land use law touches over 70% of CO2 emissions, laser focus on climate change mitigation. As we look more closely to what we found, we realized that local land use law was also adapting to climate change, creating resilient neighborhoods, furthering environmental justice, and accomplishing sustainable development. We are now witnessing a wholesale assault on climate change, including the tremendous financial losses that it is costing property owners in all parts of our country. In numerous communities in every state, property values are declining because of repeated flooding, damaging storm surges, sustained high temperatures, constant fear of wildfires, water scarcity, and potential mudslides. Cumulatively, these changes are causing what we call a reverse economic bubble associated with land use that mirrors the effect of the infamous housing bubble of 2008, but is potentially much more harmful to the economy and environment. To illustrate this point, one of our case studies looks at the drought that occurred in Spicewood Beach, Texas. My students reached out across the country to try to find examples of climate change damage in every region and every type of developed area, and they found in Spicewood Beach, Texas, a very interesting case. So I'm going to put this as a little story. Imagine that you are a real estate broker showing a home that's listed for $225,000 in Spicewood Beach. When you arrive at the house with your prospective buyer, there is a water truck at the curve filling the system. The client asks you, what's happening? Well, the house is in a neighborhood near Lake Travis, in one of the city's largest lake-based real estate markets. Investor interest in the lakefront real estate, tourism, and local business tends to rise and fall with the lake's water level. Frequent droughts take a toll on the lake's ability to meet residential needs for portable water, and for over a year, water was imported into Spicewood Beach to satisfy the community's water needs. As a broker, you picked a bad time to show the house. The climate change bubble had popped, and the price of the house with the water truck in front tanked along with the lake community's economy. These climate-clause consequences are indiscriminate. They pop up everywhere. Natural disasters are increasing in intensity and become more frequent, causing much more economic stress. Severe droughts in the West have caused some communities to seek external sources of water and to minimize their use. Wildfires raging through the western states have compromised property values and forced residents to move. Extreme heat, even in northern states, has challenged the health of vulnerable populations, making life in some cities difficult. Mortgages and casualty insurance are becoming harder to get, without which most Ross AT buyers can't afford housing. Real estate prices in many parts of the country are falling due to the real and perceived effects of climate change on land use. And believe it or not, in today's New York Times, I'm reading an article that says a climate shock is eroding some home values. New data shows how much. And there are a couple paragraphs I'd like to read. Even after she escaped rising floodwaters by wading away from her home in Chess Deep Water during Hurricane Rita in 2005, Santa Rojas now 69 state foot. But this year her annual home insurance premium increased to $8,312, more than doubling over the past four years. She considered selling but found herself in a dilemma as insurance costs of Rosenario home values have fallen, dropping by 38% since 2020. The roadsides around her house are dotted with for sale signs. They won't insure you, Mrs. Raw said. No one will buy from you. You're kind of stuck where you are. Since 2018, a financial shock in the home insurance market has meant that homes in zip coats most exposed to hurricanes and wildfires would sell for an average of forty-three thousand nine hundred dollars than they would otherwise. That relates back to what we were talking about earlier about local leaders getting the point that climate change has to be dealt with.

Stephanie Rouse:

Yeah, and unfortunately, so often that's when they see the actual problem and it's gotten so bad that then they must act, versus a more proactive approach would be better for everyone. Speaking of reacting to something pretty dramatic, your book was published in 2021, which was the beginning stages of the pandemic. Your last chapter puts forth some ideas about land use law in the pandemic, with four years now between when your book was published and recovery efforts. Have you? Found any more concrete conclusions around the impacts of the pandemic on land use law?

John Nolan:

Well, I can't for sure attribute it to the pandemic, but I think it's an influence, a very important influence on what I'm about to tell you. In February of 22, which is the year after the book was published, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its sixth assessment report. It stated that its principal strategy for managing climate change is climate resilient development. And this is the intergovernmental international organization that's in charge of fighting and managing climate change. And they said this in February of 22, they said that the principal strategy for managing climate change is climate resilient development. But I don't think anybody really knew, or not too many people really knew what that meant. So a careful reading of this recent global report notes that local governments, within their land use regulatory authority, have a major role to play in managing climate change. My students call this a local solution for a global problem. Whether it's due to the pandemic or not is hard to say, but there is a clear focus on equity for vulnerable populations and on minimizing the negative impact of climate change on high heat, flooding, storm surges, and other aspects of public health. We've been amazed at how many case studies we found that have been laser focused on protecting public health. So our research demonstrates that many municipalities have relatively recently turned their attention to facilitating development that is mitigative, adaptive, and resilient. We have found case studies featuring biophilic design, environmental housing high albido rules, low carbon construction, climate resilient retrofits, heat island mitigation, carbon neutral building assessments, climate justice plans, living shorelines, shoreline protection and anti-displacement, just to name a few. The six assessment report also refers to enhancing carbon intake and storage in the urban environment, for example, through biobase, building materials permeable, surfaces, green roofs, tree canopies, green spaces, rivers, ponds, and lakes. The list goes on to include improving, repurposing, or retrofitting the building, stock, tucking development clothes to infrastructure, supporting walking, biking, and public transit, targeting infilling and compact urban form, what we call low-carbon land use. Much of this progress occurred since the book was published and is related to some degree to the sophistication of strategies that the pandemic had on local land use decision makers.

Jennifer Hiatt:

Professor Nolan, you are a law professor at Pace University, and you've already mentioned multiple times throughout the episode your students. So you took the research from this book and turned it into a practical workshop at Pace Law School. Tell us about that workshop.

John Nolan:

Well, as a research professor, I work with about 50 students on my publications and research projects. We are the number one ranked environmental law school in the country, and that draws some very, very passionate and talented students. They innovate, they think hard about what we should do. So after the book was published, the students wanted to do something more to get the word out about the many land use strategies contained in its chapters. They came up with the idea of hosting student-run student panel discussions on individual topics like vegetated urbanism and inland flooding. The students reckoned that they could record and link the individual virtual panels and make them available on our website. And then using social media, let the relevant actors know about mysterious power of land use. The idea was to link the panel recordings and call the collection the workshop. They took this idea one step further and decided to design a framework law for implementing climate resilient development, which is the major recommendation of the IPCC, and which is just going live this month. They are still at work on this effort looking for partner organizations that are interested in getting the word out to as many stakeholders as possible.

Jennifer Hiatt:

And our listeners, if they are interested in this, there will be a link to the climate resilient development workshop series in our show notes. So you can go check it out there. And finally, this is booked on planning. So what are books that you would recommend our readers check out?

John Nolan:

It's funny, I did a couple of cartwheels trying to figure out how to answer this question. There's so many, so many really good books. And I I think that you do an excellent job of promoting important contemporary books on planning and land use law. So I'm focusing on some of the older publications that I learned from about the flexibility of the power of land use if put in proper hands. They were all authored in the nineteen nineties. We could talk for a while about what that means, but I think that during the nineteen seventies we learned a lot about managing the environment and managing economic development and dealing with sprawl. And by 1990, there were enough people who had learned about that that they could write a book about it. So the three books that I learned the most from in the 1990s were Zoning and the American Dream, Promises Still to Keep, a 1990 book by Gerald Caden and Charles Carr from Harvard, Land Use in America, dated 1996, co-authored by Henry Diamond at an amazing advisory committee that he put together on what are we going to do about straw and how can we use land use law to combat it. And then finally, The American City, What Works, What Doesn't, 1996 by Alexander Garvin.

Stephanie Rouse:

All really great books. And it's nice to have kind of a spread in some older books. We tend to, as you mentioned, focus on some of the more recent publications. So it's good to have some of these older books that are still great foundations for land use law. But John, thank you so much for joining us on Bookdown Planning to talk about your book, Choosing to Succeed, Land Use Law and Climate Change.

John Nolan:

Stephanie and Jennifer, I respect you guys very much and thank you for having me on.

Jennifer Hiatt:

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author John Nolan on his book, Choosing to Succeed, Land Use Law and Climate Change. You can get your own copy through the publisher at the Environmental Law Institute by supporting your local bookstore or online at bookshop.org slash shop slash bookdown planning, as we do now have an affiliate page with bookshop.org. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and please rate, review, and share the show. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time on Bookdown Planning.

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Jennifer Hiatt

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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

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