Professor Paul Boudreaux at Land Use Prof Blog asks Should government land use science be easier to challenge? He details a Utah proposal to allow a developer to introduce evidence demonstrating that the science supporting a zoning restriction is faulty, and compel binding arbitration if the government rejects the evidence.
Interesting concept. One might think, under Euclidean norms, that the comprehensiveness of the process would produce a scientifically-valid outcome, but anyone who plays the land use game knows that is not necessarily the case, and the data used to support land use regulation often reminds me of a certain kind of science….Weird Science.