LURC and First Principles of Land Use Regulation

The controversy evoked by the Plum creek concept Plan for the Moosehead lake region of Maine should not surprise us. The geographic scale of the plan amplifies the tensions inherent in the law, economics, and politics of land use plan-ning in our society. however, it is that very scale of development in Maine’s north woods that masks the fundamental issues here. The Maine land Use Regulation commission (lURc), like all land use planning and regulation agencies, must navigate the terrain between absolute dominion, the idea that private land