Growth Management through DRI Review: Learning from the Florida Experience

The "Quiet Revolution" is a name popularly applied to the bundle of innovative land use controls developed since the early 1960s. Two ideas with major implications for the state role in land use policy are embodied in the innovations: concern for the health of environmental systems and assertion of state and regional interests in local land use decisions. Several techniques have been developed to implement these two concepts, including state-wide land use planning, state permitting in sensitive environmental areas, and state review of local plans. Much of the early impetus for strengthening the state land planning role came from the American Law Institute's Model Land Development Code, which was developed during the 1960s and early 1970s. One of the Code's most prominent provisions, review of Developments of Regional Impact (DRIs), has been ignored by all but a few states. In fact, only Florida has faithfully transcribed the DRI process from the Code to legislation