The Municipal Corporation and Conflicts Over Extraterritorial Acquisitions: The Need for Land Planning

The conflicts which arise between different governmental units involve questions of power, loss of revenue, inconsistent zoning statutes,and actions challenged as arbitrary. However, basic to all these conflicts is the problem of conflicting desires for land use. In other words,any challenge made to a proposed taking is one in which the political unit affected by the taking objects because of supposed injury to its own development, interests, or present governmental functions. The problem can thus be seen as actually concerning the proper allocation of land-a study in land planning, the ultimate objective being, ac-cording to McDougal and Rotival, the creation of an integrated and balanced community org\u27anism so moulded and organized as to make the fullest and most effective use of its human and material resources for the achievement of basic democratic values. With this land planning goal in mind, a survey will be made of the types of conflicts with which courts have dealt in the past when one governmental unit has attempted to take property located within another