Top 25 Most Significant Planning Laws (1978–2003)

1. Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Act (1978)
To address the needs of inner city recreation, Congress passed the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Act in 1978, authorizing $725 million to provide grants and assistance to economically distressed urban communities. The program authorizes federal aid to urban localities for rehabilitation of recreation facilities. The law encourages systematic local planning and commitment to continuing operation and maintenance of recreation programs, sites, and facilities. UPARR, though not funded by the Bush administration, continues to stand as the only federal program that supports local parks.

2. Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (1980)
Passed by Congress largely in response to the contamination disaster at Love Canal, CERCLA established the Superfund cleanup program and refined the legal framework governing liability for these toxic sites. CERCLA, along with the earlier NEPA and RCRA laws, forms the core of federal statutes guiding environmental planning and remediation of toxic sites.

3. Farmland Protection Policy Act (1981)
This legislation marked the beginning of federal programs aimed at farmland conservation. The bill directed federal agencies to avoid projects that would convert prime farmland. Subsequently, the federal government has expanded its role in this area particularly in the 1985, 1990, 1996, and 2002 Farm Bills. These bills created an array of federal land conservation programs.

4. New Jersey Fair Housing Act (1985)
Enacted in the aftermath of the landmark Mount Laurel decision, New Jersey's Fair Housing Act set a national standard for a statewide approach aimed at combating exclusionary zoning and promoting regional fair share affordable housing. The statue also established the state Council on Affordable Housing.

5. Tax Reform Act (1986)
Known more for its broad changes to federal income tax structure, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 also established the nation's most widely used and effective incentive for the development of affordable housing: the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

6. Community Reinvestment Act (1987)
No federal law of the past quarter century has led more directly to renewed investment in America's low-income and minority urban neighborhoods as CRA. The law holds financial institutions accountable for the investments they finance. CRA has helped reduce the practice of "red lining" neighborhoods and opened the way not only to new investment but also greater citizen participation and awareness.

7. Rhode Island Comprehensive Planning and Land Use Regulation Act (1988)
Rhode Island's update of the state planning enabling statutes is particularly significant because it set a standard subsequently followed by many other states pursuing reform. The 1988 legislation was the direct result of a state legislative study commission established the year prior. The legislation is also significant for its aggressive promotion of state-level planning. The legislation overhauled the state's planning, zoning, and subdivision laws replacing outmoded 1920s era language with some the nation's clearest and most progressive standards.

8. Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
This landmark law provided new protections and required sweeping new accommodations for people with various disabilities. The law's section on appropriate accommodations has had a direct and profound impact on the built environment and continues to shape building codes across the nation.

9. Clean Air Act Amendments (1990)
The original Clean Air Act was enacted in 1963 but a set of major amendments adopted in 1990 made a major and long-lasting impact on planning. The 1990 amendments established the conformity process through which air quality and transportation planning were formally linked.

10. Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (1990)
This housing legislation established two of HUD's most important homeownership and affordable housing programs, HOME and HOPE. The legislation also increased support for homelessness programs that had been established several years earlier in the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act.

11. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (1991)
The passage of ISTEA revolutionized federal transportation policy by empowering local communities in transportation planning, bolstering support for transit, establishing the Transportation Enhancements program, and providing for new levels of flexibility and certainty in planning and investments. ISTEA opened to door for a new range of non-highway transportation investments across the United States.

12. Washington Growth Management Act (1991)
Washington's Growth Management Act is in many ways an historical bridge between the trailblazing work in states like Oregon, Florida, Vermont, and California and a later generation of smart growth initiatives in Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and elsewhere. Although not without its critics, the Washington law set a high standard for state-mandated planning with detailed required plan elements. The law also put in place the extensive use of urban growth areas in the state.

13. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (1993)
This year-end appropriations vehicle formally established and funded HUD's Enterprise Zone and Empowerment Community program. These programs designated specific distressed neighborhoods for a package of tax incentives designed to open new businesses, provide thousands of new jobs, rehab and build new housing, and change lives in urban and rural areas.

14. California Community Redevelopment Law Reform Act (1993)
California's original Community Redevelopment Law is widely considered the first to authorize the use of tax increment financing and was a model for redevelopment statutes in many other states. Again helping lead the way nationally, California updated this law in the early 1990s in an effort to modernize and improve equity and fairness standards in the redevelopment process.

15. Minnesota Metropolitan Reorganization Act (1994) / Community Based Planning Act (1997)
Any discussion of regional planning in the United States includes prominent mention of Minnesota's Metropolitan Council. The state enhanced its regional planning legacy in the late 1990s by adopting legislation aimed at establishing a planning process specific to communities, an alternative dispute resolution process, growth boundaries, and state funding for planning.

16. Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (1995)
TEA-21 built on the legacy of ISTEA by preserving the earlier law's fundamental reforms. TEA-21 also sought to improve the linkage between land use and transportation planning through the TCSP program. TEA-21 also provided record levels of guaranteed federal transportation resources.

17. Pennsylvania Land Recycling Act (1995)
Pennsylvania became the nation's leader in the redevelopment of brownfield sites largely based on the Land Recycling Act adopted in the mid-1990s. The law was the nation's first to provide a state framework for voluntary clean-up and set a standard for addressing some liability and remediation issues that was later mimicked by other states. When the federal brownfields reform law was passed in 2001, President Bush signed the bill in Pennsylvania in recognition of the leadership role played by the state.

18. Maryland Smart Growth Act (1997)
Along with Oregon's state planning statute passed a generation earlier, Maryland's Smart Growth Act remains the nation's most widely known and debated planning laws. The Maryland legislation was instrumental in touching off a nationwide focus on planning laws and added "smart growth" to the nation's lexicon. The law used a incentive-based system linking state funding to the identification of priority growth areas.

19. Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act (1998)
This legislation formally established the HOPE VI program to demolish blighted public housing projects and replacement them with new, mixed-income neighborhoods. The program has been at the heart of the transformation of public housing in many communities across the nation.

20. California Transportation Funding Suballocation / S.B. 45 (1998)
In 1998, California took the bold step of mandating that a variety of transportation funding be suballocated directly to metropolitan areas, instead of being controlled by the state DOT. The California law helped establish many of the state's Metropolitan Planning Organizations as national leaders in dealing with clean air and flexing federal dollars from highways into transit. California continues to be held up as a model of how to improve federal transportation programs, such as the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program.

21. Tennessee P.L. 1101 "Comprehensive Growth Policy Act" (1998)
While other states may have adopted more innovative or aggressive statewide growth legislation, Tennessee's Comprehensive Growth Policy Act remains significant. The adoption of the law in 1998 marked the emergence of smart growth as a major issue in the South and helped spur states throughout that region as well as in the West and Midwest to debate similar issues. In addition, the Tennessee statute and the legislation battle that preceded it helped identify ways to deal with strong traditions of local control and entrenched agricultural interests. The law also took a progressive approach to mandating local planning with state review and assistance.

22. Georgia Regional Transportation Authority — S.B. 57 (1999)
Facing crippling congestion, air quality problems, and environmental lawsuits, the Georgia legislation took bold action in 1999 to address metropolitan Atlanta's transportation problems and poorly planned development. The board was given sweeping powers, including the ability to approve local land transportation plans in the region, and for use of federal or state funds for transportation projects associated with major developments such as large subdivisions or commercial buildings, that affect the transportation system. Although implementation has been less than advocates originally hoped, the legislation remains an important model.

23. Disaster Mitigation Act (2000)
The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 overhauled federal programs for disaster relief and prevention. One of the most important features of the new law was the creation of a new incentive for communities to formally adopt a plan for hazard mitigation.

24. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2000)
RLUIPA marks the federal government's most significant foray into local land use decision-making. RLUIPA sought to address the problem of discrimination against religious organizations by local governments. The bill provided special protections for religious land uses and placed new burdens on local governments seeking to regulation those uses. The full impact of RLUIPA is still unknown with the scope of law being determined through numerous litigation across the nation.

25. Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (2001)
After more than a decade of debate, Congress in 2001 finally approved a set of reforms designed to promote the remediation and redevelopment of brownfield sites. The law removed a variety of liability barriers that had long stalled the development of brownfields that plague many urban and suburban areas. Additionally, the law authorized record levels of federal support for helping in the identification and cleanup of these critical sites.