More and Better Local Planning: State-Mandated Local Planning in Coastal North Carolina

Academics, public officials, and citizens increasingly advocate more and better local planning as a central component of regional growth management. They assume that local plans will provide meaningful policy guidance to local officials when making land use-related policy decisions, and that local officials will implement their plans. This article presents findings from an evaluation of state-mandated local planning in coastal North Carolina during the mid 1990s. All 20 coastal counties and 72 municipalities were preparing plans consistent with the stateʹs procedural requirements during this time, and many were using those plans to at least some extent when making land use-related policy decisions. Taken altogether, however, the plans were weak analytically and substantively, providing limited guidance for growth management, especially in terms of coastal area resource protection. The promise of state-mandated local planning for managing growth at the regional level is discussed in light of North Carolinaʹs experiences.