LULU Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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LULU means “local ly unwanted land use” or “locally undesirable land use.” According to planner and urbanist Frank Popper, there are many different types of LULUs, including low-income housing projects, junkyards, and strip developments. This definition suggests that nearly any change in the character of a community’s land use can be defined as a LULU. The term also ties to the idea of NIMBY (not in my backyard), a term used to describe community opposition to LULUs. Some LULUs, as Popper notes, are obvious. Almost no one wants to live next to a noisy, toxic, dangerous, or ugly facility. Other communities may oppose strip development because it increases traffic and can lead to discordant and unattractive development. However, the nature of a LULU depends heavily on the character of a community. An urban community may support the construction of a stadium because of the business opportunities it would create, while a suburban community may oppose the project because of the significant increase in traffic and other negative outcomes that such a facility would generate.

Popper notes that there are several ways to address community opposition to LULUs. One is to concentrate LULUs in one part of a city, reserving other land for residential or office uses, and another is to disperse LULUs. Ordinances that require bars, adult book stores, and strip clubs be no closer than a fixed distance from a similar business, or a church, school, or other public facility, are common in many cities and seek to avoid the creation of a “red light district.” LULUs can be randomly built in a community, thereby avoiding favoring or disfavoring any community, and leaving siting decisions to market forces.

However, it is doubtful that communities with differences in political power will see LULUs sited in areas with the most political power. Popper argues that LULUs’ negative effects can be mitigated, although often at a great expense that is borne by the landowner and the user of the services provided on that land (electricity, for example). Declaring anything a LULU means that the overall social benefit of a power plant may be, in the community where it is built, less important than the overall social benefit of the facility. This is one of the major shortcomings of simply compensating neighbors for the costs, or “negative externalities” created by a LULU. Such a compensation scheme may not properly account for the overall benefit to society from a LULU, and the expectation that sometimes people have to bear burdens for the broader community good.

Bibliography:

Sanda Kaufman and Janet L. Smith,”Implementing Change in Locally Unwanted Land Use: The Case of GSX,” Journal of Planning Education and Research (v.16/3, 1997);
Brian Levey, Locally Unpopular Land Uses: Defending and Challenging “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) and Locally Unpopular Land Uses (LULU) (Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, 1996);
George Noble, Siting Landfills and Other LULUs (Technomic Pub. Co., 1992);
Frank J. Popper, “Siting LULUs,” Planning (v.47, 1981).