User:Tjalexander11/sandbox

First Draft Contract Zoning Wiki Page:

Contract zoning in the United States, also referred to as "zoning by contract", "rezoning by contract", or "rezoning subject to conditions" is a form of land use regulation in which a local zoning authority accommodates a private interest by rezoning a district or a parcel of land within that district to a zoning classification with fewer restrictions based on an agreement that the property owner abide by certain conditions or limitations imposed by the zoning authority for that parcel.

Contract zoning is a contentious practice in that, by definition, it involves public servants or officials, namely an Urban planner, working outside of a locality’s general plan. Opponents of contract zoning are weary of the practice insofar as it might lead to “arbitrariness and random decision making” in land use planning and thus the overall design of a locality. Proponents of the practice argue that it is a useful tool for achieving dynamic development, especially in growing urban areas where there is a increasing emphasis on mixed use(link) and higher density development. 

Legality of the practice

There is no explicit federal law banning or allowing contract zoning, instead the legality of the practice has largely been regulated on a case by case basis at the state court level. In the past, many of the decisions in these state court hearings have deemed the practice to be illegal based on interpretations that it was “illegal bargaining away”, “inconsistent with uniformity requirements”, or that it had a potential to lead to corruption. In recent decisions, however, state courts have tended be more accepting of contract zoning as long as the rezoning to accmodate the private interest does not impede the municipality’s ability to use police power .

Example court decisions

An example of an early, often cited decision regarding contract zoning is Church vs. Town of Islip (New York 1960) in which the court found the practice to be illegal, stating:

" Zoning of properties by a municipality, being legislative in character, cannot be bargained or sold. The rezoning of a parcel of property by a municipality based in any way upon an offer or agreement by an owner of property is inconsistent with, and disruptive of, a comprehensive zoning plan.

An example of a more recent ruling concerning contract zoning would be Chrismon v. Guilford County (North Carolina 1988) in which the state supreme court made a distinction between illegal contract zoning, defined as follows:

“Illegal contract zoning properly connotes a transaction wherein both the landowner who is seeking a certain zoning action and the zoning authority itself undertake reciprocal obligations in the context of a bilateral contract. . . .”

And legal conditional zoning as follows:

“The practice of conditional use zoning …is one of several vehicles by which greater zoning flexibility can be and has been acquired by zoning authorities. Conditional use zoning anticipates that when the rezoning of certain property within the general zoning framework described above would constitute an unacceptably drastic change, such a rezoning could still be accomplished through the addition of certain conditions or use limitations. Specifically, conditional use zoning occurs when a governmental body, without committing its own authority, secures a given property owner's agreement to limit the use of his property to a particular use or to subject his tract to certain restrictions as a precondition to any rezoning. ..”

Notes on prospective edits to the Contract Zoning Wiki Page:

• The stub article contains very little information and cites few sources, the two sources it does rely on are cited incorrectly.
  • I plan on contributing a significant amount of information that will include:
    • Expanding on the definition of contract zoning by providing examples of real examples of contract zoning deals from cities in the U.S. and distinguishing it from other similar zoning practices like conditional zoning
    • Creating a section dealing with the historical context that led to the rise of the practice
    • Creating a section regarding the debate surroundings contract zoning, why it is used by some municipalities but not others
    • Creating a section dedicated to the legal disputes surrounding contract zoning, touching on key court cases that have set precedents.
  • I first fixed the two current citations and am currently looking for more sources to build up the article. These are the sources I have found so far:
    • [http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1869&context=mlr] is journal article from the Maryland Law Review from around the time when contract zoning started to be used frequently, 1963, it offers a nice definition of contract zoning, an examination of the economic context that has encouraged contract zoning, and finally an analysis of the reasons that courts have given for striking down the legality of contract zoning.
    • [https://www.sog.unc.edu/resources/legal-summaries/contract-zoning] is a legal review of contract zoning published by the UNC school of government. This is a more current take on the practice (2014) that offers an in depth definition as well as briefs of court decisions regarding the practice, examples are specific to North Carolina.
    • [http://www.law.du.edu/documents/rmlui/conference/handouts/DeloguOLetsMakeADeal.pdf] is the transcript of a talk given at the 20th Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute conference, with citations. RMLUI is part of the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver. This piece offers a nice explanation of the arguments of contract zoning proponents and those opposed to the practice, as well as an in depth analysis of court cases regarding its use on a broader level, in many states.
    • [https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=723089121105085080068007068089010023018031035064008038064102025004098093117001071094037026034111123061001011124102120008090106105082056047035121075120029127112077066040043085099000074025126105093105068084003086094011109068025108124069005079066071102004&EXT=pdf] is paper published in the Fordham Law Review from 2013 that offers a public choice analysis of contract and conditional zoning. It offers more analysis of key legal decisions and a survey of cities citing certain legal decisions as precedent to engage in contract zoning. I will be composing these additional sections and updates shortly, any feedback on what I have laid out here, any of my sources, or anything that I did not include would be much appreciated.

Urban Partnership Bank Wiki Page Notes :

• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference?
  • No, just like the community development wiki, there is a lot of information that has been left uncited. For example, the definition of the Urban Partnership Bank and information about its establishment has not been cited, which is key information to understanding the topic. The author did cite well, however, when they mentioned specific numerical figures/data about the bank's assets, which is good.
• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
  • There is not much information in the article, but everything that is here seems relevant. It seems that maybe the author is a little bit too focused on its relation to the previously failed Shorebank and does not provide much relevant information about the bank's current structure or operations.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
  • I did notice one framing by the author that seems slightly biased. When referencing the fact that the FDIC paid what are essentially insurance payouts to the bank, they say that this "cost taxpayers $367.7" which is a somewhat misleading/ partisan phrasing. In this way, every action of the federal government "costs taxpayers", so unless we were going to include this kind of phrasing in reference to every government expenditure, we shouldn't use it at all. It is not a particularly important point and does not add much to my understanding of the Urban Partnership Bank.
• Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
  • Yes the information seems to come from neutral sources, there just isn't enough of it.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
  • Like I previously mentioned, the author focuses too much of their attention on the failure of Shorebank and not enough on the current operations of Urban Partnership Bank
• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article?
  • The Links work, there is some borrowed wording like "politically connected" which may want to be reworded as it could be considered close paraphrasing.
• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
  • There information that is there seems up to date, again more current information about the bank's operations would be helpful.
• Check the "talk" page of the article - what is the Wikipedia community saying about how to present this topic? How is the article rated in terms of Wikipedia's quality scale? 
  • There is nothing on the talk page so far, it seems as though the article has been written entirely by one person and gone relatively unedited. It is rated by a Wiki bot as a Stub-class article.
• What sections in this article are different than in the Community Development article? What new information or different information is presented in the two? 
  • Article is very different than the Community Development article considering it is about a singular institution and not a broad concept such as community development. Because of this the article has to be slightly more restricted. For example while the history section of the community development page could talk about incipient development organizations all over the world and how and why they started, the history page for Urban Partnership bank can only reveal how the specific institution started.

Community Development Wiki Page Notes:

• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference   
  • Just within the first few paragraphs it's clear that not many references are cited. The author initially cites a definition of Community Development, but then goes on to pull quotes from a website without a footnote citations and even glosses over some facts without any references mentioned at all i.e. the information about where in the world community development is practiced. Upon reading further I notice that a lot of information is left uncited.
• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
  • While the article does go into detail about some of the early practices and history of community development, this information is not distracting and serves nicely yo provide context for the reader.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
  • As far as I can tell the article is neutral, I cannot detect any bias toward one position or another regarding the politics/efficacy of community development.
• Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?  
  • The information mostly comes from international organizations like the United Nations, peer review journal articles, and information produced by community development organizations. These sources are in fact neutral, they author does not rely too heavily on only the information produced by community development organizations and so avoids any kind of bias there.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? 
  • I cannot think of any view points that are over or under represented, I can only think of more examples of community development initiatives in the United States that the authors might have thought to include, as it stands their examples are somewhat dated.
• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Is there any close paraphrasing or plagiarism in the article?
  • I checked four citations and two of the links were broken, the author might want to go back and check these. I didn't notice any close praphrasing.
• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added
  • Like I said some of the examples are out of date, there is information in just about every section that could be added to make the article stronger, more informative.
• Check the "talk" page of the article - what is the Wikipedia community saying about how to present this topic? How is the article rated in terms of Wikipedia's quality scale? 
  • It seems as though authors are debating about whether or not specific elements of community development should have paragraphs in the article, like faith-based community development, or whether or not certain terms should be moved to their own pages. The article is rated as start-class, and high-importance