Proportionate Share Impact Fees and Development Mitigation

After decades of evolving practice often tested in court, development impact fees have become institutionalized in the American planning and local government finance systems. But, they remain contentious, especially as they continue to evolve. This book is the third in a series of impact fee guidebooks for practitioners, following A Practitioner’s Guide to Development Impact Fees and Impact Fees: Proportionate Share Development Fees.

is the culmination of the authors’ careers devoted to pioneering applications of the dual rational nexus test. That test requires (1) establishing the rational nexus between the need for infrastructure, broadly defined, to mitigate the impacts of development and (2) ensuring that development mitigating its infrastructure impacts benefits proportionately. The book elevates professional practice in two ways. First, it shows how the rational nexus test can be applied to all forms of development infrastructure impact mitigation. Second, it establishes the link between professional ethics and equity as applied to proportionate share impact fees and development mitigation.

The book is divided into four parts, with the first reviewing policy and legal foundations, the second detailing the planning, calculation, and implementation requirements, the third exploring economic, ethical, and equity implications, and the fourth presenting state-of-the-art case studies.

sets new standards for professional practice.

Arthur C. Nelson, PhD, FAcSS, FAICP, is emeritus Professor of Urban Planning, Real Estate Development, and Geography at the University of Arizona, as well as emeritus Presidential Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, where he was also Adjunct Professor of Finance. He has authored more than 20 books and more than 300 other publications. Recent books include Foundations of Real Estate Development Financing, Reshaping Metropolitan America; The TDR Handbook (with Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer and James C. Nicholas), and the critically acclaimed Megapolitan America (with Robert E. Lang). Nelson’s expert testimony helped frame urban sprawl as a legal concept in Florida, guide the Georgia Supreme Court to establish affordable housing case law, and support the rationale used by the US Supreme Court when it established the “rough proportionality” exaction doctrine in Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374.

James C. Nicholas, PhD, is emeritus Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and emeritus affiliate Professor of Law at the University of Florida. He has written widely on the subject of land, environmental policy, and growth management. Nicholas has authored eight books, three monographs, and over 60 articles in the professional literature, dealing primarily with growth and local governmental finance of infrastructure. He is author of The Calculation of Proportionate-Share Impact Fees, the American Planning Association’s first impact fee guide. Nicholas is also co-author of A Guide to Impact fees and Housing Affordability (with Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer and Arthur C. Nelson), editor of The Changing Structure of Infrastructure Finance, and author of State Regulation and Housing Prices. Together with Juergensmeyer, he pioneered the Rational Nexus Test, which has become the guiding principle for development mitigation such as impact fees in the United States.

Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer, a BA and JD graduate of Duke University and a member of the Ohio Bar, is emeritus Professor and emeritus Ben F. Johnson, Jr. Chair in Law at Georgia State University, where he served as Co-Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy. He was also Adjunct Professor in City and Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Florida. Juergensmeyer is the co-author of the widely cited Land Use Planning and Development Regulation Law; Impact Fees: Principles and Practice of Proportionate Share Development Fees (with Nelson and Nicholas); and over 100 other books and articles. He has consulted with local governments and attorneys on matters relating to impact fees and other infrastructure finance policies as well as development mitigation in 29 states.

Clancy Mullen, AICP, is president of Duncan Associates. Having prepared more than 300 impact fee studies, he is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on professional impact fee practice. Prior to joining Duncan Associates, Mullen served as a zoning planner for Austin. He is a contributing author to two American Planning Association publications, Principles and Practice of Proportionate-Share Development Fees and Growth Management Principles and Practice. He is also a co-founder of the National Impact Fee Roundtable (now the Growth and Infrastructure Consortium).