The Dolan Vs The City Case Study

Describe early city life. How did people live? What were the issues? How was the city planned over time? Early life in the urban cities of the US were a whole other world compared to what the cities are today. In the early 1800s, the US population in urbanized areas were about 300,000, with a total population peaking roughly at 5 million. By 1900 the population had spiked to about 30 million with 40 percent of it citizens living in urbanized areas. This spike in population had a lot to do with immigrants and a baby boom that together surpassed the amount of deaths. Transportation in New York for example, began as horse drawn carriages with about 20-30 pounds of manure, counted as pollution, per horse daily. Eventually the city evolved to …show more content…
Florence Dolan owned a plumbing and electric supply store and wanted to develop the property and expand it to about double of its current size, pushing it close to 18,000 sq. ft while adding 39 parking spots. She put a permit request and was granted the permit with the condition that she released a portion of her property to the city to be redeveloped. The issue in this case is that the city is trying to impermissibly take land from the land owner by providing a “service” in return. The city though does justify their condition, and even provide some kind of benefit for the owner. The city condition was to offer better drainage in a flooding area of her property and bike lane along with better traffic flow. Florence clearly ended up taking this to court, because she didn 't see any major benefits into giving some of her land to the city for a bike lane. There was not enough justification. This was a very similar case in the Nolan vs California coastal commission, where the final decision for both cases the court took a position where there was not a sufficient nexus to justify the municipality demand. In this case Dolan got her permit and expanded her business without the necessity of having to release some land to the