ABSTRACT
FEDERAL AND STATE INTERVENTION IN SHOPPING CENTRE DEVELOPMENT IN THE USA
John A. Dawson and J. Dennis Lord
THE EMERGENCE OF POLICY ACTIVITIES
Public policy control aimed directly at commercial development of all types in the USA traditionally has been minimal. Indirectly at the national level broad economic and financial policy has affected economic factors such as interest rates and so has had a consequential effect on the amount and level of shopping centre investment. It is possible also to trace other indirect policy influences, for example in the interstate highway programme and its creation of circumferential metropolitan freeways. Until recent years with a more realistic federal interpretation of urban trends (Berry 1981), intervention from the federal government on shopping centre issues was limited to these indirect and unstructured measures. Public policy control, as much as it existed at all, was locally based and implemented through zoning legislation. Local zoning plans still seek to direct the development of new centres but the relative ease with which such plans can be changed weakens zoning powers considerably. Although not totally unconstrained, shopping centre development in the USA has been little influenced by public policy. As long as taxes were paid, shopping centres were operated with little attention given to any broader public social and economic costs incurred from their operation.
