The focus of this guide is the search for local land use laws relevant to vacant, abandoned, and distressed properties. This research guide includes links to primary and secondary sources.
Many communities are working to deal with the adverse impacts of vacant, abandoned, and distressed properties. Use this guide to find local laws which put into effect the land use plans of local governments, and the planning documents, both local and regional, which inform land use planning for vacant, abandoned and distressed property.
Google offers customized searches. Advanced search offers:
Google Scholar search includes legal opinions from all U.S. courts and many law reviews and journals. Results can be sorted by jurisdiction (state or federal) or type of document (court opinion or journal). Results can be saved when you log in with your Google account.
Provides access to a wide range of scholarly materials, including articles available on ssrn.com, HeinOnline and the Digital Commons, as well as snipets of books from Google Books.
Take a few minutes to generate a list of possible search terms before you start your research. You'll probably find that there will be a family of terms that deal specifically with the non-legal aspects of your topic, and terms that relate to the legal and planning aspects of your topic.
Let's assume we're looking for newspaper articles and other current awareness materials regarding vacant and distressed property. Think about the words that are part of your topic in terms of these categories:
As you review and evaluate your search results, you will learn which terms and combinations of terms are most effective in particular contexts/databases. You will be able to expand this list of search terms as your understanding of the subject area and the language used to describe it grows.
See also the Housingpolicy.org Glossary of housing terms.
In order to effectively search for local laws, it will be useful to search the Internet for collections of relevant local laws / model laws which have been brought together by others. Here are some search terms that are often used when describing these collections: