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penalized, or that even the citizens directly affected by the re-zoning may find themselves with a Pyrrhic victory—Virginia’s Supreme Court says what a developer or a re-zoner wants, he gets.
ANOTHER aspect of the decisions that is alarming, to say the least, is that a Master Plan is far more than just a philosophical “Guide.” According to Devine, the court held that the plan is a guarantee of the zoning it indicates. Again, it doesn’t matter whether facilities are available, or the town or county could afford it. They have to do what the master plan says.
This newspaper has often warned about the danger of “master planning”—of how growth projections can become self-fulfilling, and of how once its marked down on a piece of paper and colored prettily, then you’re stuck with it. The sad truth is that master plans often create more planning problems than they solve, at least they do in Virginia, and the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision underlines what we’ve been talking about.□
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