Planning & Zoning News Archive: 1982-2022

What is the PZN Archive

Welcome to the Planning & Zoning News (PZN) Archive! PZN was published monthly by Mark Wyckoff, FAICP for nearly forty years from Nov. 1982 – February 2022. It was the only state-specific monthly publication of its kind published during this period. Written as a contemporary guide, it is now an historical archive. It includes summaries of (almost) all Michigan appellate court cases on planning, zoning, and related community development and environmental protection issues (more than 1,500 case summaries). It included information on topics of contemporary interest, book summaries, local planning and zoning case studies, analysis of state and local land use policy, including legislation.

How to Use It

The archive is accompanied by two indexes. One for Nov. 1982 – Nov. 2009, and one for Dec. 2009 – Feb. 2022. Each has a Subject Table of Contents (Topic), a Subject Index, and an Author Index (Author). Once you find a subject of interest in the indexes, review the listed articles or case summaries, then click on the year (start with the range below), then the month for that issue and open it, then locate the page(s) the article is on. Each issue is scanned as a PDF and may be downloaded for further use, or printing. Duplication for your personal use, or for use in a community is fine (like with the planning commission), but duplication of articles or whole issues for resale is not permitted.

When to Use it

Any time you want to know more about a planning topic that is new to you, or you want to see what the state or other local units of government have previously done on this topic is when to check out PZN. Very few topics in planning are new (e.g. data centers and solar arrays have been around for decades, just on smaller scales), many old land use issues haven’t changed much (e.g. farmland and wetland protection) and many old solutions just need “dusting off” or “refreshing” to be useful again. Check out past practices in PZN before spending hours researching online. Save yourself the embarrassment of a citizen in the audience citing what your community previously did on this topic, because they read about it in PZN.

Help Us Out

If you find a mistake (e.g. wrong issue under a month/year, an issue missing pages or including an unreadable scanned page, etc.) please contact Andy at alarsen@planningmi.org so we can fix the problem. 

Special thanks to Andrea Brown and Andy Larsen for making this unique research available to Michigan planners!!!!!

Looking to search by topic or author? Download / View the PZN Index:

• November 1982 - November 2009
• December 2009 - February 2022
  
  

Digital Uploads of the Original Issues: