Q1a. Discuss the role of zoning in the protection of property values. Is zoning inherently exclusionary. In this context, describe downzoning, large lot zoning as well as exclusionary zoning.

Q1b. In discussing your answer, describe the central arguments in the following court cases: (1) Boston suburbs of Needham (page 146), (2) Moore vs. City of East Cleveland (page 143), and Texas vs. City of Cleburne Living Center (page 145).

[600-700 words,

Q2: Finding a suitable home to live is a difficult task. Several search engines such as Zillow using a criterion based analysis to return best locations. How does it perform that task? There are many constraints to satisfy before an ideal home can be found. Few of the many constraints are: if the school district is good, whether it will take half an hour or an hour to commute from home to work, if there is open space for recreation close to home, property insurance you have to pay, if there is provision of hospital services near by, distance from grocery store, distance from main road, a playground for kids, recreation center for the family to visit, and distance from places to eat out. How will you decide which house to buy with all these constraints? A multi-criteria method is a Management Science technique adapted in geographic information systems (GIS) where one can optimally find the best house satisfying multiple constraints.

Suppose there are four houses that you are looking at for possibly buying it or renting for next year. There are three criteria that you are examining: (1) proximity to schools, (2) property taxes, and (3) proximity to main roads. How will you decide which house to purchase since you have conflicting interests? One property may have less tax but may be further away from the main road, another might have the acceptable tax you want to pay but far away from the school, yet another may be close to the main road and school but the property tax might be excessive. Given these constraints, how will you decide which house to buy or rent?

Proximity to school (minutes)

Property tax ($)

Proximity to main roads (meters)

30

22.5

200

2000

2000

1500

25

15

1000

1500

1500

2500

Constraints

Weights-I

Weights-II

Proximity to schools

0.5

0.2

Property Insurance

0.3

0.5

Proximity to main roads

0.2

0.3

Questions

1)    Using the multi criteria evaluation technique find the most suitable house (parcel) if two different weights are used for two different families. Family A has proximity to school as the most important criteria (Weight-I) and Family B has property insurance as the most important criterion (Weight-II). Show your working as in sheets provided.

2)    Have the two families selected the same parcels? Why are the parcels same or different?

3)    Describe the multi criteria evaluation technique. Describe the various steps used in multi criteria evaluation technique in your own words (Read the handout: 80-90 words).