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Land-use lawyers comprise a relatively small percentage of lawyers nationwide. Despite its relatively insignificant population among the greater bar, the land-use law community has long enjoyed a tradition of interaction, [...]

A housing affordability crisis is sweeping across Western U.S. cities and metropolitan areas. The root causes of this affordability crisis have been well-studied, and potential solutions to the crisis are welldocumented. As home prices continue to increase unabated, scholars and policymakers have rightly considered whether and how the land use regulatory system—in particular, zoning—can be reformed in such a manner as to produce more housing that is more affordable to lower- and middle-income households. But the task of achieving legislative reform is monumental, particularly in Western states with strong home rule traditions. The Colorado Housing Affordability Project (CHAP), of which the authors are members, has developed indepth research and is deep in the midst of advocating for statewide zoning reform in Colorado. This article will review CHAP’s original research on the origins and spread of Colorado’s housing shortage, how and to what degree other states and local governments have addressed such shortage and will explore CHAP’s legislative reform platform and how it might be applied in Colorado and other Western states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although clean energy generation utilizing the Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) can be considered a promising strategy, this approach remains challenging by the dependence on high loadings of noble metals, mainly Platinum (Pt). Therefore, efforts have been directed to develop new and efficient electrocatalysts that could decrease the Pt content (e.g., by nanotechnology tools or alloying) or replace them completely in these systems. The present investigation shows that high catalytic activity can be reached towards the ORR by employing 1.8 ± 0.7 nm Ir nanoparticles (NPs) deposited onto MnO2 nanowires surface under low Ir loadings (1.2 wt.%). Interestingly, we observed that the MnO2-Ir nanohybrid presented high catalytic activity for the ORR close to commercial Pt/C (20.0 wt.% of Pt), indicating that it could obtain efficient performance using a simple synthetic procedure. The MnO2-Ir electrocatalyst also showed improved stability relative to commercial Pt/C, in which only a slight activity loss was observed after 50 reaction cycles. Considering our findings, the superior performance delivered by the MnO2-Ir nanohybrid may be related to (i) the significant concentration of reduced Mn3+ species, leading to increased concentration of oxygen vacancies at its surface; (ii) the presence of strong metal-support interactions (SMSI), in which the electronic effect between MnOx and Ir may enhance the ORR process; and (iii) the unique structure comprised by Ir ultrasmall sizes at the nanowire surface that enable the exposure of high energy surface/facets, high surface-to-volume ratios, and their uniform dispersion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time in two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled in the 2014–2015 term to review the thorny planning and legal subject of local government regulation of outdoor signs and billboards and the core First Amendment requirement that regulations of speech be ”content neutral“. In basic terms, the content‐neutrality doctrine prohibits the government from regulating a speaker's content or message–including messages on outdoor signs. InReed v. Town of Gilbert, the Court will be asked to decide whether Gilbert, Arizona's sign code, which distinguishes among several categories of signs, including religious, political, and ideological signs, meets the content neutrality requirement. In so doing, the Court may provide direction on how far local governments can go in regulating speech based on message, and the Court can resolve a longstanding division among the federal appellate courts over the meaning of content neutrality [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

First Amendment challenges by billboard companies and other sign owners to local sign regulations have become a frequent occurrence in the past thirty years. The stakes are high for both commercial sign owners and local governments. Sign control has emerged as an important front in the environmental protection movement, as it focuses on the visual or scenic quality of the environment. Courts have begun to recognize and accept local governments' interest in controlling the proliferation of signage as part of their efforts to improve environmental quality, but courts have applied First Amendment doctrine in an inconsistent manner. The courts' inconsistent treatment of the constitutional requirement of content neutrality has undermined state and local efforts to maintain aesthetic environments free from noxious signage. One of the consequences of this inconsistency is a false sense of security among sign regulators that their content-based regulations are somehow consistent with the First Amendment. This Note argues in favor of a strict approach to content neutrality, placing a greater burden on sign regulators to develop the most content-neutral ordinances possible. The proposed approach would beat billboard companies and sign owners at their own litigation game, limiting governments' exposure to litigation and lessening the risk of sign regulations being invalidated, which in turn denigrates aesthetic quality. Furthermore, the recommended approach would reaffirm the First Amendment rights of sign owners while ensuring that regulatory bodies have sufficient guidance and encounter less risk in ensuring aesthetic environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]