Development Review in Local Government: Benchmarking Best Practices

Approving or denying building permits and other land-use applications is an important role of local governments but one that often draws criticism from developers and citizens alike. This volume identifies an array of proven practices for bringing greater fairness, thoroughness, and speed to the development review process. The authors and a team of planning and development review professionals benchmarked with three national leaders and discovered seventy-eight distinctive practices accounting for the leaders’ success. In doing so, the benchmarking team not only produced helpful advice for improving development review processes but also demonstrated the value to local governments of a type of benchmarking fairly common in the private sector but rarely used in the public sector.