Building moratorium as a future instrument for tackling unsustainable urban growth

We live in times when our planet is overloaded with issues coming from human activities where additional mechanisms to preserve the quality of life are essential. Modern societies experience constant internal dynamics. The uncontrolled urban growth leading to dense and unmanageable environment as a main urban issue cities face today. This is a prevailing problem in the developing countries where the construction industry is booming. Overall while there is a rush to development there are also some conflicting interest and policies that are leading to unsustainable urban growth. To regulate a property development a local government can try to impose a moratorium on the issuance of building permits and this can be agreed upon all the interest parties or it may be imposed by operation of law (Lehman and Phelps, 2005). Oftentimes local authorities will impose a building moratorium to tackle development in order to have time to make a satisfactory urban plan or to make some changes and update the regulations. The land use control objective is to promote good planning values supported by the whole community. This is done by regulating the urban growth and it is best implemented on a carefully contemplated comprehensive plan. During a time a new plan is being drafted some construction demand may arise based on an existing outdated, inadequate urban plan. If this demands are met “the ultimate worth of the eventual plan could be undermined” and this where the moratorium comes in place. The resources of academic literature on the case are somewhat in short supply and mainly based on describing specific case scenarios without a critical thought on the tool itself. Based on the resources the paper will look at different cases using the growth management systems, mainly in the USA and one south east european case - the city of Skopje, Macedonia that adopted the building moratorium system in January 2018 where the author was involved in the decision making process. According to time spam a building moratorium can be short-term, lasting for several months and long-term that last for several years up to a decade depending on the frameworks set by the local government (Bankrate, 2018). The moratorium can also be general referring to all kind of building permits in one zone or it can be specific and pose a ban on a certain land use like a housing moratorium or a commercial moratorium. The most common type is the land use moratorium that halts the acceptance of new development applications until planning or zoning changes are being made. It's validity is being determined by weighing its impact on the affected parties. Not in all countries a moratorium is recognized in the constitutional law and in turns local authorities may face big challenges in facing the troublesome and hardly manageable development. In such cases however, there are ways to practice this mechanism as shown in some of the cases presented in this paper. As a conclusion a building moratorium is often times a political decision and it's downside is that political parties would use it merely for their own purposes. Furthermore a more comprehensive research in the economic repercussions of the mechanism is needed. Governments together with policymakers need to make plans for the long run and foresee growth patterns so that a significant cost on government revenue, jobs in construction sector and consumer surplus can be avoided.