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How a developer chooses to subdivide his landholding depends on the distribution of potential buyers and their maximum offers for different sized plots. These offers depend, inter alia, upon factors outside the developer's control such as community tax rates and public services. The developer's optimal subdivision scheme for a continuum of buyers is derived, together with the implied prices of land on different sized plots. We also illustrate the effect of alternative tax regimes on the profit-maximizing density of development, when the landholding is subdivided into equal-sized plots, and exhibit the conflict of interest between developers and existing community residents.

THE rapid growth of suburban communities in recent years has led to increased congestion and greater physical burdens upon the public facilities of those communities. The purpose of this paper is to examine these problems in the specific case of public parks and recreation areas and to demonstrate that the full complexity of the issues has not yet been grasped even by those legislatures and courts that have considered the problem of congestion externalities. We begin with a simple model of congestion externalities and public recreational facilities, and then review the judicial approach to statutes attempting to mitigate these effects. Finally, we present a model for internalizing the principal effects of suburban growth upon public recreational areas, and offer some guidelines for an efficient legislative solution to these difficult problems.