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Limiting housing and infrastructure in flood-prone places has long been recognized as critical to managing long-term risk. However, due to the difficulty of tracking development at small spatial scales, little empirical research has been conducted to explain differences between communities' floodplain development patterns. We analyzed new construction across 5 million parcels in the state of North Carolina to develop standardized measures of floodplain development and evaluated the relationships between flood risk management effort and development outcomes. Statewide, for every property removed through buyouts from 1996 to 2017, more than 10 new residences were built in floodplains. At the community level, indicators of flood risk management effort (participation in the Community Rating System and use of buyouts) did not consistently align with floodplain development outcomes. Based on a sample of urban and suburban counties, we found more than 75,000 acres of vacant floodplain land currently zoned for development. Although we did not capture the full range of flood risk mitigation practices, results indicate that local development policies often run counter to efforts to limit long-term risk. Land use planning and floodplain management have the potential to play a larger role in flood risk mitigation. Modifying federal programs to more strongly disincentivize floodplain development could enhance local regulation and minimize future flood exposure. Given extensive undeveloped floodplain land and projected climate change, additional effort to manage development is needed to limit increases in flood risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal, state, and local government funding helps stimulate urban development, with growth machine politics playing an important role in determining where subsidies are allocated. The U.S. Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA) was enacted to curb the role of federal subsidies in fostering development along hazardous coastal barriers, providing an opportunity to explore how local growth politics are influenced by the removal of one source of government funding. In this study, we used a series of interview-based case studies to investigate why certain areas in the CBRA developed while most did not. In most cases, the CBRA obstructed local growth coalitions, isolating landowners from the resources necessary to improve the growth potential of their land interests. However, in cases where development occurred within the CBRA, we often found evidence that powerful growth machines were able to acquire replacement subsidies from state and local governments, suggesting these actions are a key driver in overcoming the financial barriers posed by the CBRA. This study revealed how growth machines could be hampered by removing access to the financial resources of one level of government, despite the potential to be undermined by intervention at other levels. In an era of increasing coastal risks, subsidy removal can be an effective tool for managing coastal growth, even when authority over land use decisions is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]