What Development Regulatory Variables Say—or Don’t Say—About A Municipality

Little is known about how regulatory development variables reflect and define a community. This paper explores the correlation of development regulatory variables with broader community measures in 68 municipalities in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Coefficients of determination, correlation coefficients, principal component analysis, and factor analysis were used to compare development regulatory data with broader municipal measures. The hypothesis tested is overarching: that a municipality’s development regulations and processes correlate to general measures of community composition. The strongest and only significant correlations found were in the municipal use of tax increment financing and commercial/ industrial property values, non-residential construction activity, population, and multi-family building permit activity.