Local Self-Government Powers to Establish the Target Purpose of Lands and Their Permitted Use: Analysis of Theoretical Problems
Authors:   Kazan Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (Kazan, Russian Federation), Fazlieva Liliya K. 
Published: September 2021

The study aims to determine the powers of local authorities in defining the legal regime of lands and to study problems in this area. Legal uncertainty in the relationship between territorial planning and urban planning zoning, the inconsistency of the three basic federal laws regarding the powers of urban and rural settlements to establish land use and development rules have been revealed. The impossibility of replacing urban planning zoning with a territorial one is argued. The research methods are the dialectical method of cognition, general methods of formal logic, certain general research methods (systems aspect, analysis of regulatory legal sources), and specific methods of law (formal-logical method of interpretation of law, comparative legal method). Based on the study, the following conclusions are made. (1) There is still legal uncertainty on the issue of zoning, which is contained in documents of different legal force – results of territorial planning and urban planning zoning: the site plan, which is equal in the status to a regulatory legal act and rules of land use and development. At the same time, the text of the site plan does not meet the requirements of legal technology in contrast to rules of land use and development. To eliminate internal contradictions in the legislation, it is proposed to fix the correlation of the site plan and the rules of land use and development in a codified urban planning law, and to establish requirements for the development of the site plan. (2) Urban planning and land codified laws do not distinguish between the powers of urban and rural settlements in the field of approving land use and development rules (Part 3 of Article 8 of the Town Planning Code of the Russian Federation, Paragraph 1 of Article 39.30 of the Land Code of the Russian Federation). Moreover, the approval of land use and development rules was removed from the rural settlement’s issues of local importance and transferred to the municipal areas (Part 4 of Article 14 of Law No. 131-FZ). Consequently, the different interpretation of the categorical elements of issues of local importance leads to an ambiguous understanding of municipal rights and obligations. The author considers it necessary to bring the norms regarding the powers of local self-government contained in the industry laws in line with the norms of Law No. 131-FZ. (3) In order to improve the state policy on the use of the land fund of Russia, it is planned to replace urban planning zoning with territorial zoning, which involves the removal from circulation of the principle of dividing land for its intended purpose. It has been established that territorial zoning performs only the functions of detailing and concretizing the legal regime of the corresponding land plot. In this regard, the principle of dividing land into categories for the intended purpose should be considered as the main principle of legal regulation of land relations arising from the provisions of Article 9 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.