In land-use planning, a locally unwanted land use (LULU) is a land use that creates externality costs on those living in close proximity. These costs include potential health hazards, poor aesthetics, or reduction in home values. LULUs often gravitate to disadvantaged areas such as slums, industrial neighborhoods and poor, minority, unincorporated or politically under-represented places that cannot fight them off.
LULUs can include power plants, dumps (landfills), prisons, roads, factories, hospitals and many other developments. Planning seeks to distribute and reduce the harm of LULUs by zoning, environmental laws, community participation, buffer areas, clustering, dispersing and other such devices. Thus planning tries to protect property and environmental values by finding sites and operating procedures that minimize the LULU's effects.
