The National Longitudinal Land Use Survey (NLLUS) was administered in 1994, 2003, and 2019. Survey respondents are land use planning officials in local governments with land use and zoning authority, which varies from place to place. In 1994, the survey included the 25 most populous core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) in the US. In 2003 and 2019 it included the top 50 most populous CBSAs. The NLLUS data can be used to describe land use practices, assess whether they have changed over time, and analyze their relationship to economic and social conditions like housing supply and affordability, racial and economic segregation, urban sprawl, and neighborhood disinvestment.

1994 Land Use Survey The NLLUS 1994 Land Use Dataset includes information collected by Rolf Pendall as part of his dissertation at the Institute for Urban and Regional Development at the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. The dataset includes data on land use planning empowered jurisdictions in the 25 most populous metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) or Combined Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs) as of 1990. The survey was mailed to all planning directors in 1,530 jurisdictions with populations over 10,000 that have land use planning power, and 1,168 jurisdictions responded.

2003 Land Use Survey The NLLUS 2003 Land Use Dataset includes information collected by Rolf Pendall, Jake Wegman, and Jonathan Martin. The 2003 survey modified some of the questions from the 1994 instrument and expanded the sample to include all jurisdictions with populations over 10,000 in the 50 most populous MSAs and CMSAs as of 2000. It also expanded to include up to 50 extra jurisdictions with fewer than 10,000 residents in metropolitan areas where jurisdictions with more than 10,000 people covered less than 60 percent of the total MSA land area. The extra sample of smaller population jurisdictions was the same regardless of the number of smaller population jurisdictions in the MSA, unless the MSA had fewer than 50 of these jurisdictions with less than 10,000 people in which case the extra sample captured all of them. The survey was mailed to 2,365 jurisdictions and 1,845 responded.

2019 Land Use Survey The NLLUS 2019 Land Use Dataset includes information collected by the Urban Institute in collaboration with Rolf Pendall in 2019. The dataset includes data on land use planning empowered jurisdictions with populations over 10,000 within the top 50 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSA) (as of 2014) and a sample of land use planning empowered jurisdictions with populations under 10,000 in the Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; and Cincinnati, OH CBSAs. It also includes jurisdictions (regardless of population size) who responded to the survey in 1994 or 2003. The survey was emailed to 2,945 eligible jurisdictions in January and February of 2019 and representatives from 1,703 jurisdictions responded.

Longitudinal Land Use Survey The NLLUS Longitudinal Land Use Dataset includes information from the 2019, 2003, and 1994 Land Use Datasets. The dataset contains 3,142 total jurisdictions’ responses to the survey over the course of the three iterations. The statistical power of the longitudinal dataset varies depending on which years are being used for analysis. For analyses across 2003 and 1994, there are 742 repeat respondents. For analyses across 2003 and 2019, there are 1,034 repeat respondents. For analyses across all three years, there are 446 repeat respondents. The dataset includes both a comparable set of roughly 50 variables that have been standardized across all years as well as all the original variables from all three survey datasets. Both wide and long versions of the dataset are provided.