Michigan has a history of land use policy recommendations reaching back to the tenure of former Governor William Milliken, the current co-chair of the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council (MLULC). Governor Milliken created a Special Commission on Land Use in the early 1970s that made several recommendations to address what was believed to be a problem with urban sprawl even back then.

The centerpiece of the commission's recommendations was a statewide Land Use Planning Act. The Act's perceived interference with the privacy and primacy of the residential open market caused its legislative failure. This debate would keep the issue of coordinated land use tabled until the early 1990s.

In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded the Michigan DNR to produce the Michigan Environmental Risk Report in hopes it would provide a framework for responding to Michigan's environmental problems. Out of the 24 issues studied, the DNR steering committee identified "the absence of land use planning that considers resources and integrity of ecosystems" and "the degradation of urban environments" as the most critical environmental problems facing Michigan.

In 1994, as a result of these findings, Governor Engler assigned the Natural Resource Commission to form a task force who was charged with reviewing current state land use programs and providing recommendations to correct the uncoordinated and destructive land use policies found in the report. The task force submitted Toward Integrated Land Use Planning in August 1996. The breadth of land use policy recommended by the task force was comparable to that suggested by the Michigan Society of Planning's 1995 report Patterns on the Land: Our Choices-Our Future.

These two overwhelming studies focused on the patterns of uncoordinated growth that had fragmented Michigan's natural resources, overextended its infrastructure and separated its urban and rural communities. These reports, along with 1994's House Republican Task Force's Report on Land Use showed the very possible cooperative solutions to the disparate and destructive trend of sprawl that current land use policy reinforced.

Once again, these reports and recommendations were tabled because of their perceived interference with the independence of local government planning and the primacy of free-market realty.

In 1999, Public Sector Consultants, Inc. prepared a study for The Michigan Bipartisan Urban Caucus and the Michigan Environmental and Economic Roundtable (MEER) that focused on the economic, social and environmental well-being of Michigan cities. Entitled The Status of Michigan Cities, it provided convincing statistical evidence that showed a population shift away from the urban core to the surrounding suburbs and farther, taking with it job opportunities and economic activity.

The most recent land use study is the Michigan Land Resource Project, also put together by Public Sector Consultants in November of 2001 for MEER. It expands on previous studies by using geo-spatial mapping to make a computer projection of the future of Michigan's natural resources if we continue with the trend of uncoordinated planning and destructive sprawl. This report was presented to the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council at their first meeting by the Director of Basic Science and Remote Sensing Initiative at Michigan State University, David Skole.

In 2001, the House Democratic Land Use Task Force submitted a report that listed several land use policy recommendations, mainly focusing on the need for regional planning cooperation.