Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:03:57.146Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Land Policy in Five Western Countries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Max Neutze
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Western governments often attempt to regulate the use of privately owned urban land, while still relying on private landowners and developers to initiate development. This requires restrictions on the ways owners can develop their land, which restricts supply and increases land prices. The incentive of landowners to maximize the value of their land leads them to resist any restrictions on their right to develop.

Different countries have responded to these difficulties in achieving land use policy objectives in different ways. In the United States, and to a lesser degree Australia, the private market largely determines the way cities grow and land use planning has only a minor influence. In Sweden and the Netherlands most land for development is purchased by the municipalities who also initiate the development. Britain, with strong land use controls, still relies on private development initiatives. Those controls restrict the land available and contribute to high land prices.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 225 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hall, Peter et al. , The Containment of Urban England, London: Allen and Unwin, 1973Google Scholar; Haar, Charles M., ‘Zoning for Minimum Standards’, Harvard Law Review, 1953, Vol. 66, pp. 1051ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 I have used this measure in a study of apartments in the Washington metropolitan area (Neutze, Max, The Suburban Apartment Boom, Washington D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1968, pp. 69–80).Google Scholar

3 Senior, Derek (Ed.), The Regional City, London: Longmans, 1966Google Scholar; Delafons, John, Land Use Controls in the U.S.A., Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969Google Scholar; Clawson, Marion and Hall, Peter, Planning and Urban Growth: An Anglo-American Comparison, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973Google Scholar; Odmann, Ella and Dahlberg, Gun-Britt, Urbanisation in Sweden, Stockholm: Government Publishing House, 1970.Google Scholar

4 Stretton, Hugh, Ideas for Australian Cities, Melbourne: Georgeon House, 1970.Google Scholar

5 A more recent appraisal of the tax is by Simon, H. A., ‘The Incidence of a Tax on Urban Real Property’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1943, Vol. 57, pp. 398–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Seligman has written one of the classic discussions (Seligman, E. R. A., The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation, New York: Columbia University Press, 1926).Google Scholar

6 Gaffney argues that a change from a property to a land tax would increase the leverage of land use planning (Gaffney, Mason, ‘Land Planning and the Property Tax’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1969, Vol. 35, pp. 178–83).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Else-Mitchell, , Report of the Royal Commission of inquiry into Rating, Valuation and Local Government Finance, Chairman, Mr Justice Else-Mitchell, N.S.W. Government. 1967.Google Scholar

8 Pullen, J. M., ‘The N.S.W. Land Development Contribution Act’, Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal, 1971, Vol. 9, pp. 5–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Rose, Louis A., ‘The Development Value Tax’, Urban Studies, 1973, Vol. 10, pp. 271–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neutze, Max, ‘The Development Value Tax: A Comment’, Urban Studies, 1974, Vol. 11, pp. 109–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Neutze, Max, op. cit.Google Scholar; Urban Research Unit, Urban Development in Melbourne, Canberra: Australian Institute of Urban Studies, 1973.Google Scholar

11 Stretton, , op. cit.Google Scholar

12 National Swedish Building Research, Municipal Land Policy in Sweden, Stockholm, Document D5, 1970Google Scholar; Neutze, Max, The Price of Land and Land Use Planning: Policy Instruments in the Urban Land Market, Paris: OECD, 1973.Google Scholar