Property Rights Land Values And Urban Development

This book presents an analysis of betterment and compensation issues under the Land Use Rights (LURs) System in China since 1988. The topic originates from the observation of widening inequity and increasing uncertainty associated with the failure of g

When it comes to urban planning, to what extent and under what conditions should the community’s interest prevail over the rights of private property owners? Public Interest, Private Property addresses this question at a time when pollution, urban sprawl, and condo booms are forcing municipal governments to adopt prescriptive laws and regulations. Case studies focus on spheres in which public values and private property rights collide – expropriation law, natural resources regulation, green development, and water provision – laying the groundwork for more active debates on the issues currently shaping our cities.

'Principles of City Land Values' is a study book on the valuation of land and buildings in the American real estate market. When placed in charge of the Mortgage Department of the U. S. Mortgage & Trust Co. in 1895, the writer, Richard M. Hurd, searched in vain, both in England and this country, for books on the science of city real estate as an aid in judging values. Finding in economic books merely brief references to city land and elsewhere only fragmentary articles, the plan arose to outline the theory of the structure of cities and to state the average scales of land values produced by different utilities within them. The material for this study of the structure of cities - including their locations, starting points and lines of growth - has been gathered from a large number of local histories of American cities, old maps, commercial geographies, etc.

The rights associated with the "ownership" of urban land have undergone coniderable revisions as a result of the public policies, provincial regulations and market innovations. Increasingly new institutional actors have come to be "partners" in decisions about the use, disposition and enjoyment of urban land. The "process" of decision making is altering the "substance" of land rights. The efficiency and equity of the process have become items on the land reform agenda. Furthermore, the enjoyment of private property rights depends on proper management of the common property, namely air, water, roads, parks, communities. The property rights need to be formally redefined to take into account the contemporary demands and modern land use practices. A national commission should be set up to define the powers and obligations of various actors and interests involved in decisions about land disposition.

Published in 1976, Land and Urban Development--originally prepared for Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation--is the first comprehensive study of the land development and housing industry in Canada. It details the ownership of major contemporary development corporations, analyzes the massive land banks these corporations controlled around 21 Canadian cities, dissects the profits made from turning farm land into house lots, describes the successes and failures of public land bankings in five locations, and offers case studies of the land market in Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver. Land and Urban Development presents an extremely detailed analysis of the mechanics of urban development at a crucial period in Canadian history.

This book provides cities with strategies and methodologies for applying land value capture financing schemes for capital-intensive transit and transit-related investments, based on the successful experiences of Mass Transit Railway Corporation in Hong Kong SAR, China, and Japanese railway companies in Tokyo metropolitan areas.

Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing rapid population growth. Yet their economic growth has not kept pace. Why? One factor might be low capital investment, due in part to Africa’s relative poverty: Other regions have reached similar stages of urbanization at higher per capita GDP. This study, however, identifies a deeper reason: African cities are closed to the world. Compared with other developing cities, cities in Africa produce few goods and services for trade on regional and international markets To grow economically as they are growing in size, Africa’s cities must open their doors to the world. They need to specialize in manufacturing, along with other regionally and globally tradable goods and services. And to attract global investment in tradables production, cities must develop scale economies, which are associated with successful urban economic development in other regions. Such scale economies can arise in Africa, and they will—if city and country leaders make concerted efforts to bring agglomeration effects to urban areas. Today, potential urban investors and entrepreneurs look at Africa and see crowded, disconnected, and costly cities. Such cities inspire low expectations for the scale of urban production and for returns on invested capital. How can these cities become economically dense—not merely crowded? How can they acquire efficient connections? And how can they draw firms and skilled workers with a more affordable, livable urban environment? From a policy standpoint, the answer must be to address the structural problems affecting African cities. Foremost among these problems are institutional and regulatory constraints that misallocate land and labor, fragment physical development, and limit productivity. As long as African cities lack functioning land markets and regulations and early, coordinated infrastructure investments, they will remain local cities: closed to regional and global markets, trapped into producing only locally traded goods and services, and limited in their economic growth.