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Section 1 — Conclusions and afterthoughts
HABlTATINTL. Vol. 11, No. I, pp. 113-115. 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd. Prtnted m Great Britam
Section 1 Conclusions and Afterthoughts Each of the papers of this special section raises the same fundamental question about land-use ownership and land-use planning: who allocates the private rights and collective rights attached to property. The answer to this question depends on societal attitudes towards land. These attitudes are translated into norms, practices and regulations. Even the weakest form of zoning is a way of distributing ownership of collective property rights between individual land-owners and the community. The way this distribution works depends on the views prevailing in the society about the respective roles of the individual and the community. In the USA, the prevailing view is that individual property rights do include development rights (“highest and best use of the land”). Therefore it is considered as normal that the community pays compensation to an owner of farmland who is prevented from developing that land for housing even if he had no actual intention of doing so but might do so in the future. One can therefore understand that the Pinelands farmers are not interested in abandoning any development rights which might become more valuable in the future than what they are offered for them by the conservation scheme. If one crosses the border to Canada the societal attitude - and therefore the norms and regulations - appear to be considerably different, as Canada is closer to the British tradition of crown ownership of the land and because of the absence of broad constitutional protection of individual property rights. This gives to the community - i.e. provincial and local governments - much more possibility of controlling the use of the land without fear of the need to pay compensation. The difference between US and Canadian urban land use has been recently analysed in depth by M. Goldberg and J. Mercer in their book, The Myth of the Challenged (University of British North American City: Continentalism Columbia Press, 1986). Each of the countries reviewed in the papers could be the subject of a similar analysis. It actually could be argued that the less a country has a community oriented view towards land ownership the more it needs land banking to achieve community purposes. In the USA, the safest way for the community to ensure conservation of fragile ecosystems is to buy them outright through land banking. Any other form of control is potentially threatened by court rulings or local political decisions in favour of owners who also happen to be voters. By contrast, in Holland and Israel, a strong community element is grained into the social fabric of the country because of historic factors. Dutch land has been gained from the sea through continuous collective effort. In Israel, the founders of the nation had to fight for every inch of the national territory. As to Sweden, the prevailing view has been consistently in favour of an increase of the community role in land-ownership and a trimming of the bundle of individual ownership rights, for example by underestimating the value of land in case of expropriation. Nevertheless, the country has engaged in large-scale urban land banking, as illustrated by Atmer’s paper about Stockholm. The paradoxical 113
result of the whole exercise bus been analysed by A. D. Ratzka in his book Sixty Years of Municipal Leasehold in Stockholm: an Econometric and Cost-Revenue Analysis (Swedish Council for Building Research, 1980). The author concludes that as the ground charges have been below market the land banking exercise has in fact resulted in subsidies to middle-class leaseholders, as the subsidies have mainly benefited first owners of single-family homes erected on city-owned land. In the case of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, the leasehold system has also resulted in a subsidy to the first owners of single-family houses built on leased land. Detailed assessments of who benefits from land banking might be an interesting subject for comparative research. The discussion about the “bundle of rights” included in individual land ownership should not make us overlook the problems related to the way the community manages the property rights to which it is entitled. These problems do arise both in large estates owned and managed by private interests and in publiclyowned urban developments. The problems related to large private estates are illustrated by the case of the break-up of the Hawaii Bishop Estate. Similar problems are occurring in all maturing company towns and planned unit developments. The Louvain-la-Neuve case illustrates how a large estate put together by the university developers is gradually becoming a neighbourhood among the other neighbourhoods of the Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve Municipality. Besides the examples treated in the papers, one could cite the case of Thamesmead in the UK, which was created by public initiative and which is now tending towards self-management and, in addition, the case of Villeneuve d’Asq in France, where the State-appointed New Town Authority is presently in the process of being replaced by an elected municipal management. The same question will be raised in the future in relation to the British enterprise zones, such as the London Docklands, presently run by a government-appointed development authority and which at some point will need more participatory forms of management. Let us now reflect on the question of property rights and urban land tenures explored by Doebele’s paper in relation to the developing world. In most traditional communities land ownership rights have a very strong community element. This community element includes collective management of the land under the stewardship of the traditional community leaders. The process of transformation of this collective process into individual forms of ownership is one of the striking changes occurring in the Third World. As the registration oflandownership rights of specific plots is not needed in a traditional society whereas urban development requires well-defined property rights of the land on which the buildings are constructed one tends towards a dual system of land entitlement. Modern cadastral systems are introduced little by little while traditional forms of property identification remain valid. One may argue that this duality often acts in favour of the traditional elites. These elites get an opportunity to vastly increase their wealth and power by selling property rights on land which they do not actually own but of which they can dispose because of the stewardship attached to their eminence in the community. In that way, the traditional elites are directly interested in Western-type private urban developments. They are among the beneficiaries of private-public interactions deriving from the dual system of land ownership and registration. At this stage of the reflection, one may wonder if we are not presently experiencing a diverging historical evolution in industrial societies and in developing countries. In industrial countries, the bundle of individual property rights is extremely well defined (with variations according to the prevailing value systems), but the need to take into account a growing number of community managed networks and services resulting from technical progress imposes growing constraints on individual owners.
Section I -
Conclusions and Afterthoughts
115
In developing countries, we are experiencing a trend towards individualisation of property rights and widespread efforts towards registration of the land, at the expense of the hitherto prevailing community forms of land ownership and management. Pierre Laconte Guest Editor
Section 1 Conclusions and Afterthoughts Each of the papers of this special section raises the same fundamental question about land-use ownership and land-use planning: who allocates the private rights and collective rights attached to property. The answer to this question depends on societal attitudes towards land. These attitudes are translated into norms, practices and regulations. Even the weakest form of zoning is a way of distributing ownership of collective property rights between individual land-owners and the community. The way this distribution works depends on the views prevailing in the society about the respective roles of the individual and the community. In the USA, the prevailing view is that individual property rights do include development rights (“highest and best use of the land”). Therefore it is considered as normal that the community pays compensation to an owner of farmland who is prevented from developing that land for housing even if he had no actual intention of doing so but might do so in the future. One can therefore understand that the Pinelands farmers are not interested in abandoning any development rights which might become more valuable in the future than what they are offered for them by the conservation scheme. If one crosses the border to Canada the societal attitude - and therefore the norms and regulations - appear to be considerably different, as Canada is closer to the British tradition of crown ownership of the land and because of the absence of broad constitutional protection of individual property rights. This gives to the community - i.e. provincial and local governments - much more possibility of controlling the use of the land without fear of the need to pay compensation. The difference between US and Canadian urban land use has been recently analysed in depth by M. Goldberg and J. Mercer in their book, The Myth of the Challenged (University of British North American City: Continentalism Columbia Press, 1986). Each of the countries reviewed in the papers could be the subject of a similar analysis. It actually could be argued that the less a country has a community oriented view towards land ownership the more it needs land banking to achieve community purposes. In the USA, the safest way for the community to ensure conservation of fragile ecosystems is to buy them outright through land banking. Any other form of control is potentially threatened by court rulings or local political decisions in favour of owners who also happen to be voters. By contrast, in Holland and Israel, a strong community element is grained into the social fabric of the country because of historic factors. Dutch land has been gained from the sea through continuous collective effort. In Israel, the founders of the nation had to fight for every inch of the national territory. As to Sweden, the prevailing view has been consistently in favour of an increase of the community role in land-ownership and a trimming of the bundle of individual ownership rights, for example by underestimating the value of land in case of expropriation. Nevertheless, the country has engaged in large-scale urban land banking, as illustrated by Atmer’s paper about Stockholm. The paradoxical 113
result of the whole exercise bus been analysed by A. D. Ratzka in his book Sixty Years of Municipal Leasehold in Stockholm: an Econometric and Cost-Revenue Analysis (Swedish Council for Building Research, 1980). The author concludes that as the ground charges have been below market the land banking exercise has in fact resulted in subsidies to middle-class leaseholders, as the subsidies have mainly benefited first owners of single-family homes erected on city-owned land. In the case of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, the leasehold system has also resulted in a subsidy to the first owners of single-family houses built on leased land. Detailed assessments of who benefits from land banking might be an interesting subject for comparative research. The discussion about the “bundle of rights” included in individual land ownership should not make us overlook the problems related to the way the community manages the property rights to which it is entitled. These problems do arise both in large estates owned and managed by private interests and in publiclyowned urban developments. The problems related to large private estates are illustrated by the case of the break-up of the Hawaii Bishop Estate. Similar problems are occurring in all maturing company towns and planned unit developments. The Louvain-la-Neuve case illustrates how a large estate put together by the university developers is gradually becoming a neighbourhood among the other neighbourhoods of the Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve Municipality. Besides the examples treated in the papers, one could cite the case of Thamesmead in the UK, which was created by public initiative and which is now tending towards self-management and, in addition, the case of Villeneuve d’Asq in France, where the State-appointed New Town Authority is presently in the process of being replaced by an elected municipal management. The same question will be raised in the future in relation to the British enterprise zones, such as the London Docklands, presently run by a government-appointed development authority and which at some point will need more participatory forms of management. Let us now reflect on the question of property rights and urban land tenures explored by Doebele’s paper in relation to the developing world. In most traditional communities land ownership rights have a very strong community element. This community element includes collective management of the land under the stewardship of the traditional community leaders. The process of transformation of this collective process into individual forms of ownership is one of the striking changes occurring in the Third World. As the registration oflandownership rights of specific plots is not needed in a traditional society whereas urban development requires well-defined property rights of the land on which the buildings are constructed one tends towards a dual system of land entitlement. Modern cadastral systems are introduced little by little while traditional forms of property identification remain valid. One may argue that this duality often acts in favour of the traditional elites. These elites get an opportunity to vastly increase their wealth and power by selling property rights on land which they do not actually own but of which they can dispose because of the stewardship attached to their eminence in the community. In that way, the traditional elites are directly interested in Western-type private urban developments. They are among the beneficiaries of private-public interactions deriving from the dual system of land ownership and registration. At this stage of the reflection, one may wonder if we are not presently experiencing a diverging historical evolution in industrial societies and in developing countries. In industrial countries, the bundle of individual property rights is extremely well defined (with variations according to the prevailing value systems), but the need to take into account a growing number of community managed networks and services resulting from technical progress imposes growing constraints on individual owners.
Section I -
Conclusions and Afterthoughts
115
In developing countries, we are experiencing a trend towards individualisation of property rights and widespread efforts towards registration of the land, at the expense of the hitherto prevailing community forms of land ownership and management. Pierre Laconte Guest Editor