Land development in the United Kingdom: private property rights and public policy objectives

Abstract

The system of land-use planning in the United Kingdom has remained essentially unchanged since the introduction of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Acts. There has been rather little progress since then in the economic evaluation of this system or in the development of more market-based approaches to land-use planning. The author discusses some of the reasons for the lack of economic evaluation, develops decision criteria for conducting such economic evaluation, and goes on to indicate the kind of role market-based instruments might play in future.