Public Infrastructure, Private Finance: Developer Obligations and Responsibilities

Traditionally, the public sector has been responsible for the provision of all public goods necessary to support sustainable urban development, including public infrastructure such as roads, parks, social facilities, climate mitigation and adaptation, and affordable housing. With the shift in recent years towards public infrastructure being financed by private stakeholders, the demand for transparent guidance to ensure accountability for the responsibilities held by developers has risen.

Within planning practice and urban development, the shift towards private financing of public infrastructure has translated into new tools being implemented to provide joint responsibility for upholding requirements. Developer obligations are contributions made by property developers and landowners towards public infrastructure in exchange for decisions on land-use regulations which increase the economic value of their land. This book presents insight into the design and practical results of these obligations in different countries and their effects on municipal financial health, demonstrating the increasing importance of efficient bargaining processes and the institutional design of developer obligations in modern urban planning.

Primarily written for academics in land-use planning, real estate, urban development, law, and economics, it will additionally be useful to policy makers and practitioners pursuing the improvement of public infrastructure financing.

Demetrio Muñoz Gielen (ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6863-2336) is Lecturer of Land Policies at two universities: the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, and also at the Radboud University, both in the Netherlands. He combines his lectureship and research position with a position as public officer at the Dutch Municipality of Purmerend. He does research on, and is involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of land policies and land-based finance in urban development.

Erwin van der Krabben is Professor of Urban Panning at Radboud University (the Netherlands), and Honorary Professor of Planning and Real Estate at Hong Kong University, Faculty of Architecture. His research focuses on the interrelationships between urban planning and land and real estate markets and includes work on land policy and value capture, financial aspects of urban management and decision-making processes.