Speaker
Description
In light of global ambitions to reduce land take and the need for housing, densification has become a prominent policy goal for urban development in many countries. While densification has been widely discussed in academia for the inner-urban realm, suburban areas have huge potential but are yet understudied. Densification of suburban areas, however, is from a spatial planning perspective much more challenging.
This contribution presents evidence of the international research project SUBDENSE from city regions in England, France and Germany. There are three main types of results: (1) Based on a geo-spatial analysis, it will be shown where densification takes place and the institutional drivers behind different types of densification. (2) The study then looked at the role of actors in suburban densification process based on interviews with landowners, residents, developers, planners and councillors to assess the agency that various stakeholders have in the densification process. Finally, (3) the study investigated the role of land policy in the densification process.
The results reveal that the main barrier to suburban densification is not so much due to resistance from landowners, but the passivity of local authorities as well as a lack of proper tools to have informed public debate and to contract with stakeholders. Our results encourage a debate on the role that suburban areas play in trajectories towards sustainable urban development.
| Keywords | housing; geo-spatial analysis; landowners; property rights |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
