Speaker
Description
The significance of the relationship between property, law, and spatial planning is increasingly widely recognized (Alterman, Balla et al. 2010, Davy 2012, Blomley 2017, Dorries 2017). Yet notwithstanding the recent spread of research on ‘new municipalism’ (Ewen and Hebbert 2007, Clarke 2011, Sareen and Waagsaether 2022), there is still little planning research on the central role of municipal government institutions in the production and regulation of urban property.
The paper argues first that urban property is a distinctive form of landed property because its very existence requires sets of urban infrastructure including streets, water supply, sewers, police and fire services, and property registers, and the promise of their continued maintenance and enforcement (Monstadt 2009, Sorensen 2018). Without these, urban property would quickly lose both use value and exchange value. Urban property, urban infrastructure, and municipal government are the tripod at the heart of the socio-technical system that forms the terrain of spatial planning.
Second, the hegemonic institution of local governance is the municipal territorial jurisdiction with corporate status and legal durability, powers to borrow, invest in land and infrastructure, levy and collect taxes, deliver and charge for mandatory services such as fire protection, and regulate capital investment in property (Dillon 1873, Frug 1980). Territoriality is thus an integral characteristic of municipal self-governance that has had profound and lasting consequences. Among these, prominent is pooled responsibility for infrastructure and services in a defined urban territory, linked with pooled revenue from local taxes, that can be powerfully redistributive either in favour of or against social equity, a quality that has long shaped both institutional contestation and the contested geographies of municipal territoriality (Orfield 1997, Dreier, Mollenkopf et al. 2001, Freemark, Steil et al. 2020).
Third, basic aspects of current municipal governance institutions were a product of the urban revolution of 11th century Europe, that linked property, infrastructure, and self-governance within bounded territories (Weber 1958). Sassen argues that the merchant towns of the late medieval period achieved a completely new configuration of territory, authority, and rights (TAR), and that this represented a major turning point that contributed significantly to the later emergence and dominance of the nation-state configuration of TAR. Sassen (2006) suggests that particular configurations of TAR are historically produced and contingent, the product of struggles and contestations among actors in specific places and times. Although embedded in multilevel governance systems in which they are normally the weaker party (McGuirk 2007, Salet and Thornley 2007), bounded municipal territorial jurisdictions are the ubiquitous urban governance institution globally, that vary greatly in their powers in different countries and over time.
I suggest that urban property capitalism therefore emerges in the 11th century urban revolution with the establishment of self-governing cities in Europe. Before this time urban property rights were limited, urban law was weak, and property markets as such did not exist, but the emerging municipal institution led immediately to stronger property rights, urban law, and increasing capital investment in urban property and infrastructure. Key aspects of the municipal institutional system survived the emergence of nation-states, and was spread around the world by colonialism, but with great and enduring variety in both law, and planning and governance capacity.
I argue that variety of urban planning systems, approaches, and capacities in different cities and countries amounts to significant variation in urban property capitalisms, and can be analysed with reference to five key variables: degree of local legislative autonomy, extent of local policy authority, share of total tax revenue retained for local purposes, scope of public infrastructure and services delivered and financed locally, and ability to achieve land value capture.
References
Alterman, R., E. Balla. (2010). Takings international : a comparative perspective on land use regulations and compensation rights.
Blomley, N. (2017). "Land use, planning, and the “difficult character of property”." Planning Theory & Practice 18(3): 351-364.
Davy, B. (2012). Land policy: planning and the spatial consequences of property. Ashgate.
Dillon, J. F. (1873). The law of municipal corporations.
Freemark, Y., J. Steil and K. Thelen (2020). "Varieties of Urbanism: A Comparative View of Inequality and the Dual Dimensions of Metropolitan Fragmentation." Politics & Society 48(2): 235-274.
Frug, G. E. (1980). " The City as a Legal Concept." Harvard Law Review 93(6): 1057-1154.
Monstadt, J. (2009). "Conceptualizing the political ecology of urban infrastructures: insights from technology and urban studies." Environment and Planning A 41: 1924-1942.
Orfield, M. (1997). Metropolitics : a regional agenda for community and stability.
Salet, W. and A. Thornley (2007). "Institutional Influences on the Integration of Multilevel Governance and Spatial Policy in European City-Regions." Journal of Planning Education and Research 27(2): 188-198.
Sassen, S. (2006). Territory, authority, rights : from medieval to global assemblages.
Sorensen, A. (2018). "Institutions in urban space: Land, infrastructure and governance in the production of urban property." Planning Theory and Practice 19(1): 21-38
| Keywords | Municipality; Institutions; Infrastructure; Urban property capitalism; Urban law; |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
