Speaker
Description
The conversion of natural land into urbanized areas, commonly referred to as "land take," presents significant ecological, social, and economic challenges. While (supra)national-level regulatory reforms have received considerable attention as a strategy to curb land take, much less focus has been directed towards the local level. This is surprising, given that the responsibility for achieving the “no net land take” (NNLT) goal largely falls on municipalities. However, local governments often lack the planning resources required to address these goals effectively. Moreover, they face limited incentives to reduce land take, as they tend to rely on urban growth—and the associated surge of fiscal revenues —for financial stability.
National and regional regulatory frameworks may help address land take at broader scales, but they are less operable at the local governance level where NNLT goals are ultimately implemented. This prompts the need to explore alternative solutions. Fiscal tools, in particular, represent a promising yet underexplored approach in planning literature. While land value taxes have been extensively studied, other, distinctly local instruments, such as developer obligations and impact fees, remain largely overlooked in planning. These mechanisms offer potential advantages: they can address land take issues without requiring resource-intensive planning efforts, and they may also help realign local fiscal systems, reducing dependence on growth and providing new incentives for municipalities to limit urban expansion.
This study addresses this gap by investigating how local fiscal instruments in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, can be adapted into effective planning solutions to curb land take. It focuses in particular on the choices developers make in different tax regimes. Through in-depth interviews with developers and planning stakeholders, the study examines two key dimensions of development taxation: (a) its economic impacts and (b) its socio-political and legal feasibility and effectiveness as perceived by the respondents. Through these analyses, this research seeks to identify actionable strategies for municipalities to incorporate fiscal tools into land-use policies, offering scalable and cost-efficient alternatives to traditional regulatory approaches.
| Keywords | development taxation; no net land take; sustainable land management |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
