Active land policy in small municipalities in the Netherlands: “We don’t do it, unless...”

Thomas van Oosten, Patrick Witte and Thomas Hartmann

Land Use Policy, 2018, vol. 77, issue C, 829-836

Abstract: Due to their active role in land development, Dutch municipalities have suffered considerably from the economic crisis. The financial and economic effects are particularly striking in small municipalities. We conducted an empirical analysis to highlight the magnitude of the financial effects both pre- and post-crisis and to determine the potential reasons for these differences in small Dutch municipalities. Aside from the main reasons, such as housing demand stagnation and declining land prices, some additional causes are specifically responsible for the struggles of small Dutch municipalities. These causes include a downward adjustment of housing building, optimistic acting of municipalities and political motives. Furthermore, several contextual causes have led to financial disappointments. Dutch land policy is an extreme example of active land policy as municipalities are heavily involved in the development of land, which seems to be partly inspired by reasons related to ideology, the institutional framework and enrichment strategies. The lessons from the Netherlands can be seen as an indicator for other countries who are conducting or experimenting with forms of active land policy.

Keywords: Active land policy; The Netherlands; Financial consequences; Post-crisis; Small municipalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837716305579
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:77:y:2018:i:c:p:829-836

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.10.029

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().