Housing Supply Limitations, Land Readjustment and the Ecological Performance of the Urban Landscape

Klaas Kresse,Erwin Van Der Krabben

doi:10.3390/su13179774

Klaas Kresse, Erwin Van Der Krabben

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179774

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Abstract

Public authorities in developing economies typically have to deal with fiscal stress, lack of resources and an underdeveloped real estate industry. This poses a severe challenge at times of rapid urbanisation. Governments typically react to housing demand shocks by introducing policies that support the real estate market’s capacity to supply housing. One prominent policy in this respect is land readjustment. It has been promoted as a best practice and has been extensively discussed from an efficiency perspective; however, little is known about the ecological performance of the urban landscapes that typically emerge with this tool. Therefore, this study developed an assessment framework that allows discussion of the ecological performance of these neighbourhoods as an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between public sector initiatives and real estate market responses. Based on a LEED ND assessment of the cases of Taipei and Seoul, the research identifies four institutional drivers of ecological costs. First, public agencies tend to neglect the ecological costs of greenfield site developments. Second, public agencies to not employ policies that promoe brownfield developments. Third, a weak public sectors’ negotiating position can result in an ecologically inefficient urban pattern. And finally, the public sector’s construction standardisation policies can impose real estate market limitations and wasteful use of resources in the long run.

Highlights

The study presented here analyses the ecological performance of new urban landscapes that emerge during periods of rapid urbanisation and under the difficult conditions of fiscal stress and resource scarcity
The study provides an assessment framework for the ecological performance of the built urban landscape that emerged from developer strategies operating in this institutional context according to the LEED ND standard
In their research on the relation between the New Urban Agenda (NUA), the SDGs and the LEED ND framework, Diaz-Sarachaga et al detect a bias related to an overrepresentation of aspects such as efficient resource management, pollution and climate change effects deriving from urbanisation in LEED ND [51]

Summary

Introduction

The study presented here analyses the ecological performance of new urban landscapes that emerge during periods of rapid urbanisation and under the difficult conditions of fiscal stress and resource scarcity. The study understands these new urban landscapes as being the result of a complex, reciprocal negotiation between governmental policies employed to stimulate housing supply and the corresponding real estate market actors’. Considering that rapid urbanisation is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century [5,6] and the prominence given to the topic in international organisations through the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the Sustainable

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