International experience of public infrastructure delivery in support of housing growth

Abstract

This paper compares planning and funding arrangements for public infrastructure delivery in support of new housing development in the UK, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the US, and Hong Kong/Mainland China. It examines the roles and responsibilities of different levels of government, the extraction of financial contributions from the development process (mainly funded through increases in land value), and the level of involvement of private and public actors in infrastructure delivery and land value capture (LVC). Three linked questions provide a basis for comparison of the cases: first, what arrangements are in place, in terms of planning hierarchy and responsibility, for coordinating infrastructure delivery (and how do these relate to funding arrangements); second, how are local contributions extracted from the development process or through the acquisition and sale of land; and lastly, what inferences can be drawn regarding the relative power of public and private actors in this process and to what extent is public interest prioritized/served through prevailing approaches to value extraction. The paper contributes international experience to debates on optimizing planning approaches for infrastructure delivery while maximizing public benefit from land value.