Urban land readjustment: Necessary for effective urban renewal? Analysing the Dutch quest for new legislation

Abstract

Dutch municipalities have four instruments to actively assemble landownership. Using these instruments, municipalities have been capable to steer land use developments in both rural and urban areas into the desired directions. Despite the available instruments to assemble land, the necessity for a new act that enables urban land readjustment (ULR) has been discussed several times in the past decades. In 2015, the decision has been made to implement a new act for ULR. Given the situation that ULR will be added to the Dutch land policy instruments, this study explores the main conditions and features that the ULR act needs, to concede to expectations of urban planners, who currently consider the use of ULR. To do this, eleven cases in which ULR is considered as land policy instrument, were analysed. The results show that the expected added value of ULR is mainly related to its ability to share financial costs, gains and risks; to effectively relocate owners and reshape parcels; and to decrease the development costs that occur during active land acquisition. This implies that the main characteristics of regulation on ULR are to enable: 1) the financial division of risks and costs amongst owners, 2) a facilitative role for public parties, and 3) ways to reach agreement on adjusting the property and parcel structuring amongst land owners. Given the current Dutch situation, in which ULR is perceived as an instrument that can be especially valuable in urban renewal tasks with low financial profits, legislation that enables mandatory exchange under strict circumstances is argued to be necessary, to ensure an added value of the instrument upon existing instruments for land assembly.