Planning by law and property rights reconsidered

"Countries which take spatial planning seriously should also take planning law and property rights seriously. There is an unavoidable logical relationship between planning, law, and property rights. However, planning by law and property rights is so familiar and taken for granted that we do not think about the theory behind it. As a result, we do not think abstractly about its strengths and weaknesses, about what can be achieved with it and what not, how it can be improved, how it could be complemented. Such reflections are essential to cope with current and future challenges to spatial planning. This book makes the (often implicit) theory behind planning by law and property rights explicit and relates it to those challenges. It starts by setting out what is understood by simulation--the relationships between planning law and property rights, and investigates--theoretically and by game simulation--the relationships between planning law and property rights. It then places planning law and property rights within their institutional setting at three different scales: when a country undergoes enormous social and political change; when there is fundamental political debate about the pow