Land policy for affordable and inclusive housing (SmartLand, May 2020)

  • Land policy for affordable and inclusive housing: an international review

  • By Julie Lawson and Hannu Ruonavaara

  • Published as part of the SmartLand academic consortium in May 2020

  • Summary:

    • "The purpose of this international review is to shed light on the range of land policy instruments that governments can use to inform best practices that improve housing affordability and promote more inclusive neighbourhoods.

    • "These instruments include: public land banking, public land leasing, land re-adjustment, land value recapture, regulatory planning, neighbourhood planning and regulating the platform real estate industry.

    • "The geographical scope of the illustrations presented is both broad and deep and includes Europe, Asia, North America and Australia to provide national, regional and local territorial perspective. (...)

    • "Cheap global credit has accelerated the process of financialization in the 21st century. In the absence of effective financial regulation and land policy and more flexible working conditions, this has generated worsening affordability, insecurity of incomes and occupancy rights, threatening secure access to affordable housing.

    • "To combat these challenges, it is important that the supply and preservation of affordable and social housing be improved. This will require a more proactive approach to land policy coupled with a more effective investment by citizens, social enterprises, businesses and most importantly their national and local governments in the immediate future. This report provides many illustrations of how."

  • Keywords: land policy, affordability, financialisation of housing, financialization of housing, REITs, Vienna, Austria, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, China, Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, Germany, Seoul, South Korea, England, Scotland, UK, US, United States, Paris, France

Last updated