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The deregulation of urban land markets: A note on the alternatives to zoning

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Abstract

The profound disenchantment with zoning as a tool for guiding urban growth has prompted researchers to present and examine a variety of alternatives. This paper examines three widely proposed alternatives to zoning, restrictive covenants, nuisance law and transferable development rights from a property rights perspective. The general case for deregulation of markets is examined and applied to the urban land market. Critical to the feasibility of deregulating the urban land market is the resulting incidence of transactions costs that attend any alternative planning mechanism. It is concluded that although these three alternatives have great potential, given the extreme difficulty of measuring the costs of planning apriori, the present experiments with these proposals must be closely monitored with special attention to the incomes of market intermediaries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, Canada

    Greg Mason (Assistant Professor)

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  1. Greg Mason
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I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Mike Goldberg, Jim Dean and Jim Seldon. All errors remain mine.

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Mason, G. The deregulation of urban land markets: A note on the alternatives to zoning. Ann Reg Sci 13, 54–66 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01284780

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01284780

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