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Citizen Participation, the -Knowledge Problem- and Urban Land Use Planning: An Austrian Perspective on Institutional Choice

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Abstract

At the forefront of the argument for government-directed land use planning is the notion that -citizen participation- in urban land use decisions can avoid the problems associated with bureaucratic governance and tackle widespread instances of -market failure-. Using illustrations from the British land use planning system this paper argues that participatory planning models are insufficiently attuned to the problems of social co-ordination generated by the absence of market prices and of the importance of private property rights in facilitating -experiments in urban living-.

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Pennington, M. Citizen Participation, the -Knowledge Problem- and Urban Land Use Planning: An Austrian Perspective on Institutional Choice. The Review of Austrian Economics 17, 213–231 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:RAEC.0000026832.58981.ec

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