Brussels Studies Institute (BSI)

Land policy, urban regulations and housing: myths and truths

The way land is managed, through zoning tools and other regulatory instruments, is a fundamental determinant of the supply of land available for housing. Furthermore, although land is in fixed supply, land use management, such as zoning, can reallocate land between different uses. For example, land that was previously only meant for agricultural uses can be rezoned to urban land, which increases the supply of land for the development of housing. Similarly, zoning also determines how high buildings can be built, which also determines how much land, in this case related to air-rights, is available for construction, including housing.

Land policy is not necessarily good policy. It can play both a positive role securing, promoting and protecting affordable housing and a negative role by raising costs, reducing access and driving households away from certain neighborhoods. There are also many myths about rezoning as strategies to enhance social housing provision. Indeed, land policy can discriminate between different groups: including or excluding households by their composition, income, racial origin and religious beliefs. The best examples of land policies’ effectiveness include institutional connections and combinations to other aspects of housing policies.

The purpose of this workshop is to present and reflect critically on the range of land policy and urban regulation instruments, used by governments in different cities worldwide, to improve housing affordability and promote more inclusive neighborhoods. These instruments may include: public land banking, public land leasing, land re-adjustment, land value recapture, regulatory planning, neighborhood planning, among others. The geographical scope of the examples presented includes Europe, Asia, North and South America.

In this workshop, apart from the presentation of international land policy/urban regulation experiences, participants will be invited to form groups to reflect critically on existing land policy and urban regulations in Brussels, as well as on their impact on housing availability and affordability.