Stéphane Nahrath

The business of densification refers to more or less aggressive urban development practices that use the broad political consensus on the need for urban densification to promote profit-driven development, often dressed up in the rhetoric of eco-efficiency, and to the detriment of social policy objectives (e.g. affordable housing, cultural heritage, community cohesion). The implementation of urban densification requires deep changes in the practice of land-use planning because, as opposed to greenfield developments, it occurs in a complex web of established rights and interests. These more active forms of planning interventions are referred to as “land policy” in a growing body of literature (including in this special issue). In the context of densification, land policy tends to be appraised in planning debates as purely instrumental, that is, as a more effective and proactive administrative strategy for improved project implementation. In this commentary, relying on empirical data from the Netherlands and Switzerland, we argue that land policy is in fact a hybrid construct that merges both progressive and neoliberal elements. We discuss how the hybrid nature of land policy generates tensions in project implementation as different discourses and representations collide. Therefore, there is a real need to accurately assess the true ideological scope of urban changes implemented in the name of densification, as land policy is fundamentally value-loaded. If planners remain blind to the political dimension of land policy, the business of densification will flourish, and social sustainability objectives will be systematically relegated to the background.

A strong vision of sustainable development requires respect for the limits imposed by the functioning of the planet to ensure its resilience. The framework of planetary boundaries is increasingly relied on to design quantifiable objectives that can guide policy- and decisionmakers to enact measures to ensure such a sustainable society. Yet, to effectively guide, the framework requires a reformulation to make it applicable to human activities. Concretely, planetary boundaries need to be transposed into planetary quotas, which express the maximum absolute quantity of emissions, withdrawals or use that is admissible so as not to exceed the planetary limits. Furthermore, the achievement of planetary quotas depends on the fair allocation of national, sectoral, or even individual quotas. In this context, we question whether and under which institutional conditions environmental quotas could be an appropriate tool to implement planetary boundaries. This article proposes a legal and political theory of quota systems and applies it to the establishment of planetary quota systems in international environmental law.

Complexity is inherent to the policy processes and to more and more domains such as environment or social policy. Complexity produces unexpected and counterintuitive effects, in particular, the phenomenon of policy regimes falling short of expectations while made by refined policies. This paper addresses this phenomenon by investigating the process of policy integration and its nonlinearities in the long run. We consider that the increase in the number of policies unexpectedly impacts the policy coherence within a policy regime. We argue that, depending on the degree of policy interactions, this impact varies in direction and intensity over time, which explains nonlinearities in integration. The impact turns negative when the regime is made of numerous policies, which favors non-coordinated policy interactions. Finally, the negative impact prevents further integration as stated by the Institutional Complexity Trap hypothesis and explains the contemporary paradoxical phenomenon of ineffective policy regimes made of refined policies. Empirically, we draw on a relational analysis of policies in the Swiss flood risk policy regime from 1848 to 2017. We study the co-evolution of the number of policies and of their de facto interlinkages, i.e., the co-regulations of a common issue. Findings support that the Institutional Complexity Trap is a structural and long-term dynamic punctuated by periods of policy learning and policy selection. We identify three main phases in the evolution of the regime: the start (1848–1874), the development (1874–1991), and the Institutional Complexity Trap (since 1991).

Land-use policies aim to control urban sprawl. Such control may involve different regulatory and market-based policy instruments, which compensate for and/or transfer development rights. In Switzerland, compensation for development rights has remained legally hazardous; discussions on the transfer of development rights have primarily considered Transferable Development Rights (TDR) as a means to transfer ill-placed development rights to more suitable areas. However, other instruments, such as Land Improvement Syndicates (LIS), may prove more appropriate in the Swiss context. Drawing upon a literature review and attempts to conceptualise a new instrument, the present paper discusses theoretical and institutional characteristics of TDR and LIS. We review both instruments’ capacity to fight urban sprawl and analyse their respective compatibility with the Swiss institutional setting. In an attempt to put forward the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of both instruments, we conceptualise a new instrument: Multi-Site Land Improvement Syndicates (MSLIS). We discuss potentials and limits of MSLIS under the Swiss institutional setting, in particular, when transferring rights across jurisdictions. We conclude with lessons on re-locating development rights in a context of strong property rights, such as in Switzerland. In particular, we underline a) the different vehicles MSLIS offer for transferring rights, b) the specific decisional rules of the instrument, and c) its compatibility with legal obligations of compensation and the guarantee of property. These insights may be of interest to non-Swiss planning researchers and practitioners working on development rights re-location.

While land-use plans are regularly revised, property rights are extremely stable over time. Yet, the stability of property rights resulting from the current conception of exclusive ownership makes the implementation of land-use plans increasingly complicated, difficult and long. Planners recognized the need for more flexibility in many urban contexts to effectively steer spatial development in the already built environment. Relying on a detailed case study carried out in the municipality of Bienne, Switzerland, this paper examines how a strategic use of long-term ground leases granted on municipal land can allow for increased flexibility in planning. Ground leases are a policy instrument leading to a time-limited division of the bundle of rights between a public landowner and the ground lease holder, who becomes the owner of the facilities on the land for up to one hundred years. The strategic role of ground leases in urban planning remains largely unexplored. This article shows that ground leases are an empirical and practical response of planning authorities to the inflexibility of property rights in given situations where more flexibility would be needed. Public actors can use ground leases to implement an active land policy leading to a better allocation of land to specific projects and to a more precise control of building activity. By analyzing the role of ground leases at the interface between planning and property, this article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationship between land-use planning and property rights.

Game, hunters and the forest seen in the perspective of the institutional framework (essay) Game and the forest are both natural resources. They interact through ecosystem services rendered by the forest (service supplier) to wildlife (service beneficiary). This service to the game resource influences other, more direct, forest services (e.g. wood, recreation, non-wood products),which benefit from the regulation of the game by the hunter. The action of hunting, in its turn, hinders the supply of other wildlife linked services, notably economic and symbolic (hunters), scientific (zoologists), artistic (painters) etc. cultural, even linked to identity (nature lovers, members of religious groups). This leads to rivalries between the two resources and to the putting in place of institutional frameworks to solve this conflict. This is the approach we use to discuss the three hunting regimes in place in Switzerland (concessions, licences, prohibition).