Bunnell, Gene A
(1993)
Making developers pay - British versus American experience in the 1980's.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
During the 1980's, governments in both Britain and the U.S. were increasingly inclined to shift costs and obligations onto developers. In the U.S., a variety of methods were experimented with, but the predominant technique which emerged was to impose mandatory, fixed exactions and "impact fees." In Britain, local authorities negotiated legal agreements which frequently involved "contributions." This thesis evaluates the negotiation of agreements in Britain in light of contrasting U.S. experience with developer finance. The thesis begins by setting developer finance in historical context, describing how and why different methods of developer finance emerged in the two countries. Planning research and literature in Britain and the U.S. are analysed and compared to identify important research questions regarding the attitudes of planners and developers, the rationale for obtaining developer payments, the process for obtaining payments, factors affecting local government success in extracting payments, the incidence of developer payments, and the presumed effects of developer finance on planning and development control. The core of the thesis describes empirical research conducted in England, analysing how local authorities in a high-growth region used agreements between 1985 and 1990. An important feature of the research is that it examines local authority use of agreements in a specific geographic and planning context. This research calls into question many widely held assumptions about how planning agreements have been used, and suggests that, in the British context, negotiated agreements have significant planning advantages. The thesis argues that an important criteria for evaluating developer finance is how it functions in relation to regional planning and growth management objectives, and that additional geographically-based research is needed in both countries to evaluate the effects of developer finance on patterns of development, and on the achievement of planning policies.
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