In everyday practice, private and common property relations often accommodate a wide variety of demands made by the owners and users of land. In a stark contrast, many theories of property and land policy fail to recognize plural property relations. The polyrational theory of planning and property as employed in this book reconciles practice and theory. With international examples, this is a valuable resource for those concerned with town planning, land reform, land use and human rights.

Property Rights in Land widens our understanding of property rights by looking through the lenses of social history and sociology, discussing mainstream theory of new institutional economics and the derived grand narrative of economic development. Written by a collection of expert authors, the chapters delve into social processes through which property relations became institutionalized and were used in social action for the appropriation of resources and rent. This was in order to gain a better understanding of the social processes intervening between the institutionalized ‘rules of the game’ and their economic and social outcomes.

In dealing with scarce land, planners often need to interact with, and sometimes confront, property right-holders to address complex property rights situations. To reinforce their position in situations of rivalrous land uses, planners can strategically use and combine different policy instruments in addition to standard land use plans. Effectively steering spatial development requires a keen understanding of these instruments of land policy. This book not only presents how such instruments function, it additionally examines how public authorities strategically manage the scarcity of land, either increasing or decreasing it, to promote a more sparing use of resources. It presents 13 instruments of land policy in specific national contexts and discusses them from the perspectives of other countries. Through the use of concrete examples, the book reveals how instruments of land policy are used strategically in different policy contexts.

Domestic and international development strategies often focus on private ownership as a crucial anchor for long-term investment; the security of property rights provides a foundation for capitalist expansion. In recent years, Thailand's policies have been hailed as a prime example of how granting formal land rights to poor farmers in low-income countries can result in economic benefits. But the country provides a puzzle: Thailand faced major security threats from colonial powers in the nineteenth century and from communism in the twentieth century, yet only in the latter case did the government respond with pro-development tactics. In Land and Loyalty, Tomas Larsson argues that institutional underdevelopment may prove, under certain circumstances, a strategic advantage rather than a weakness and that external threats play an important role in shaping the development of property regimes. Security concerns, he find, often guide economic policy. The domestic legacies, legal and socioeconomic, resulting from state responses to the outside world shape and limit the strategies available to politicians. While Larsson’s extensive archival research findings are drawn from Thai sources, he situates the experiences of Thailand in comparative perspective by contrasting them with the trajectory of property rights in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines.

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Learn more about Connected eBooks This hugely successful cases-and-problems book is acclaimed for its textual clarity, evenhanded perspective, and contemporary, up-to-date character. Easily distinguished from other property casebooks for its clear descriptions of legal doctrine and its variations; its explanations of the social ramifications of property law; its emphasis on both statutory and regulatory interpretation; its comprehensive treatment of public accommodations and fair housing law, current tribal property issues, and property in human bodies; and its use of the problem method to teach legal reasoning andlawyeringskills. Thoroughly updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property, the Seventh Edition incorporates multiple new Supreme Court cases, including:Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,Obergefellv. Hodges, andReed v. Town of Gilbert, and 3 decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture,Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, andMurrv. State. Key Features: Updated to reflect significant changes in the law of property to help professors keep current and be aware of emerging disputes. These include multiple new Supreme Court cases: Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015), upholding disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act; Obergefellv. Hodges, 123 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage; Reed v. Town of Gilbert,135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), broadly applying the First Amendment’s free speech clause to sign regulations; and three decided or pending cases with implications for regulatory takings,Horne v.Dep’tof Agriculture, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015),Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1257 (2014), andMurrv. State, 359Wis.2d675 (Wis. Ct. App. 2014), cert. granted sub nom.Murrv. Wisconsin, 136 S.Ct. 890 (2016). New materials and problems have been included in several areas: Collisions between the sharing economy and servitude, zoning, and landlord-tenant law; Questions of the inheritance rights of children born through assisted reproductive technology; Continuing litigation over the Rails-to-Trails Act conversion of abandoned railroad tracks into recreational trails Invalidation of the copyright on the Happy Birthday song; Commonwealth v.Magadini, 52 N.E.3d 1041 (Mass. 2016), upholding a necessity defense to a trespass charge against a homeless man; and The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, adopted in 2015.

"Zoning has for a century enabled cities to chart their own course. It is a useful and popular institution, enabling homeowners to protect their main investment and provide safe neighborhoods. As home values have soared in recent years, however, this protection has accelerated to the degree that new housing development has become unreasonably difficult and costly. The widespread Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome is driven by voters’ excessive concern about their home values and creates barriers to growth that reach beyond individual communities. The barriers contribute to suburban sprawl, entrench income and racial segregation, retard regional immigration to the most productive cities, add to national wealth inequality, and slow the growth of the American economy. Some state, federal, and judicial interventions to control local zoning have done more harm than good. More effective approaches would moderate voters’ demand for local-land use regulation—by, for example, curtailing federal tax subsidies to owner-occupied housing"--Publisher's description.

Students of public finance and fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional countries have long argued for more intensive use of the property tax. It would seem the ideal choice for financing local government services. Based on a Lincoln Institute conference held in October 2006, the chapters in this book take this argument one step further in drawing on recent experience with property tax policy and administration. Two main sets of issues are addressed. First, why hasn't the property tax worked well in most developing and transitional countries? Second, what can be done to make the property tax a more relevant source for local governments in those countries? The numerous advantages of the property tax as a local government revenue source are analyzed and discussed in detail as are the many perceived disadvantages.

In this book, the authors argue for instigated property exchange--a concept applied in a land-assembly method commonly known in the literature as land readjustment.