Sale of public land as a financing instrument. The unspoken political choices and distributional effects of land-based solutions

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, the sale of public land has become a fairly widespread financing solution: capital gains obtained from the sale and redevelopment of public land, and secured through the planning system, are employed to fund new public infrastructure or facilities. While this is often presented as an optimum solution for hard-up public authorities, this paper draws on the sociology of policy instruments to shed light on the unspoken political choices and uneven distributional effects of land-based financing. These choices concern the aims of public land use (where financial uses are prioritized over redistributive/productive uses), the roles played by public authorities (whose role as speculative landowner is prioritized over that of land use regulator), and the coordination of both land sales and redevelopment (where market coordination is prioritized over political coordination). Based on a case-study of the Ministry of Defence Estates London (MoDEL) project, this paper shows how these choices have been institutionalized into binding financial calculations and contractual agreements that actually limit the use of public land, overlook alternatives, drive up land values and exacerbate exclusionary effects.