Jean-David Gerber

The managerial turn and municipal land-use planning in Switzerland – evidence from practice

Abstract New Public Management (NPM) reforms are intended to increase efficiency and support a more managerial approach to public problems. This paper examines how NPM-type reforms have led to the growing influence of finance and real-estate departments in local level planning in Switzerland. Drawing on over 50 interviews, the paper maps the growing influence of flexible private-law or incentive-based instruments as complements to more binding instruments (typically zoning) in land-use planning practices. NPM reforms have prompted a renewed interest in public property, forcing municipalities to position themselves in relation to the necessity to sell or retain public land. The results show that NPM has affected practices of land-use planning in Switzerland, but the outcomes are more complex than a one-to-one takeover and there is variation across the country. The Swiss case study helps extend the wider international debate about NPM and planning. This paper highlights the complex impacts of managerialism on planning reform as well as ongoing tensions between increased efficiency in plan implementation and public scrutiny.

Towards Integrated Governance of Landscape Development

Abstract Coherent regulation of landscape as a resource is a major challenge. How can the development interests of some actors (eg cable car operators and property developers) be reconciled with those of others (agriculture, forestry) and with conservation of biodiversity and scenic value? To help understand how the newly introduced Regional Nature Parks (RNPs) can improve the coherence of the regulation regime in Switzerland, we highlight current direct mechanisms for regulation of landscape as a resource (bans, inventories, subsidies) as well as indirect mechanisms (taking place through the regulation of the physical basis of landscapes, eg forest, land, and water planning policies). We show that RNPs are fundamentally innovative because they make it possible to manage and coordinate indirect strategies for appropriate regulation of resources at a landscape scale. In other words, RNPs enable organization of governance of landscape as a resource in a perimeter that is not necessarily restricted to administrative boundaries.

The role of Swiss civic corporations in land use planning

Public authorities in charge of managing public real-estate assets at the local level face conflicting interests. In Switzerland, short-term solutions often prevail. This paper looks at another group of actors which are characterized by their long-term real-estate management strategies: civic corporations. In Switzerland old civic corporations, which share many characteristics with common pool resource (CPR) institutions, are large landowners, some of them very powerful, which seem to have been successful in the management of their assets over centuries. The objective of this paper is to address the role played today by large urban civic corporations in the implementation process of land-use planning policies, as well as to understand the conditions of their perpetuation within the complex policy framework characterizing Swiss and European welfare states. This research examines the real-estate strategy of the civic corporations of Bern and Chur—ie their choice to buy, sell, or lease parcels of land depending on their location—in order to highlight their complex relationship with local authorities in charge of land-use planning. We show that CPR institutions such as civic corporations must not be dismissed too quickly as relicts of the past: quite the reverse, their strategies gain a renewed significance in a time when public bodies are looking for new ways to improve the sustainability of their spatial footprint and incorporate long-term thinking in their management objectives. More concretely, we show that their significance within land-use planning processes depends on their capacity to complement local authorities through the mobilization of their real-estate assets in order to support the implementation of land-use and urban planning policies.

The Swiss Model of Regional Nature Parks. Toward a better coordination of landscape regulations

Abstract Coherent regulation of landscape as a resource is a major challenge. How can the development interests of some actors (eg cable car operators and property developers) be reconciled with those of others (agriculture, forestry) and with conservation of biodiversity and scenic value? To help understand how the newly introduced Regional Nature Parks (RNPs) can improve the coherence of the regulation regime in Switzerland, we highlight current direct mechanisms for regulation of landscape as a resource (bans, inventories, subsidies) as well as indirect mechanisms (taking place through the regulation of the physical basis of landscapes, eg forest, land, and water planning policies). We show that RNPs are fundamentally innovative because they make it possible to manage and coordinate indirect strategies for appropriate regulation of resources at a landscape scale. In other words, RNPs enable organization of governance of landscape as a resource in a perimeter that is not necessarily restricted to administrative boundaries.

Land-Conservation Strategies: The Dynamic Relationship between Acquisition and Land-Use Planning

Nonprofit organizations often pursue land acquisition as a nonpolitical, private property rights approach to conservation of ecological and cultural resources. Yet acquisition and regulatory land-use planning are intertwined, both in terms of political strategies and conservation outcomes. Our objectives are (1) to understand the relationship between the acquisition strategies of land trusts and their involvement in land-use planning and zoning, and (2) to examine how the interactions between acquisition and land-use planning may shape conservation outcomes. We focus on the strategies of The Nature Conservancy, one of the largest conservation NGOs in the United States. Drawing from an institutional analysis framework, we compare case studies from Tehama and Monterey Counties, California. Through semistructured interviews, analysis of land-use plans and conservation-easement agreements, and GIS mapping we examine political strategies and conservation outcomes. Our analysis reveals that acquisition strategies and the regulatory context influence each other strongly, but that tensions between the politics of these strategies challenge conservation actors to deploy both effectively. Finally, we develop themes for future research, suggesting that the implementation and assessment of regional conservation efforts would benefit from an integrated strategy that recognizes the synergistic linkages between acquisition and regulatory land-use planning.

The strategic use of time-limited property rights in land-use planning : Evidence from Switzerland

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.

Polycentric governance in telecoupled resource systems

Recent advances in land system science and in institutional analysis provide complementary, but still largely disconnected perspectives on land use change, governance, and sustainability in social-ecological systems, which are interconnected across distance. In this paper we bring together the emerging concept of telecoupled land systems and the established concept of polycentric governance to support the analysis and the development of sustainable land governance in interconnected social-ecological systems. We operationalize the two concepts by analyzing networks of action situations in which interactions between proximate and distant actors as well as socioeconomic and ecological processes cause land use change and affect the sustainability of land systems. To illustrate this integrated approach empirically, we analyze a case of transnational biofuel investment in Sierra Leone. We identify the characteristics of, and activities in, networks of action situations that affect the sustainability of land systems related to this case. Integration of the two concepts of telecoupled land systems and polycentric governance enables analysts to identify interactions in polycentric governance systems (1) as drivers of telecoupled sustainability problems and (2) as transformative approaches to such problems. The method provides one way for linking place-based analysis of land change with process-based analysis of land governance.

Instruments of land policy : Dealing with scarcity of land

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.

Why are housing cooperatives successful? Insights from Swiss affordable housing policy

Abstract Housing policy is primarily regulated at the municipal level, especially in view of the international trend towards the withdrawal of the national state in this sector. This article examines recent developments in Swiss housing policy in five large cities, and the counter-reactions that are emerging due to an acute housing shortage. Relying on critical literature on housing, we present the main instruments of the Swiss housing policy and empirically analyse the political debates about their implementation. Results show that housing cooperatives are the housing support mechanism that the whole political spectrum can agree on. As the vast majority of cooperatives are non-profit, we observe the puzzling situation where neoliberal processes of state withdrawal in social policies lead to the promotion of a form of housing that is mostly common property-based and decommodified. The reasons behind their success are complex, but basing policies on private initiative rather than public property and targeting the middle class contributes to their popularity.

Land Grabbing, the State and Chiefs: The Politics of Extending Commercial Agriculture in Ghana: Land Grabbing, the State and Chiefs in Ghana

Since 2006, Ghana has experienced a wave of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) for agricultural purposes. Although these acquisitions are enabled by favourable agricultural and investment policies, investors nevertheless generally negotiate directly with traditional authorities, often bypassing state authorities in the acquisition process. The strength of customary authorities is often attributed to the weakness of the state. Considering historical political precedents, this article argues that chiefs in fact increasingly derive their power and legitimacy from state and donor policy. Chiefs play a crucial role in translating the (inter)national investment and development logic into local customary settings which are characterized by complex and overlapping use rights to land and natural resources. Using data from an LSLA in Ghana’s Volta Region, this study shows how chiefs continuously redefine and adapt the customary land tenure system and its intricate governance logic to the globalized neoliberal policy setting, readily switching between different institutional settings (institution shopping) to legitimize their actions. Those whose rights under customary tenure are least secure are most likely to lose out in the process of institutional change from common to private property, while those with close connections to the customary elite are most likely to benefit from LSLAs.