What rights does the state have over privately owned land? Why should some landowners be favoured over others? How can the practice of land-use planning be improved?

This book addresses these essential questions and shows that the interests people have in property rights over land and buildings are not just emotional but often financial too. It follows that the law, which affects who has property rights, what those rights are and how they may be used, can have great financial consequences for people and great economic consequences for society in general.

For those reasons, looking at land-use planning as it affects and is affected by property rights illuminates some core aspects of land-use planning, including the law, economics, ethics and ideology. In this book, Needham examines those aspects from the clear perspective of property rights.

Barrie Needham is Professor of Spatial Planning at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

1. Land-use Planning and Property Rights: A Fraught Relationship 2. Two Ways in which Laws can Influence How Land is Used 3. The Legal Language: Rights in Land 4. The Economic Language: Making a Good Use of Scarce Resources 5. An Evaluation of Property Law: Rules under Public Law 6. An Evaluation of Property Law: Rules Under Private Law 7. Application: Achieving Neighbourhood Quality 8. Application: Regional Land-use Planning 9. Conclusions: The Rules we Make for Using Land