Planning by Contract: Governing Urban Sustainability

Organizers: Josje Bouwmeester, Martijn van den Hurk, Utrecht University

Description: Across many planning systems, public authorities are moving away from traditional command-and-control instruments and toward more negotiated, project-based forms of development (Bouwmeester et al., 2024). As a result, spatial development is increasingly governed by contracts rather than just plans and regulations. This shift reflects broader institutional and political transformations, including a growing reliance on public-private partnerships and an emergence of municipalities as entrepreneurial or commissioning agents in spatial transformation (Van den Hurk and Tasan-Kok, 2020). Contracts are used to formalize public objectives, allocate responsibilities and risks, coordinate timing, and distribute value between the public and private actors involved in spatial developments. Macneil (1980) stated that making contracts is about making present decisions about future relationships. City governments, developers, investors, housing associations, and community organizations have engaged with contracts to implement solutions addressing grand societal challenges, such as housing crises. In contexts in which formal planning instruments are seen as too slow, politically contested, or unable to guarantee implementation, contracts increasingly serve as substitutes or supplements to statutory planning. Contracts are thus key tools of institutional innovation (Selmi, 2011).

This ‘contractual turn’ brings opportunities and challenges. Contracts provide legal certainty: they define who is responsible for what, under which conditions, and within which timeframes. Land-use contracts such as development agreements occupy a hybrid legal space, arising in a public-law context but negotiated under private-law logic. This allows municipalities to extend their discretion beyond what public law would otherwise permit. For instance, stakeholders may enforce them flexibly to maintain room for maneuver, navigate uncertainty, or preserve relationships over time (Van den Hurk and Tasan-Kok, 2020). However, this flight into private law also raises concerns. As Koppenjan and Enserink (2009) note, sustainability objectives are typically broad, long-term, and multidimensional, and therefore difficult to fully codify in contractual terms. Furthermore, the potential benefits of using contracts to steer development come with concerns about the compatibility of the private sector’s short-term return-on-investment logic with the long-term commitments needed to realize sustainability targets (Debrunner and Kaufmann, 2023). It may also sidestep established planning norms, reduce transparency, and limit opportunities for third party participation (Selmi, 2011).

This session invites papers that engage with contracts as planning and spatial governance instruments. We are particularly interested in how contracts are used to shape urban development, how they function in different institutional contexts, how they alter power relations and affect the outcomes of spatial developments, and what their use implies for planning legitimacy, public value, and the distribution of rights and risks.

We are interested in papers that explore one or more of the following questions relative to sustainable urban development: • How do public authorities and private actors formalize their role in development projects through contracts? • What is the relationship between contracts and other statutory instruments? • How do contracts accommodate flexibility? How do these mechanisms balance flexibility with legal certainty? • How do contracts redistribute rights over land use, access,

and value capture? What are the implications for long-term public control over urban space? • To what extent do contractual arrangements align with broader public goals or foster the achievement of those goals? How transparent, accountable, or contestable are these agreements? We welcome a broad range of contributions, including empirical case studies, conceptual papers, and comparative legal analyses.

Spatial Plans at Local Level as a Planning Tool: A Comparative Approach

Organizer: Maciej Nowak, West Pomeranian University in Szczecin

Description: Most national spatial planning systems at local level have planning instruments that can be described as ‘spatial plans’. On the one hand, there are a lot of differences between them (in terms of terminology, legal status, scope of content, method of enforcement, etc.), but on the other hand there are many similarities. The terminological differences concern the names of the plans, referred to as land use plans, zoning plans, or masterplans, among others (Nadin et al. 2018, OECD 2017). The designations indicated very often have different, varying meanings from country to country. Simplifying, however, it can be assumed that the key role of spatial plans boils down to: 1. zoning; 2. defining development and land-use parameters. Of course, also the indicated tasks/concepts are understood differently in different systems and in the context of different planning traditions. In the British family of planning systems, spatial plans are not legally binding - they remain rather instructions (Munoz - Gielen, Tasan -Kok, 2010). In some systems, plans are opposed to an ‘urban code’ (Needham et al. 2019). However, the above limitations do not block discussion of spatial plans. On the contrary: there is a particular need to compare them and to discuss their optimal content, rules of application and the way they are linked to strategic documents.

The aim of the session will be to discuss more broadly the role of spatial plans at the local level in selected countries. Based on the analysis of the case studies, broader conclusions will be drawn, relating to the universal discussion. Researchers from all countries, familiar with the indicated planning instruments, are invited to participate in the session. The papers in the session should deal with case studies on the different types of spatial plans, their legal status, their content coverage, and the key challenges and problems in their application and enforcement. The authors of the papers should evaluate the spatial plans presented and attempt to make a broader assessment of the challenges associated with the application of the plans and the social, cultural, or systemic conditions determining their role. It is also important to identify how spatial plans affect the application of property rights (especially through restrictions on development), and whether the traditional formula of spatial plans is sufficient in the context of current spatial challenges.

Property in an Age of Extremism

Organizer: Harvey M. Jacobs, PhD. University of Wisconsin-Madison

Description: This early part of the 21st century is one of political-social, urban, and environmental extremism. Politically and socially, we have seen the rise of right-wing movements and parties globally, but perhaps most shockingly for many in the traditional social democracies of western Europe. The National Front in France, the Alternative for Germany, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the UK Independence Party, are but some of the examples. All of these have grabbed anxiety about the changing immigration, the global economy, and the ability of governments to continue fulfilling social contracts of the post-World War II decades. The power of these forces is, for many, embodied in the Brexit vote, which polls showed was likely to be defeated, and the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024.

This is also an age of urban extremism. We now have 35 mega-cities on the planet, cities of more than 10 million people. The majority of these cities are in the developing world, and often exist absent planning and adequate infrastructure. Estimates are that the planet is urbanizing at the rate of 1.3 million people a week! Within these cities more than one billion people live in informal settlements (slums), and this number is expected to double by 2030.

And then there is environmental extremism. Evidence of climate change and its consequences are evermore apparent. Melting glaciers in Greenland, severe storms which impact major coastal cities, disappearing species are but some of the phenomena which challenge a definition of what sustainability means in practice. And there is severe social contestation over environment management, symbolized by the so-called ‘occupiers’ in Oregon, USA who push onto nationally owned (federal) land demanding its repatriation to local citizens for productive economic use. All these issues raise questions about property, an institution about ownership and control that is the west was ‘invented’ over 200 years ago (during the time of the American and French revolutions). What there is are multiple voices in a chaotic conversation about whether traditional western property should be constricted, expanded or reformed, and what that would even mean and how it would happen. This special session seeks to present a range of perspectives about how property might respond to these challenges While an age of extremism presents many challenges, it also offers opportunities to reexamine a social, economic and legal institution central to human welfare and central to the relationship of people with the natural world.

Legal Dimensions of Land Value Capture: Comparative Research, Methods, and Trends

Organizers: Safira De La Sala, Marta Lora-Tamayo, Xirui Shi, Lincoln Land Institute

Description: Land Value Capture (LVC) enables governments to recover value increases in land due to public investments or regulatory changes, funding infrastructure and services. The OECD’s Global Compendium of Land Value Capture Policies (2022) provided a quantitative overview of LVC instruments across 60 countries. This approach has demonstrated the need for a deeper qualitative, regulatory frameworks that determine LVC’s feasibility and effectiveness. This gap limits the ability of public managers, scholars, and policy analysts to design context-specific LVC policies.

Comparative studies in planning law and property rights navigate the complexity of diverse legal systems and context-specific regulations. Planning varies from country to country, and often between cities in the same country, adding a level of complexity for wide comparative studies. Common methods include systematic legal framework comparisons, case studies, and expert consultations. However, limitations arise from jurisdictional sovereignty, varying policy priorities, and challenges in standardizing data across countries. These constraints underscore the need for

a tailored methodology that respects local contexts while enabling cross-country learning. Our proposal aims to deepen the understanding of the legal and regulatory dimensions of land value capture in different contexts.

We would like to address issues such as the following:

• Legal Enablers and Barriers: How do constitutional frameworks, property rights, or judicial interventions shape LVC tool selection and implementation?

• Governance and Legitimacy: What governance models ensure democratic legitimacy and public trust in LVC, and how do they vary across centralized vs. decentralized systems?

• Effectiveness and Equity: How can we measure LVC’s efficiency and fairness, and what legal mechanisms promote equitable redistribution of value?

• Global and Regional Insights: What lessons can mature LVC systems (e.g., Japan’s land readjustment) offer emerging ones? How do regional legal traditions influence policy transfers in different jurisdictions?

Key Questions

• How do legal traditions (history and culture) impact the design and success of LVC tools?

• What role do public participation and transparency play in legitimizing LVC?

• How to standardize data and facilitate cross-jurisdictional learning?

• What kind of legal and regulatory innovations can minimize financial risks for public bodies while maximizing public benefits?

This special session will serve to enhance the qualitative, legal understandings of the needs for a comprehensive international analysis to enhance policy design and implementation, towards a publication.

Land Ownership Data: Public Good or Private Asset?

Organizers: Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, UCL Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

Description: This special session asks for submissions which explore contradictions, contestations, and compromises between a right to privacy and a right to data transparency for land ownership, as well as histories or narrative of where and how data on land ownership has been sought, denied, recorded, attained, or challenged around the world. In her 1986 book Who Owns London? Shirley Green writes: “The property world is paranoically secretive about its activities, and rather as in the world of espionage, works on a furtive ‘kneed-to-know’ basis. This paranoia extends from private individuals to major financial institutions like the pension funds and insurance companies, who for the most part, although they are investing the public’s money, keep the public in as much ignorance as possible…” Green implicitly claims the public have a right to know how their money is invested and spent, through disclosing land ownership. The disclosure would increase transparency across multiple types of public agencies and corporations or pension funds in which the public, whether consciously or not, is heavily invested.

On an individual level concealing property ownership makes some amount of sense; one could imagine a need for the privacy and security of personal information and finances in concealing property ownership on an individual scale. Beyond a certain scale of land holding, however, or in land held by corporations, the arguments for personal security start to fall apart. To own vast swaths of land is to exert incredible control over its use and inhabitation, in ways that significantly affect the broader population. Guy Shrubsole, long-time activist for land ownership transparency and author of both the book and blog “Who Owns England”, argues that land ownership’s implication in how and where housing is built, food is produced, and environments are destroyed or stewarded, in ways that affect us all, demands a fundamental public right to land ownership data transparency. Similarly, both he and Kevin Cahill, author of “Who Owns Britain,” argue that the financial privileging of land ownership as a way to avoid taxes and in many cases receive substantial government subsidies impacts public budgeting and spending. Land ownership’s impact on the allocation of public resources affects everyone in the country, and at times beyond; Shrubsole and Cahill both argue that land ownership’s substantial impact on public budgets, in addition to other reasons, constitutes an irrefutable argument for ownership transparency. Marion Shoard (1987) takes this argument to a different place, questioning the legitimacy of private land ownership in the first place, and arguing for a new relationship between landowners and the public restoring a sense of public duty and obligation to the owning of land. At different times, land ownership data has mattered for different reasons – sometimes to quantify land wealth to expedite its seizure for profit, other times to document the scale and scope of land transfers or maintain thorough records of land requisitioned in emergencies and needing to be returned.

This session seeks the multiplicity of these stories, asking, broadly, how is land data captured and stored, and why? Whom does the data serve, and to whom should it be made accessible? We seek submissions from international contexts, comparative or local, exploring these topics of data transparency for land ownership.

Knowledge and Information in Contemporary Planning

Organizers: Eynat Mendelson-Shwartz, Jesse Fox and Talia Margalit, Tel Aviv University

Planning knowledge is a vast and complex domain that encompasses both professional and nonprofessional forms of understanding. It underpins planning deliberations and actions, offering insights into the relationships between actors and decisions. Currently, planning knowledge is shaped and communicated through a diverse and uneven set of discursive arenas, ranging from official committees and traditional expert forums to the media and emerging digital platforms. These arenas and their networks connections are sites for negotiating diverse perspectives and giving voice to a multiplicity of actors (Pojani and Stead, 2015; Margalit, 2022).

In planning and other fields, knowledge reflects the interests and social-political backgrounds of its producers and interpreters, as well as the historically contingent norms defining what constitutes legitimate or valid (Faludi, 1996; Latour, 1999; Rydin, 2007). As such, planning knowledge may be used to highlight or challenge a specific claim, or to persuade audiences towards a particular worldview, reflecting the cultural milieu of its creators (Harley, 1989; Kitchin et al., 2009). It also plays a critical role in shaping the perspectives and decisions of planners and decision-makers, influencing how plans are formulated, whose preferences are prioritized and which voices are heard.

In recent years, the ways that planning knowledge is formulated, negotiated, and communicated has undergone profound transformations. The rise of social media, popularization through mass media, and the spread of populist and post-truth discourses, along with the dominance of quantitative, economic and legal knowledge used in pro-growth technocratic arenas have fundamentally altered the terrain. These developments have facilitated new forms of engagement but also introduced new challenges. Raco and Savini (2019) argue that the current technocracy has disempowered ‘less necessary’ knowledge(s) and the knowledge and lay actors in planning discourses. Fox and Margalit (2024) show how the emergence of “technocratic populism” (Guasti and Buštíková, 2020) impacts planning as centralist governments convey specific understandings directly to citizens using PR and media outlets. Knowledge relations are further complicated by the rise of non-human knowledge sources, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and the widespread circulation of misinformation and "fake news”, which together destabilize the epistemic authority of planners and their relations with stakeholders and citizens.

In this session, we wish to discuss these challenges and concern the role of knowledge in contemporary planning and urban design. While planning draws upon multiple knowledge types, originating from diverse sources and expressed through various forms, including verbal, textual, and visual (Levin-Keitel and Behrend, 2023), not all knowledge types or claims are treated equally. Since the 1960s’ scholars have shown that localized, experiential, and contextualized forms of knowledge are often subordinated to planners’ “universal” objective, and technical or scientific knowledge (Rydin, 2007). Scholars had also shown that Northern, technocratic knowledge often overshadows Southern, alternative, or indigenous frameworks (Weiss et al., 2013). We aim to identify how these relations are expressed today, whose interests are addressed and how new arenas and knowledge formations reflect and impact the relationships between professionals and lay citizens. The way planning knowledge is constructed and framed affects who is seen as responsible, who is involved or impacted, which ideological principles are foregrounded, and ultimately, which problems are recognized as worth addressing (Pan and Kosicki, 2001). Framing also highlight whose knowledge is

considered valid and relevant, namely whose expertise are considered as vital (De Munck and Lachmund, 2023).

Through this selective inclusion, knowledge-power relations in planning can either reinforce or challenge existing norms and values, and even push certain expertise and social and groups “off the map” of planning deliberations (Kitchin et al., 2009). Consequently, current uses of planning knowledge for control and exclusion may consolidate existing power structures and institutional networks (Fox and Margalit, 2024). In this section we will highlight such current use and the impacts in various locations, in populist, authoritarian or liberal constellations.

Planning deliberation is frequently fraught with miscommunication, especially when stakeholders bring different languages, disciplinary assumptions, or cultural references (Raaphorst, 2018). Therefore, planning processes require ongoing efforts to translate, mediate, and interpret information between stakeholders (Rydin, 2007). We wish to also discuss the ways to effectively incorporate multiple and competing knowledge types and claims and support equitable actions (Rydin, 2007; Weiss et al., 2013).

This session also aims to address the current subjective, situated, and value-laden knowledge(s) and power-knowledge relationships in current discursive arenas, and whether a blurring of boundaries exists between arenas and between professional and non-professional actors. Moreover, this session will explore the rapid changes in knowledge means and contents now used in planning processes—particularly at the intersection of legal frameworks and property rights, in light of current rapid technological and societal transformation.

We seek papers that critically examine how knowledge is produced, communicated, and contested in current planning and urban design processes. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• How are recent changes in types and sources of knowledge influencing planning and design, including the impact of technocracy, populist discourse, and non-human intelligence?

• How does the current shaping and communication of legal and property-related knowledge affect planning discourses and their outcomes?

• What tensions arise between different knowledge types (e.g., lay vs. professional, planning-oriented vs. design-oriented, property-related vs. social or environmental, verbal vs. visual) in current planning deliberation?

The Governance of Urban Property: Ownership, Legitimacy, and Conflict

Organizer: Aurora Echavarria, Florida State University

Description: Even though many contemporary urban issues directly engage with property relations, property itself is often understudied as an object of analysis. Property is a dynamic social relationship between individuals and society, mediated and managed by the state. Governments, especially at the local level, face the and society, mediated and managed by the state. Governments, especially at the local level, face the complex task of negotiating between private interests and collective needs, often making property a site of conflict over what constitutes fair or legitimate state intervention. The governance of property refers not only to how property is protected, but also to how it is limited, regulated, and redefined by the state through tools such as taxation, zoning, regularization, and expropriation. These tools are not neutral, but reflect competing political visions about who belongs, who benefits, and what property should be. Despite property’s centrality in addressing many pressing urban issues, such as inequality, housing, and service provision, relatively few studies in urban scholarship have made property itself the central analytic. Fewer still have directly examined the role of the state in defining, bounding, and managing property rights (Roy 2009, Albertus 2021, Rose 1994), or the legitimacy of state intervention as perceived by property owners and residents (Blomley 2003). This panel seeks to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue on how the state uses legal, fiscal, and administrative tools to redefine property, and how power operates through those tools. We aim to bring together theoretical and empirical work that interrogates the boundaries of property rights, the role of the state in shaping them, and the conflicts that emerge in the process.

This panel seeks to put the following questions at the forefront of discussion:

• What powers do owners have over what they own, and what legitimacy does the state have in managing or limiting that power?

• How do people understand and interpret property? How do ideas about homeownership, tenure, and the state shape what kinds of state interventions are seen as acceptable?

• How is the legitimacy of government interventions in property perceived across different types of property owners?

• Do property owners have social obligations to contribute to collective goods, and how are such obligations justified or resisted?

Answering these questions is fundamental for addressing many of the challenges of urban governance. Property is not simply a legal category, but a social institution, shaped by law, norms, and public authority. Understanding how property rights are defined, limited, and contested helps reveal how states not only govern land, but govern legitimacy itself. In the context of growing spatial inequality and housing crises, rethinking the governance of property is vital to building more just, equitable, and sustainable cities. In order to motivate a rich and multidimensional discussion, we encourage participation from researchers working on distinct geographical contexts and from diverse disciplines including geography, urban planning, sociology, political science, and legal studies.

Flexible Planning in Densifying Cities: Opportunities and Challenges

Organizer: Gabriela Debrunner, University of Lausanne

Description: Urban densification is a global trend. In the face of climate change, housing shortages, and land scarcity, cities are under increasing pressure to become more compact. Densification is often seen as a way to reduce land consumption, improve infrastructure efficiency, and promote more sustainable urban forms. However, implementing these goals within already built-up areas brings significant challenges. Existing zoning laws, property rights, and planning tools often stand in the way. At the same time, redevelopment can trigger social displacement, rising housing prices, and the loss of green and open spaces.

In this context, "flexible planning" has re-entered urban policy debates. Flexible planning refers to a set of approaches and tools that seek to adapt to rapid urban change and growing uncertainties. Examples include temporary land uses, experimental housing formats like Tiny Houses, or the creation of so-called "urban laboratories" and "test zones." These initiatives are often launched in collaboration between local governments and private actors—who bring investment capacity but depend on planners to make urban space available for experimentation. While flexible planning may offer innovative solutions and quicker responses to pressing needs, it also raises critical questions:

• How do these initiatives emerge, and who drives them?

• What kind of flexibility is pursued—and for whose benefit?

• Are these approaches inclusive, or do they risk reinforcing exclusion and fragmentation in the urban fabric?

This Special Session brings together scholars and practitioners to critically reflect on flexible planning in densifying cities. We welcome contributions from diverse geographic and disciplinary contexts that explore:

• Conceptual frameworks for understanding flexibility in urban planning

• Case studies of flexible planning tools in action

• Legal, institutional, and governance-related tensions

• Socio-spatial impacts, including unintended exclusions

By linking theoretical insights with grounded empirical work, the session aims to develop a nuanced understanding of whether flexible planning in densifying cities enables just and sustainable urban transitions—or reinforces uneven development through selective innovation.