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Public authorities have a wide range of objectives related to urban development. Usually, they strive to achieve the objectives via land use planning but their involvement in land development can be significant as well. In this paper, we compare how, and to what extent, local authorities can safeguard public objectives through the use of public and private land development by analysing four illustrative cases of land development in two Nordic countries, Finland and Sweden. Our results suggest that public land development appears to bring significant added value for public authorities in respect of achieving both qualitative and economic objectives. On the other hand, to guarantee fair treatment of landowners, it appears important that public authorities have consistent long-term land policies concerning the use of public land development. However, within democratic societies such long-term policies may be infeasible due to short electoral terms.

The purpose of our study was to investigate the content of sustainability reporting issued by real estate sector. Content analysis was employed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of sustainability information provided by sample companies. The content analysis structure considered both quantity and quality of information simultaneously. Our results show an inconsistency in the form, extent and quality of sustainability reports. In addition, our findings recognise a lack of clear approach to embrace materiality, external assurance, and further engagement of stakeholders in the sample reports. It seems that most of the sample companies were engaged in issuing sustainability reports to fulfil the legislative requirement and avoiding financial or legal risks. Our study provides information on the current status of sustainability reporting to real estate professionals. In addition it contributes in decreasing the financial and legal risks, and increasing the corporate reputational capital, by revealing the common weaknesses prevalent in the sustainability reports.

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