Competition in local land use planning?

Abstract

The extent of political fragmentation of metropolitan areas impedes effective land use planning in many countries, and thus contributes to the phenomenon of urban sprawl. For some metropolises in the United States and Europe, strategic interaction between local policymakers codetermines the implementation of local planning policies. However, previous empirical analyses of this phenomenon have usually assumed interdependence in planning decisions to be confined to neighbouring jurisdictions. This is a common simplification in research on diffusion in public policies. Proceeding on the assumption that municipal zoning decisions are subject to competition between municipal authorities trying to attract new residents, I suggest an alternative conceptualisation of location-choice competition in Tiebout-like economies: the correlations of out-commuting patterns serve as a proxy for the degree to which municipalities are competitors for mobile residents, irrespective of their contiguity. Spatial autoregressive models, estimated on the basis of a large panel of fine-grained zoning data, reveal that zoning decisions in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland’s most dynamic metropolitan area, are indeed subject to such interdependence.

Business centre or bedroom community? The development of employment in small and medium-sized towns

“…With regard to the political orientation of the local electorate, Berli (2018) shows that structurally similar municipalities in Switzerland behave similarly in regard to local land-use planning despite different political attitudes. This points to a more functionalist behavior of local leaders: They are first and foremost concerned with tackling challenges at the local level and partisan preferences are only of secondary interest.…”

Leaves in the wind? Local policies of small and medium-sized towns in metropolitan regions

“…One problem is that the relationship between policies, institutions, governance and economic development is multi-faceted and hard to trace (Malecki, 2007;Rodríguez-Pose, 2013). Erickcek and McKinney (2006, p. 239) , as well as on studies of local economic development policies in Switzerland (Berli, 2018;Devecchi, 2016;Kaufmann & Arnold, 2018), we propose three categories of local policies that Swiss SMSTs may apply to influence their economic specialization. The local autonomy in Switzerland is high compared to other federal states.…”

“…The third category of local policies focuses on land-use planning. SMSTs can steer the development of housing and industry or trade zones, as well as the management of land reserves, via land use planning (Berli, 2018;Devecchi, 2016). To do so, SMSTs may apply, as call it, the market of territories approach, meaning that SMSTs offer land to private actors as quickly as possible so that they build profitable business buildings or apartment blocks.…”

How Strong is Local Politics’ Grip on Local Economic Development? The Case of Swiss Small and Medium-Sized Towns

“…Economic development policy, however, is not a classical local policy field because much is negotiated on higher regional levels (Ansell 2002). Nonetheless, empirical studies on SMSTs and smaller municipalities in Switzerland show that they not only use their discretion in designing local tax policy (Brülhart, Jametti, and Schmidheiny 2012) and land-use policy (Devecchi 2016;Berli 2018;Kaufmann and Meili 2019) but also that these policies have the potential to shape local economic development (see also Kaufmann and Arnold 2018). Additionally, regional governance and vertical exchange with cantonal entities enable local politicians to advocate for their municipality.…”