Municipal finance sustainability: a new territorial management instrument to redistribute surplus-values accrued by plans

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2014

Authors

Emília Malcata Rebelo (Author) FEUP

Conference proceedings International

Title: Atas/Proceedings 20th APDR Congress 2014, ¿Renaissance of the Regions of Southern Europe¿

Pages: 1432-1441

Scientific classification

FOS: Social sciences > Social and economic geography

CORDIS: Social sciences

Other information

Abstract (EN): The research reported in this article fits the main goals that guide the revision of the Land, Territorial Ordinance and Urbanism Act, currently under way in Portugal. One of the main goals searched by this revision consists in the inclusion of new territorial management instruments in plans that support the economic and financial sustainability of urban development operations. Considering that planning decisions concerning zoning delimitation and urban indexes settled in plans engender land unearned increments (surplus-values), it is legitimate that municipal powers recapture them, and reassign them later on to social purposes framed by the municipality´s urban goals, namely in urban regeneration and social housing grounds. Within this scope it is proposed the collection, by each municipality, of a 30% fee on the building capacity assigned by plans to new buildings aimed at trade, industry, tourism or services deducted by the value of non-buildable land, and respective costs on urban infrastructure and municipal development charges . This new territorial management instrument is applied, as a case study, to the intervention area of the Urban Development Plan of the Planning Unit 11 (UP 11) of the municipality of Lagoa (Algarve), according to the following methodology: computation of (i) the nonbuildable land surface; (ii) the urban infrastructure costs; (iii) the municipal development charges; (iv) the costs of non-buildable land, according to land trade market prices/m 2 ; (v) the concrete net building capacity of each planning and management operational subdivision, for respective profitable uses; (vi) the base value this fee falls on; and (vii) the proper value of the fee to collect. The implementation of this new territorial management instrument is able to strengthen municipal finance, and to foster municipalities´ economic and financial sustainability; it clears up the origins and applications of municipal funds from urban development processes; and it grants that surplus-values accrued by most profitable urban operations are allocated on behalf of population´s general social interest.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 17