Developing a Theoretical and Conceptual Framework Explaining the Role of Land Property Rights in Urban Spatial Planning

Conflicts between the rights of private landowners and the public interest and balancing between the two has always been one of the most important challenges of spatial planning. The increasing expansion of cities and insufficient supply of developable land have made right to use and develop, the most valuable resources and the ambiguity in defining and determining the owners of these rights has led to unproductive competition between landowners, developers and government agents, the conflicts of interests and increased spatial inequality. This trend has made the need to pay attention to institutional requirements in spatial planning more necessary.

Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore what the land property rights and its components are and to explain the relationship and interaction between spatial planning and property rights institutions.

This research is fundamental based on purpose, and qualitative in nature, and by adopting an explanatory-exploratory approach, it reviews and analyzes sources and texts systematically. Critical realism has been chosen as the philosophical position and retroduction as the logic of reasoning and strategy of the research.

By Using the new institutionalist and property rights approach and applying institutional analysis, this article in addition to a theoretical framework, develops a conceptual framework that explain the relationship between spatial planning and land property rights institutions and how these rights are allocated in the city.

What the applied institutional analysis tell us is that the final products of the spatial planning system, such as zoning, regulations, building codes and permits, are a bundle of rights for each plot of land, and resolving the conflict of significant interests in urban land development requires a precise and clear definition of owner of each component of this bundle. Therefore, it is necessary for spatial planners to focus on how to allocate land property rights, optimally and to detemine owner of each right, clearly.