Downtown redevelopment and land-use regulation: Can planning policies discipline property development?

摘要

This paper examines the attempts that planners have made to discipline downtown development through the articulation and implementation of land-use regulation. Such a mission is a definite challenge since planning regulation in this quintessential corporate complex is responsive and subordinate to marketplace dynamics. Drawing on the case of the old central business district in Tel Aviv and employing a mixed-method approach, this paper explores twenty years (1992-2012) of landuse regulation in which the initial strategy of office development has yielded to residential development challenging the predominance of the corporate-complex strategy. Planners in Tel Aviv have been closely involved in configuring redevelopment efforts, ascertaining that planning policies are not necessarily tailored to satisfy the interests of the development industry and that planners are not merely submissive agents. Instead, their actions may be viewed as a medium through which market forces are channelled and disciplined. In the case of the downtown, planners mediated between market pressures for residential development and city-planning objectives that concern the long-term supply of land for office development in order to preserve the competitive position of the CBD. By setting reasonable and flexible objectives and taking advantage of administrative tools while concurrently listening to the market, planning authorities can, to a certain extent, counteract unwanted development pressures. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.