ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 concluded with low rating of the likeliness of successfully applying the cross-subsidising of open space across the metropolitan landscape. We add to this point from another angle, namely the question whether building companies and house owners really profit so much from the presence of open space that they can be asked to financially contribute to open space management. Put differently, the conversion of open space into urban land use entails externalities. Since the market value of open space does not fully reflect its societal value, these externalities are in fact market failures that call for corrective measures by the public sector in the form of land use interventions or pricing measures (Kotchen and Powers, 2006; Smith et al., 2002). Public decision-making therefore requires information on the value of services provided by urban open spaces in order to make informed trade-offs against the (opportunity) costs of preservation.
