ABSTRACT
In this chapter and the next, we look at how it is possible to create better places through shaping real estate markets. Market shaping is essentially about setting or resetting the context within which market actions and transactions take place. It is the first of four types of policy instrument which we examine in detail in this final part of the book. As in the case of the other three types of policy instrument – market regulation (Chapter 12), market stimulus (Chapter 13) and capacity building (Chapter 14) – attention is primarily focused on the impact of policy on market actors, and specifically on developers, landowners and funders in the private sector, whose strategies and actions were explored in the previous three chapters. For if we want to see more successful places created, we must not focus simply on public policy, but must critically evaluate the extent to which specific policies might shape, compel, constrain or inspire the behaviour, choices and actions of those key decision-makers closest to the problem. This approach equates to what Elmore (1987) termed ‘backward-mapping’, since it starts with potential impacts and works back to selecting policies.
