ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a closely related issue: how publicly provided services which are subject to a financial ré gime should be charged for. It also considers the point of the allocation of resources to physical development, the various services which make up the development process should be charged for and the issues which arise when prices and costs are not closely related. The chapter focuses on the significance for land-use planning of the fact that typically prices are not set ideally. It is a characteristic of nearly all urban areas that populations or densities are falling, with the consequence in some cases that new development can often be accommodated at no extra cost in terms of infrastructure. Distributional considerations are at the heart of many of the arguments which reject pricing solutions in favour of other methods of allocation.
