Introduction

This appendix describes the tools aimed at the control of development that have been encountered in the different cases. It is not the aim here to give a complete description of urban planning in the different countries. For a general overview of land use planning and urban development, we refer to the Urban land and property market series, published in 1993 and 1994. For a fine grain understanding of some of the mechanisms at work in housing development, we refer to the case studies reported in the preceding chapters of this book. The information in this text should be seen as background information to the case studies. First, the political organisation of each country is briefly presented. Then relevant local land use tools are described. Finally, a brief description of the context of housing development in each of the four countries is given. This aims at uncovering implicit practices and knowledge. These are often Taken for granted’ in the separate countries, but need to be made explicit when the experience in a country is used in an international comparison.