ABSTRACT
The predominant form of governance in Polish urban development is private land development. The only PVC tools that provide much revenues are leasing public urban land and the property tax. The Planning levy (opłata planistyczna), a direct PVC tool, does not provide any significant revenues. A formal betterment charge (opłata adiacencka, charged on landowners profiting from public investments in infrastructure) also does not provide much results. There are only two formal DOs that provide some results in practice: the opłata adiacencka in plot subdivisions (a sort of N-NDO), and a contract with the traffic authority (a sort of NDO). But at most, they provide some incomes and a basic package of road infrastructure directly connected to the development. Besides these formal tools, several informal tools have developed, none of them providing satisfying results, mainly because public law does not allow municipalities and developers to negotiate contributions in exchange for the land-use plan. Adding to this general failure of PVC tools, most urban development in Poland is done without land-use plans, based on ad hoc planning permissions that impose almost no requirements on developers. As a consequence, most of the time, developers of privately owned land only provide a minimum package of the most indispensable road infrastructure. In small developments made possible through ad hoc planning permits, the situation is worst: local access roads are often not even paved. Since 2015, the possibilities to obtain obligations are a bit larger in some specific cases, but it is uncertain whether this will provide results.
