ABSTRACT

This chapter develops an historical institutionalist approach to municipal governance, infrastructure, and property institutions, suggesting that these dense matrices of institutions are co-evolutionary and particularly path dependent. The focus is on the relationships between land, infrastructure, and governance institutions (illustrated in the urban property triangle), and on the fact that existing spatial patterns of urban property generate powerful positive feedback effects that are politically consequential. In this perspective, property, infrastructure, and governance institutions play a central role in regulating capital investment in cities, structure urban change, service, protect, and structure property’s meaning and value, and demonstrate enduringly different approaches between jurisdictions.