ABSTRACT
Land is, with capital and labor, one of the the three classic elements of production. When urban land policies are defective, economic productivity immediately suffers: adequate land is not available for industrial production and commercial activities of all sorts are impaired. The most significant fact is not that future demand is so high but that it will occur in the face of very different conditions for supplying urban land than those that have generally prevailed in the past. It has for many years been believed that the best way to deal with the shortage of urban land for shelter was to reduce demand by means of attractive programs outside major cities that would stem migration. What is often not recognized is the direct and heavy fiscal costs that the lack of such systems imposes on effective public action for all types of economic development projects.
