ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, some argued that planning activity merely reflected market dynamics, or the interests of powerful players in land and property markets. Planning systems come into play by giving some spatial specification to limits on land and property development rights, using instruments for deploying regulatory powers and powers for land acquisition. The relations between cultural values and those embedded in planning activity are not just a one-way street. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the dominant interpretation of the relation between state and market has been that the inertia and inefficiency of overly bureaucratic states has held back market innovation, and hence impeded economic growth. But the markets that need special attention from those concerned with the spatial dimensions of urban and regional development are those involved in land and property development processes. Land and buildings on land have always presented a difficult problem to address in terms of a market.
