ABSTRACT
In broad terms, the allocation of land, like the allocation of other commodities is determined by the nature of the politico-economic system in which it is set. In traditional societies this was normally a function of custom or convention (including religion), but in modern urban societies there are fundamentally two schemes. First, there is the market economy which began to dominate in industrial societies, starting with Britain, in the early eighteenth century. This is based upon individual ownership of land, not necessarily wholly private, with the wishes of buyers and sellers being brought into balance through the exchange and price mechanisms of the market. Second, there are variants of the command economy in which there is centralised decision making and a very high level of state intervention and ownership. In the broad political sense, such systems are usually modelled upon Marxist lines, but in a narrower sense elements of centralised control are present in most of what we understand by town planning. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the processes which shape the allocation and patterning of urban land according to each of these principles. It should immediately be pointed out that as we are dealing with developed western countries the distinction is not clearly polarised, but is one of a market allocation of land controlled by greater or lesser amounts of public intervention. At the outset, it is necessary to give some consideration to the particular nature of urban land itself, especially since this influences its treatment as an economic commodity.
