- Property Regimes in territorial Competition    75 kb by    Jacobs, Wouter | w.jacobs@nsm.kun.nl    Short Outline Property regimes in territorial competition is about the institutional dynamics of property regimes and its contribution to urban competitiveness. Abstract This paper proposes a research approach aiming to identify the institutional structure and development of property regimes in different territories of the European Union and the United States. More particularly, this research wants to look at the contribution of the institutional structure of property regimes to the competitive performance of cities and urban regions and the implications for spatial planning. Territorial competition in the United States has been a permanent phenomenon ever since the colonial era and can be explained as the outcome of geographical capitalization of (innovative) industries (Storper and Walker, 1989) in a large integrated economy with few constraints on production factor mobility. Similar conditions now apply to the European Union with its single market, common currency and a projected eastwards territorial expansion. Though it seems clear that the property market will influence urban competitiveness directly through the provision of suitable accommodation for economic activity and indirectly through its cumulative contribution to the built environment, the role of the property market in the urban development process has largely been ignored or it has been regarded as relatively unproblematic by planners (Keogh and D’Arcy, 1999). Here, European research contrasts with work done in the United States where property has been given a more formal role in urban economic research and policy practice, like Logan and Molotch’s (1987) concept of Growth Machines. The Growth Machine and its, mainly Marxists proponents, symbolizes the political-ideological nature of property as a way to organize societies. In addition to Keogh and D’Arcy’s rather market centered-conception of property, this study places the property market in a broader perspective: the institutional environment of the property market by making use of regime theory. Since the 1990s, European scholars have started to explore the institutional structure and environment of property markets, the property regime, as a potentially important factor in shaping urban competitive advantages, sustainable economic growth and development outcomes, and as a policy instrument for urban competition. My presentation is interesting because: Globalization has changed the inter-relationships between property markets, planning systems and the built environment. In practice this means that planning increasingly has become geared to market-priorities. Keywords property, territory, competition Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2003: Planning in a more globalized World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper