Private initiative and the regional law governing city and territorial planning activities (LRAU

Abstract

The paper examines the principal factors, necessary stages and requirements as within the field of initiatives proper to City and Territorial Planning from the stand point of a businessman working therei n and, also, in the light of the Valencian Regional Law governing all such activities, seeing this last as a worthwhile innovation that lends greater economic efficiency to those operations it is designed to cover. Having examined the causal and legal city and territorial planning factors that he considers have brought about a rise in the price of spanish housing, he then indicates the economic and business considerations that have made this law popular in the sector. The author remarks that, during its 30 months in force, private investment in developing and building ground has shown a sharp increase and this, he holds, can be directly attributed to the new legal framework which, furthermore, is said to have brought about a moderate but telling lowering in the price of land. This last, in its turn, is here seen to indicate a trend towards a growing cooperation on the part of real estate companies (both promoters and builders) in city and territorial planning responsibilities along with a more open general feeling in favour of negotiation, agreements and mutual contracting as between land owners, promoters and the Regional Administration, this, in turn, encouraging a normal operating of the real estate market thus unfettered from unnecessary administrative control and intervention. The author comments that the real estate sector is, for the moment, whole heartedly in favour of the new legislative framework that the law propounds.