The New Land Usage & Assessment Bill as a Way Out from a Crisis

Abstract

The author begins by giving a step-by-step description of the development and crises of Spanish City and Territorial Planning legislation from its first modern expression in 1956 on through the convulsive and much discussed Act of 1990, the findings of the Free Market Defence Council, the provisional amendments that the in-coming party's government made to it and then on to the earth shaking sentence handed down by the Constitutional Court that brought down its whole doctrine as the how land could be made available. The paper then enters into an analysis of the structuring thought behind the new Bill, here laying special emphasis on the reach a novel regulating of the legal standing of real estate in its various categories, special attention being here given to land as to building where it is planned to invert the traditional proportion between that which can and cannot be so used. Likewise here the notion of time determined programming is to be swept away insomuch as it has proved to be unworkable and, being so, has given rise to rigidity in the supply of built upon and available land which, in its turn, has led to scarcity and price rises. The Bill is said to be inspired by the idea of the 'no-can planning' of building land, i.e. a defining of what cannot be done with it. This once established, the real estate owner is then at liberty to undertake its transformation as and if a wider market and greater supply will let him do so. The author rounds his paper off by calling for a re-founding of the new Bill to take in all such elements of previous legislation that it leaves standing to thus avoid any chance of any possible chaos as to the norms governing the supply of land and suggesting that this move would lead to a even greater collaboration between all such at National or Autonomous Regional Government Level sitting on the Council governing this sector.