Proposal of Land Readjustment for the Netherlands: An analysis of its effectiveness from an international perspective

Many believe that Land Readjustment (LR) can potentially resolve the stagnation of development that accrues from scattered ownership and improve the financing of public infrastructure. With this enthusiasm for LR, arguments are made that LR avoids the need to expropriate land, empowers landowners to develop their land and provides the necessary public infrastructure at a lower or even no cost to the public. This enthusiasm has recently drawn the attention of the Dutch government, who asked an expert committee to elaborate a draft proposal for LR regulation. In the summer of 2014 this committee submitted this draft proposal to the Dutch government, who since then is working on a draft for an LR act. However, LR does not always resolve the previously mentioned problems; in some countries, it is a “dead word” in legislation. Unfortunately, not many studies analyze the aspects of LR regulations that might be critical in practice. Based on other countries' experiences with LR (especially Germany and Spain), this paper develops a framework of analysis that concludes that the proposed Dutch LR regulation may not fulfill expectations in reality.