“In spite of a multitude of positive actions carried out by the current and previous governments, it is clear that housing prices are constantly rising,” the government said in a press release.

It is placing its hopes in three new tools with the cost of land, considered responsible for the upward trend in housing prices, at the centre of the strategy, along with land speculation.

The first measure is the modification of the “Baulandvertrag”. This law of July 2004 governs the urban planning and development of municipalities. It determines the building potential, a prerequisite for the development of new districts.

Currently, once the general development plan (PAG) has been adopted, there is no time limit to force owners to start construction work. The decisions taken by municipalities on the sole criterion of the general interest do not necessarily meet the landowners’ interests. The government therefore wants to move from an approach without a participatory approach, the “Negativplanung”, to a collaborative planning approach, or “Positivplanung”, in which landowners would participate directly in urban development.

While the bill launched by the previous government created a 12-year delay between the declaration of land fit for building and its development, based on an administrative development contract, the new government is going further: an additional deadline will be introduced in the PAG for housing construction. With a deterrent sanction: if the deadline is not met, the building plots concerned will only be able to accommodate construction projects that meet a mission of general interest in the field of housing, and in particular social housing.

Creating this easing directly in the PAG has the advantage, according to the government, of “making the mechanism more transparent,” since this document is a regulation accessible to all.

Overcoming barriers

This system is supplemented by an accelerated procedure for modifying a general development planning as well as a procedure for ministerial regrouping, the second desired tool.

Currently, the procedure for modifying a PAG is spread over a period of approximately 12 months. The streamlined procedure introduced in the project will allow for ad hoc modifications within a period of 7 months.

Ministerial consolidation, the third tool, can be analysed as the regrouping and redistribution of land that reshapes the existing parcel of land in order to bring it in line with the building land as set out in a special development plan (PAP). Experience has shown that the land covered by a PAP often has a complex parcel configuration and is owned by a large number of owners, which is a source of bottlenecks when new residential neighbourhoods are built. With this tool, a single land owner will no longer be able to block an entire project. The minister of the interior will be able to bypass the example by reconfiguring the project. A reluctant person seeing a project being carried out all around his plot will end up becoming conciliatory.

At least, perhaps.

Originally published in French by Paperjam