Institutional factors affecting urban green space provision – from a local government revenue perspective

Abstract

Statutory land-use planning allocates different uses of land resources. However, local governments may focus on economic development and financial revenue, leading to environmentally unfavourable outcomes, such as a shortage of public urban green space (UGS). Land resource allocation in planning is associated with institutional arrangements. This study aims to link the corresponding institutional factors under the themes of initial land ownership and governing instruments to the fiscal effect of UGS provision. A comparative study with different scenarios is conducted using land market data to demonstrate quantitatively the influence of such factors on government revenue. The results suggest that the situation with initial public land ownership status backed up by regulatory instruments is more advantageous for providing UGS than that with the initial private land ownership status relying on market-based instruments. The study identifies the characteristics of different institutional arrangements, outlining institutional changes and possible strategies for improving urban sustainability.

Keywords:

• institutional arrangement
• urban green space
• government revenue
• land use mechanism
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and The University Grants Committee of Hong Kong. The authors are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their meticulous comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Time-limited property rights are granted by dividing the bundles of land rights and allocating private-property rights within a certain time frame on municipal land, e.g. a long-term ground lease (GL) in Switzerland. A GL is a policy instrument in the form of ‘planning by contract’, where the GL holder becomes the owner of the facilities on the original public land for up to 100 years (Gerber, Nahrath, and Hartmann 2017).

2 It is regulated in ‘The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China’ that ‘[l]and in urban areas of cities belongs to the state. Land in the rural and suburban areas is owned by collectives, except for those portions which belong to the state in accordance with the law’. In the process of urbanisation, the collectively owned land must be expropriated and converted to state ownership before it can be used for urban construction. Municipal governments, as the representatives of the state, extract profit by expropriating land from collectives and then transferring land-use rights (through a land lease) to private developers for commercial and residential development, which becomes a main source of revenue for local governments (Chen and Hu 2015).

3 The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Press Releases. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201711/01/P2017110100682.htm

4 Census and Statistics Department. Population Overview. http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/so20.jsp

5 Lands Department. https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/legco/sfc_question_2015/DEVBPL129.pdf and https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/legco/sfc_question_2015/DEVBPL116.pdf

6 Census and Statistics Department. www.statistics.gov.hk/pub/B10100032015AN15B0100.pdf

7 Rating and Valuation Department. www.rvd.gov.hk/en/public_services/rates.html

8 Hong Kong Monetary Authority. www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/market-data-and-statistics/