2017 Volume 82 Issue 739 Pages 2343-2349
Some of urban planning system in Japan have progressed the ways in which to improve urban environment along with urban development projects by providing open space or any local use facility within the urban development site, in return for being obtained extra floor area. These contributions produced by urban developments have been collected in the central area of Japanese cities. As the decreasing population and being the aging society, it is needed for the local authority to take advantage to use such contributions to improve urban environment with more effect, and for the developers to consider the sustainable management strategy for these spaces and facilities including financial backups.
In England, it has developed the planning gain system in the planning permission process for urban development to mitigate its influences to surrounding area of the project site. Through the transition of the planning gain system, the Section 106 agreement system was established under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. It has developed the planning gain methodology which allows local authorities to negotiate about the development mitigation with developers and derive various contribution along with the local authority's Supplementary Planning Document.
This paper aims to discuss on the ways in which urban development projects contribute to improve local built and social environment by closely looking at the transition and implementation of Section 106 agreement in England.
To understand the planning gain system in England, first of all, the paper makes clear its transition process, in which there were criticisms such as the unclear negotiation process between local authority and developer, the longer process to obtain the planning permission, the different standards by each local authority, and so on.
The Section 106 agreement was progressed to make the system to be clear and sentenced in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to be able to use it outside of the development site, to combine the small amount of contribution for a certain size of a project, to use for not only capital but also revenue expense, and so on. However, it has constantly criticized as the dual tax system. To correspond to the criticism, each local authority sets up the formula to calculate the quantity of the contribution in Supplementary Planning Document, prepares the list of the targets for local authority to ask the contributions, to present the project names implemented the contributions as the results to the public, and so on. Since 2008, the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) was introduced to charge urban developments along with the fixed rate calculation system, which recently each local authority are preparing to introduce. CIL will take over a part of the role of Section 106 agreement, and thus the number of Section 106 agreement will decrease.
Based on the research, this paper finally discussed the ways for urban development projects to contribute to improve urban infrastructure including parks by pooling and combining the individual contributions to make bigger amount for urban infrastructure improvement and maintenance projects for the establishment of sustainable society. To develop this system, it would be needed to establish the standard to calculate the contribution amount by formula or other methodology in order to keep the accountability of the agreement.
