Land Development Contracts – A Comparative Study in Finland and in the Netherlands

This paper is based on a comparative study made by both authors. The study includes a comparison of public-private co-operation in land development process both in Finland and in the Netherlands. The land development process involves the acquisition of raw land, detailed physical planning, improvements of soil, construction of the infrastructure and building site disposal. The land developer can be the local government (municipality) or a private enterprise or the two in co-operation. In Finland and in the Netherlands the municipalities have played remarkable roles in producing building sites for the use of housing, retail, offices and industry. Increasing the role of private enterprises is a topical issue in both of the countries. The adequacy of housing sites in particular has been a problem in the Netherlands, which is a small densely populated country in Central Europe. Finland is a rather large and sparsely populated country in Northern Europe, but because of the movement from sparsely populated rural areas to bigger cities in the south, there is a scarcity of building land in these cities