Introducing the urban land pooling/readjustment technique into Thailand to improve urban development and land supply
| Author | R. W. Archer |
| Date | 01 May 1992 |
| Published date | 01 May 1992 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230120204 |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
VOL.
12,155-174
(1992)
Introducing the Urban Land PoolingDteadjustment Technique
into Thailand
to
Improve Urban Development and Land
Supply'
R.
W.
ARCHER
Asian
Institute
of
Technology,
Bangkok
SUMMARY
Land poolingheadjustment (LP/R) is a technique for managing the planned development
of urban-fringe lands, whereby a government agency consolidates a selected group of land
parcels and then designs, services and subdivides them into a layout of streets, open spaces
and serviced building plots, with the sale of some of the plots for cost recovery and the
distribution of the remaining plots back to the landowners to develop or to
sell
for development.
Widely used
in
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, LP/R is being adopted in Indonesia, Nepal
and Malaysia. The community benefits that the technique can provide in the Thailand situation
of weak urban land-use controls and inadequate provision of urban network infrastructure
are outlined. The landowner benefits the technique
can
provide that make it
a
fully acceptable
and feasible technique are identified. Pilot LP/R projects should be undertaken to demonstrate
and learn the technique in the Thai context. A draft scheme for one such project, to install
distributor roads and utility
lines
in
advance of private land development,
is
outlined. These
pilot projects would also provide the local experience for designing a law, administration
and procedures for the wide
use
of LP/R in Thailand. The main elements of such a national
LP/R system are outlined.
A
similar approach is recommended for the adoption of LP/R
by the other developing countries of Asia.
INTRODUCTION
Most of the growth of Asian cities takes place by their outward expansion through
the conversion of urban-fringe lands from rural to urban uses. This land conversion
usually takes place by the separate subdivision of private land parcels and is usually
subject to the problems of land withholding, land shortages, scattered land and
building development, backlogs in the provision of public road and public utility
works, unused farmland, excessive land speculation and high land prices. The land
poolingheadjustment technique
(LPR)
can be used to reduce these problems.
LPR
is a technique for managing the urban development of urban-fringe lands,
whereby a group of separate land parcels are assembled for their unified planning,
servicing and subdivision as a single estate, with the sale of some of the new building
plots to recover the costs and the redistribution of the other plots back to the land-
owners. A local government could undertake
LPR
projects for selected urban-fringe
The author is Associate Professor
of
Urban Land Economics and Management, Division of Human
Settlements Development, Asian Institute
of
Technology, GPO
Box
2754,
Bangkok
10501,
Thailand.
'
This paper
forms
part
of
the author's continuing study of the land poolinglreadjustment technique
for managing and financing urban land development
in
Asia-Pacific Region countries
(see
also
Archer,
1989,1986,1985,1982).
0271-2075/92/020155-20%10.OO
0
1992 by John Wiley
&
Sons,
Ltd.
156
R.
W.
Archer
areas to subdivide the land for the planned urban land uses and to construct public
roads, public utility networks and parks at no cost to government. The
LP/R
tech-
nique is widely used in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and is used in some cities
in Australia and Canada. It has also been adopted in Indonesia and Nepal, where
a number of
LP/R
projects have been camed out (Ibrahim, 1987; Archer, 1986b;
Acharya, 1988). The present paper discusses the potential benefits of adopting the
technique in Thailand and outlines the way in which it might be introduced and
the conditions that should be met to achieve the benefits of
LPR.
The
LP/R
technique has different names in different countries, being known as
‘land readjustment’ in Japan and South Korea, ‘land consolidation’ in Taiwan and
Indonesia, ‘land pooling’ in Australia and Nepal, and ‘land replotting’ in Canada.
These different names reflect different parts of the
LP/R
process. Although there
is an important legal difference between land pooling and land readjustment, they
are essentially the same and the present writer finds it useful to use the words ‘pooling’
and ‘readjustment’ together to indicate this similarity and to give the technique a
name that is self-explanatory.
NATURE
OF
LP/R
LP/R
can be defined
as
a technique by which a group of adjoining land parcels
are consolidated for their unified design, servicing and subdivision into a layout
of streets, open spaces and building plots, with the sale of some of the plots for
cost recovery and the redistribution of the other plots to the landowners. A definition
from another perspective is that
LP/R
is a land management technique, whereby
a group of neighbouring landowners in an urban-fringe area are combined in a
compulsory partnership for the unified planning, servicing and subdivision of their
land, with the project costs and benefits being shared between the landowners. It
is a simple concept and this
is
illustrated by the diagram in Figure 1, which shows
a typical
LP/R
project to produce serviced building plots.
Rural
Land
Par ce
Is
JOpen Space1
/
+
far
Cost
Recoverv
1/11
+
Unified
Infrastructure
8
Planning
&
Subdivision
F
\.I
Serviced
I/
I
,
P;o;e’.’
Figure
1.
A
land poolinglreadjustment project to convert rural land
into
urban land.
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