Transferring Development Rights: Lessons and Suggestions from Switzerland

Land-use policies aim to control urban sprawl. Such control may involve different regulatory and market-based policy instruments, which compensate for and/or transfer development rights. In Switzerland, compensation for development rights has remained legally hazardous; discussions on the transfer of development rights have primarily considered Transferable Development Rights (TDR) as a means to transfer ill-placed development rights to more suitable areas. However, other instruments, such as Land Improvement Syndicates (LIS), may prove more appropriate in the Swiss context. Drawing upon a literature review and attempts to conceptualise a new instrument, the present paper discusses theoretical and institutional characteristics of TDR and LIS. We review both instruments’ capacity to fight urban sprawl and analyse their respective compatibility with the Swiss institutional setting. In an attempt to put forward the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of both instruments, we conceptualise a new instrument: Multi-Site Land Improvement Syndicates (MSLIS). We discuss potentials and limits of MSLIS under the Swiss institutional setting, in particular, when transferring rights across jurisdictions. We conclude with lessons on re-locating development rights in a context of strong property rights, such as in Switzerland. In particular, we underline a) the different vehicles MSLIS offer for transferring rights, b) the specific decisional rules of the instrument, and c) its compatibility with legal obligations of compensation and the guarantee of property. These insights may be of interest to non-Swiss planning researchers and practitioners working on development rights re-location.